Articolo disponibile anche in: Italian

Brace yourself, today we’ll be talking about the king. The king of the dining table, the most precious ingredient of all, the one everyone’s mad about. The white truffle!

Personally I’m a fan, as far as my wallet will allow me. It’s easy to criticise the way in which it is used, but it’s impossible to resist. It should be prescribed as a remedy for the soul at least once a year.

In Tuscany the truffle lives in many places, surely the most famous is the San Miniato truffle, but you also find it in the Val d’Elsa (in Barberino …), in the Crete Senesi, in Mugello and even in Casentino.

The ancients believed that this wonder was generated every time lightning struck the ground, but today we know that its characteristic scent (which the profane call “a gas stench”) is due to a high concentration of bismethylthiomethane, responsible for its unmistakable aroma.

This is how I eat white truffle: I prepare the crêpe batter with half a litre of milk, four eggs, 50 grams of melted butter and 200 grams of flour 00, then I let it rest for 20 minutes and make about 18 cm diameter crêpes in a teflon pan.

I have left the parmigiano cheese soaked in milk for one night in the fridge. I take the cheese out of the milk, drain it and put it in the blender. I bring the remaining milk to the boil and slowly add it to the cheese that is blending, to obtain a smooth cream. I then put it in the fridge and let it congeal.

I prepare a nice capon broth using cold water, white onions, lightly seared leek, a few carrots and celery.

Then I cut the crêpes with a pasta cutter into disks of an 8 cm diameter. Putting the fondue in the centre of each disk, I pull the sides up and tie it into a bundle using the chives. I put the bundles in the oven at 180 ° for 7 minutes, and serve in the hot broth with lots of thinly sliced ​​truffle.

And there you have my mini parmesan bundles (fagottini) in capon broth with white truffle.

Matia Barciulli, chef, Technical coordinator Antinori’s restaurants… and father of Brando

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