Katie Caldesi's Diary of Italian Living, Food & Culture.

Now I’m addicted to white truffles and what an expensive thing to be addicted to. I thought Alba was great, its such a typical old Italian small town. The main street was brimming with great shops both for clothing, shoes and food so I was in heaven, only didn’t have enough time to shop. Had to be very focussed and try not to get distracted by gorgeous bargains. Luckily I was chaperoned by two Italian men who took me to Mora, a shop started by a families about 80 years ago. Signor Mora had the foresight to realise there was a massive potential market in white truffles and so began Alba’s truffle fair which is in November. He also gave away huge white truffles to famous people such as President Truman and other stars of stage and screen. This is really what gave the white truffle its luxury feel, plus of course, its rarity and weird scent.

To me the truffles smell of the woods, of wet trees, spring onions and a hint of strong cheese. It is said that they give off pheramones and that is why we find them sexy or at least find our co-diners sexy. I love Elizabeth Luards description, in her book Truffles, of how she looked at a bearded botantist who was showing her a white truffle in a different light after he let her inhale the scent.

Apparently truffles smell like a male pig to the female pig and this is why the females were used to hunt them. The only problem was that they kept eating them and prizing a truffle from the salivating mouth of a pig on heat was tricky. That is why dogs were used, who obey orders better and are easier to train. They still want to eat them but can be bribed with doggy snacks.

We went truffle hunting in the early hours of last Wednesday morning. We went to the hills just outside Alba, it was a beautiful morning, crisp and quiet. We had no luck with the whites, we met a hunter with two dogs who had been in our patch before, but then went on to find about five black truffles which I proudly brought home. I bought a couple of whites for our Truffle Evening last Friday at the school and we enjoyed them shaved onto Giancarlo’s fresh egg pasta. The blacks we used to give flavour to chicken breast by stuffing them under the skin. Delicious!

As for the dining part of the trip I ate at Le Clivie, a michellin starred restaurant in Tenuta Carretta which is in Alba. Poalo, owner of the Tenuta produces wonderful local wines. I liked the Cayega from the Arneis grape and the Bric Quercia, a mainly Barbera red so much we are going to have them at Caffe Caldesi for a limited period. I had Cayega with an rich creamy fonduta made with local Fontina cheese and egg yolk with shavings of white truffle. The red perfectly matched the meat course again served scattered of white truffle. Oh how I love to eat and drink Italian. So if you can, go to Alba, the flights are inexpensive, we went BA to Turin, the accommodation plenty and of good quality. Then there is a great choice of restaurants and of course fantastic local wines to be savoured with the finest white truffles. What more could you want?

Yes its that time of year when Bruno, The Truffle Man, keeps popping into Cucina Caldesi to tempt us his precious earthy nuggets of white truffle. Although I find the smell intoxicating and mouthwatering, I still cannot bring myself to part with hundreds of pounds for a muddy morsel. Maybe now I wont have to as next week I am going to Alba in Northern Italy, the home of the white truffle. As I have to write an article on white truffles and their worth I am going to spend time with a truffle hunter and his dogs to see what exactly goes into finding these rare specimens. Apparently his dogs are worth £15,000 each so that’s a start to finding out where the end consumer’s money goes. I have to be up at 4am to meet him at 5am in the forest so I’d better not forget my alarm clock. Perhaps if I pack him a nice english bacon butty and a vacuum flask of tea he’ll let me bring a truffle back for nothing! Well I can hope. I don’t actually like dogs, they terrify me and I’m allergic to them too, so between fearing from my life and sneezing I really hope we find some flipping truffles or it will be one of the worst early mornings of my life.

I’ll be filming part of my trip and showing the results at our Truffle Evening with Bruno on Friday 27th October so if you are equally mad on truffles come and join us, details on the website www.caldesi.com.

Yesterday we went on our weekly trip from the cookery school here in Torrita di Siena to the market at Sinalunga. It a medium sized bustling little square packed with market stalls selling everything from wierd shaped tomatoes to imported Chinese toys. Fascinating however, to walk around and the guests and I always manage to pick up clothing bargains as well as a range of odd shaped tomaotes, beans in different sizes and locally grown fruits.

At the moment, there are sweet-smelling peaches in abundance, little hard but tasty pears, frierelli (probably not spelt right) sweet green peppers and Coche della Monica, the local variety of plum supposed to be so smooth and luscious they are like Nun’s thighs. Apricots too are everywhere, it seems the more ugly the tastier. I have been making apricot jam, then making Crostata di Albicocche (Jam Tart) out of the jam and topping it with fresh apricots.

However, the thing I need help with is fennel. The Italians talk about male and female plants producing thin weedy tough bulbs or heavier chunky bulbs. The larger type being sweeter and the thinner better for cooking. In the market you see the Tuscans picking out only the fatter ones. From my reading on the web, I see that male and female fennel doesn’t actually exist, merely different gene strands making a different shaped plant but I can only find one reference to this, any other ideas anyone??

Today we are off to our friends’ Livia and Nello’s house near Gracciano in Tuscany. They are 80% self-sufficient and it’s amazing to see how they live. They still live in the way that people have done for years around here. Today we are making peach jam. We’ll be baking it in the wood burning oven and then storing it in jars for winter (if we can wait that long)! I always wonder what people will make out of it, it is not “roses round the door” touristy although it has its pretty parts. We’ll be working in the garage in the shade as it is too hot outside already and its only 10.30am.

Our guests this week are from Israel, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Holland, USA and England so we are a real eclectic bunch but its fun to see all the nationalities gathered together with a joint passion for food and learning.

More later

Katie

Today we said goodbye to our first week’s guests from our cookery school in Tuscany. We establised good relationships with them and will certainly miss them. You get very close to people in a short space of time when you are all cooking, eating and living together. Our children have loved showing all ten of them their collection of weird and wonderful insects that they have collected over the last ten days here. Flavio has two amazing (dead but still amazing!) stag beetles and the top half of a rhino beetle!

We have certainly eaten loads of delicious food and consumed a fair amount of Tuscan wine too. Now we are waiting for the last four guests to show up, two from Greece and two from USA. We already have the English and two Dutch.

The Greeks have just arrived so I must show them around. Tonight we are having roast pork with rosemary and Amaretti semifreddo and this afternoon I have to collect more flowers for the table.

At last arrived in Tuscany at the end of last week after long but good journey here. Drove through hailstones the size of golf balls and had to stop, so scary, like the car was being pelted with stones. Stayed in the lovely Hotel Majestic in Lago Maggiore, what a beautiful place, it took my breath away looking over the little private beach and the lake. Our children, Giorgio and Flavio collected clams from the lake. We had to throw them back but if we had had a stove Giancarlo would have whipped up Spaghetti Vongole.

We put a tomato, basil and garlic salsa on top of ours, it goes so well and means I cant stop eating it.

Today we had the fifth day of our cookery course with some really nice guests. We have ten people and we took them to our friends house Livia and Nello to learn to make apricot jam the local way. They bake it rather than spend hours over a hot stove stirring it.

One of our guests wanted to see how to skin a rabbit so we watched Nello kill one and skin it. It brought tears to our eyes but we reckoned if we were going to eat it we should be prepared to partake it all parts of getting it to the table. I must admit however gruesome it is we are looking forward to rabbit ragu with rosemary and local white wine on homemade tagliatelle tonight. And I used to be vegetarian. I think I would eat less if I had to do that each time I felt like meat.

Well the cool glass of Prosecco calls and the sun is setting over the Tuscan hills so I must go and serve supper. The guests have arrived downstairs looking smart and smelling sweet. Instead my fingers smell of onions and I still have my pinny on.

Until tommorow

Katie