Not to be truffled with

A couple of months ago I wrote about ceps and said that it looked as though we were going to enjoy a year of abundance for most people’s favourite mushroom.

A few days later, the supply of ceps suddenly dried up and the season – now over – has proved to be sporadic and somewhat indifferent in quantity. It is therefore with a degree of hesitation that I do the same for truffles. It might be more prudent, perhaps, just to say that the season has started extremely promisingly and that prices are substantially down on last year.

The price of white truffles, of course, borders on the sort of lunacy normally reserved for Beluga caviar and en primeur Bordeaux. This year’s much-improved price, down £1,000 on last year, is still around £1,800 per kilo. Five years ago we paid half that and thought it ridiculous: there is, of course, a point at which one no longer feels the pain and makes an impulsive decision either that no food can be worth such a ridiculous amount of money, or that it just doesn’t matter because you simply have to have them.

Despite probably making a loss every time I shave a white truffle, I fear I am still in the latter category and, in a year like this, have to have my truffles. Apart from the sheer pleasure in the aroma, a pleasure that the cook can share on equal terms with the diner, truffles stimulate the creative juices.

I used to take a conservative line on white truffles, holding the view that they were best deployed with the simplest of foils – scrambled eggs, plain pasta, risotto – that would amply demonstrate their power and not compromise their flavour. I have wavered a little. I still enjoy preparing and eating such dishes but I have also been experimenting. If white truffles excel at elevating the mundane, they are also capable of enhancing quite complex dishes. We have been serving two sheets of lasagne filled with a crisp slice of Parma ham, a purée of onion squash and a spoonful of foaming sage butter, a good dish in its own right but even better when showered with thin slices of truffle. Raw scallops, with tiny dice of tomato, a squeeze of lemon and some olive oil, may seem an unlikely vehicle for white truffles but my friend Alberico Penati prepared them thus and they were stunningly good; I have copied him since. A more traditional recipe is the Piedmontese carne cruda, a dish that is both extremely simple yet quite complex in flavour. Not something, perhaps, to try out on people you do not know well.

Rowley Leigh is the chef at Le Café Anglais, London

rowley.leigh@ft.com

For more Rowley Leigh columns, go to www.ft.com/leigh

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Carne cruda

Ingredients

In Piedmont they tend to use rump from vitellone, the pale meat from young bullocks that is halfway between veal and beef, for their carne cruda. Good veal works well but must be from dry, clean meat that has been hanging on the bone and not sitting in its own blood in a plastic bag. Any discolouring on the surface of the meat should be avoided. Fillet of beef is also a very acceptable compromise.

500g lean veal or beef

1 clove garlic

1 tsp sea salt

1 lemon

New season’s olive oil

40g white truffle

Trim the meat carefully, removing every scrap of sinew, membrane or fat attached, and any discoloured meat. Wrap in film and place in the freezer for half an hour to stiffen.

Split the clove of garlic in half and rub the chopping board on which you are going to cut the meat very well with the exposed part of the garlic. Unwrap the meat from the freezer and cut it with a very sharp knife into the thinnest possible slices. Form these into little piles on the board and cut again to produce very thin matchstick lengths of the meat. Turn these on the board and chop again into fine dice. It is important to cut it very thinly the first time in order not to go over the meat several times, which would bruise and compact it.

Lift the meat off the board and on to a serving dish, keeping it as light and uncompressed as possible. Grind the sea salt between finger and thumb over the meat and then sprinkle generously with the juice of the lemon.

Dress the meat with a tablespoon of the olive oil and then cover with the thinnest possible shavings of truffle. Serve immediately, with thin dry toast – or nothing at all.

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Rowley’s wine choice

Wine and truffles are not always the friends that one might imagine. The overpowering aroma of the truffle blows away delicate wines and can also put paid to rich and earthy flavours in bigger wines. In Piedmont they tend to serve their younger reds, their Barberas and Dolcettos with their truffles, and it is a good example to follow.