With autumn, the inebriating scents of truffles blow through the air throughout the boot, from Piedmont to Sicily. In Alba, the International Truffle Fair, the most famous of all. Also in Piedmont, the historic Moncalvo Truffle Fair is held, now in its sixty-third edition. Certainly Emilia-Romagna could not be missing with the National Black Truffle Fair of Fragno in the province of Parma which accompanies the gastronomic specialties of the Region. We pass through Tuscany with the White Truffle Market Exhibition of the Crete Senesi in San Giovanni d'Asso and the National White Truffle Exhibition in San Miniato.
Another high-level fair is underway in Acqualagna where the prized Marche white truffle it is the protagonist of numerous events until mid-November. Going to Umbria you meet La Bisaccia del Tartufaio, an event in the small town of Citerna, in the province of Perugia, which takes its name from the ancient container that was used to collect the underground mushroom.
And then there is the Molise thanks to its production of 40 percent of all the precious truffles collected in Italy, which shows its jewels in San Pietro Avellana in a fair now in its 27th edition. Further down in Laino Borgo in the province of Cosenza, Calabrian truffles are the protagonists of the current Fair.
And it drops right up in Sicilia where in Capizzi in the province of Messina and for some years now, the Trinacria truffle is king.
If at this point you haven't had an irrepressible desire to eat truffles, you will have to ask yourself a few questions.
Mondo Food turned to Errico Recanati, starred chef of the historian Andreina restaurant in Loreto for a recipe based on fine Acqualagna truffles. Not by chance. Recanati has made natural cuisine a natural element of his life.
Son of the unforgettable Andreina, a culinary reference point for generations of enthusiasts in the Ancona area, trained at the prestigious Étoile School, he made prudent choices in his professional growth alongside Gianfranco Vissani, a Peter Leeman of the "Joya" (first Michelin-starred vegetarian restaurant in Italy), a Martin Dalsass another starred chef of the Talvo Restaurant, of which Michelin writes: "does not like modern frills, focuses instead on classic-Mediterranean dishes rich in taste, intensity and aroma". Choices of essence and substance of the raw material treated with obsessive pique.
Its essentiality finds a moment of great synthesis in its specialty: grilled meat, where he has established, as he says, the "meeting point between past-present-future-truth precisely in the primordial cooking of the spit and the embers: nothing more primitive and current" because, as he likes to say "The dish is flavor and nature , where we talk about the truth of the ingredients. It is the only way to express simplicity”.
Simplicity which is obviously far from what we mean in common parlance. His recipes don't arise suddenly due to an artist's whim, they require long times, rather than simplicity: “To make a recipe, I need months to perfect it. It's a long process, a journey into my knowledge, a confrontation with myself, a complete immersion in what I have been and what I want to become. From here I start and everything takes shape and substance, in the kitchen it seems to take on consistency and flavour.”
It's his idea “neorural kitchen”: where the tradition acquired over time merges with the new techniques and research of today. A research that can be defined as innovatively primordial: the center of everything is the embers and the spit which is enhanced by the support of experimental and original techniques.
His recipe for ossobuco with Acqualagna white truffle concentrates a symphony of different but surprisingly harmonious tastes and textures. The decision to use the veal from the Marche region cut with a knife, therefore raw and uncooked, and to remove the marrow from the bone to create another one with a panna cotta with truffles, Pecorino dei Monti Sibillini and Parmesan, are the singular and unexpected elements that allow this recipe to create a hypogeum of flavours. The taste, in fact, is revealed precisely under each layer, exactly like the truffle that grows underground.
“This recipe of mine – he says – is like having taken a picture of the autumn season, full of antitheses, where nature slows down its pace but does so by still offering a scenario of warm and enveloping colors, of mild temperatures alternating with the first cold . I bring this image back to taste. The decisive and aromatic hints of the Acqualagna white truffle enhance the flavor of the pecorino from the Sibillini Mountains and the Parmesan used for the panna cotta directly inside the bone”. The dish is served with the tartare base, on which the bone is placed that the diner will have to lift to let the panna cotta fall on the meat, immediately followed by a pouring of the sauce obtained from the overcooking reduction of the meat. The dish is completed with the sliced truffle.
The recipe for Ossobuco with Acqualagna white truffle
Recipe for 4 people
Ingredients
– 8 shanks
– celery, carrots, onion
– Spalià Ascoli tender oil
– salt, pepper to taste
- vegetable broth
for the truffle panna cotta:
- 250 g of fresh cream
– 60 g of egg white
– 2 g of salt
– 25 g of pecorino dei sibillini
– 20 g of Parmesan
– 10 g of Acqualagna white truffle
Method
Start with a classic ossobuco: flour, add celery, carrots, onion, salt and pepper. Bring to overcooking.
Then filter all the cooking juices and make a sauce which must be degreased and tied.
For the other 4 ossi buchi:
in the meantime, prepare the panna cotta to insert inside the shanks. Weld the cream and put all the ingredients. Cook directly inside the ossobuco by steaming for 55 minutes. This will become our truffle marrow.
Chop the remaining meat with a knife, season with salt, pepper and Spalià tender ascolana oil. Then recreate the ossobuco: put the tartare as a base using a pasta cup.
Put the marrow with the panna cotta and truffle. At the table, then pour the sauce on the ossobuco, in front of the diner, and then grate the Acqualagna white truffle on top of it at the end.
Andreina restaurant
Via Buffolariccia, 14, 60025 Loreto
Phone: 347 957 2088
Information: info@ristoranteandreina.it
