5-Truffle Pasta (and Pizza): SUPER Decadent #Recipes!

Truffles and I are kind of an old love story. I first enjoyed them when I lived in Italy, eons ago, usually grated on top of pasta, but I didn’t get to have them very often. Truffles are very “earthy” and aromatic, and somewhat of an acquired taste, but I acquired that taste PDQ! 🙂 In the USA, I’d see something with truffles on a menu at a fine restaurant once in a blue moon, and order it as a super-special treat… So when I had the opportunity to be in Italy for a week with my husband, I arranged for us to go truffle hunting in Le Marche, which was truly fabulous: our guide, Moreno, was wonderful, and the very clever truffle-hunting doggie helped us find 3 truffles! And we got to learn to make pasta, too! Moreno arranged for us to stay at a gorgeous, historic villa surrounded by vineyards, and we were treated to Vin Cotto on our arrival, and a wonderful dinner the next night; our host, Paolo, made the first course with our pasta, and our truffles! This is my 5-star review of Moreno on TripAdvisor, and his contact information if you want to do it, too: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g1752441-d1861629-r110281575-Truffles_hunting_in_le_Marche-Comunanza_Province_of_Ascoli_Piceno_Marche.html IMHO, if you are a “foodie” who is going to Italy, this is an Absolute MUST-DO!

There are white truffles and black truffles, summer ones and winter ones, and French ones and Italian ones… and a tremendous amount of information online about them if you Google. Basically, they are a super-rare, very expensive, and difficult to find, underground mushroom! Pigs were traditionally used in France to sniff them out and find them, but dogs are used in Italy. They are now being cultivated in a number of places, but, interestingly, this hasn’t brought the price down! This is a good article for a “truffle overview”: https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-are-truffles-5179896

Truffles are more my thing than Chef Dan’s- he thinks they taste like dirt. And, actually, they sort of do! But in a really, really good way! LOL So while he humors me when I order truffles and make things with them, he basically leaves most of it for me to eat- and that’s okay! 🙂

Over the years I’ve periodically ordered wonderful Italian truffle cheeses from www.igourmet.com & www.boteggadellanonna.com, (and there are a number of other specialty cheese stores online that have it, as well), and enjoyed them with a glass of wine, and crusty, Italian or French bread, & Italian fennel sausage, as an antipasto… We’ve bought white and black truffle oils at specialty oil shops, and truffle salt, and I’ve ordered truffle ‘essence’, and jars of sliced truffles from Italy… and one day, like magic, LOL, the light went on in my head, and it occurred to me to use them ALL AT ONCE, and make THE MOST DECADENT PASTA EVER: what I call my “5-TRUFFLE PASTA!

It is actually really simple- and stupidly expensive- to make, LOL, so this isn’t something I do very often. But if you are feeling flush, or blue, and in need of a foodie pick-me-up, or you want to treat a truffle-loving friend to something they will talk about for a week, this will Definitely fit the bill!

Like most of my recipes, there are no exact measurements. You do this to taste- YOUR taste!

Ingredients:

1. Pasta of your choice (I love to do this with Barilla thin spaghetti, or really fine artisan Italian pastas from www.boteggadellanonna.com, but it’s also great with Barilla cheese tortellini!) (NOTE: I first started buying Barilla pasta in Italy, and literally hauled a suitcase of it from Italy back to Israel, when you couldn’t get it there!)
2. Truffle Cheese (I usually order it from www.bottegadellanonna.com) You can also add grated Parmesan and/or Mozzarella, if you like.
3. Truffle Oils – white and black (I get ours from The Naked Olive in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia)
4. Sliced Truffles in oil (I ordered a jar of them most recently from eBay; amazon and many other specialty groceries online- and even www.walmart.com– have them, too). Note: You can also use truffle “essence”, which comes in a packet, but the sliced truffles in oil are Much better!)
5. Truffle Salt (Many online gourmet stores have it- it’s very trendy!)
6. Cracked black pepper (We like Vietnamese Phu Quoc Pepper, which you can actually get from McCormick’s at Walmart now, or pepper from the JQ Dickenson Salt-Works in West Virginia).
7. Wine– because you can’t serve this without a good glass of wine! I like a dry, or semi-dry, white Italian wine with this the best.

Directions:

1. Shave the room-temperature truffle cheese, (and the other room-temperature cheeses if you are using them), and set them out with everything else above.
2. Cook the pasta ‘al dente’ (“to the tooth”) in salted, boiling water, according to the package directions. Drain it, but save a bit of the pasta water.
3. Put the hot pasta in a large bowl and toss it immediately with a little of the black and white truffle oils. Add the shaved truffle cheese (and other cheeses, if you are using them), and toss it around some more to melt the cheese into the pasta. Add a little of the hot pasta water to make it more “saucy”.
4. Top it with the sliced truffles and a sprinkle of truffle salt, and lashings of cracked black pepper.
5. Pour yourself a glass of wine (or two if you are sharing this), and Mangia, baby! Buon Appetito!

Truffle Tortellini, before being tossed…

Having created 5-Truffle Pasta, I then went on to create a 5-Truffle Pizza, using that wonderful Jus-Rol “Round & Thin” refrigerated pizza dough that I have blogged about before. I rolled out the dough on its baking paper, pricked it with a fork, (so it doesn’t puff up), & baked it on a pre-heated perforated pizza pan (you can also use a pre-heated pizza stone) for 5 minutes at 425F. Then I brushed it lightly with the truffle oils, covered it with room-temperature grated Parmesan, and then the grated truffle cheese, topped it with the sliced truffles, and a sprinkle of truffle salt, and then covered it with grated Mozzarella. (The topping of Mozzarella is very important, because other cheeses burn too quickly). You can also add other things, like I did in the one pictured, such as oven-dried tomatoes, but the mozzarella needs to be on top. Then into the oven for 14 minutes, and OMG: you’ve got THE most wildly decadent Truffle Pizza ever!

Do you love truffles like I love truffles?

What do you make with them?

Please let me know in the comments if you make these recipes, and what you think of them!

And let me know your favorite truffle treats, so I can make them, too!