Growers of the

 "Périgord Black Truffle"

Périgord black truffles - Tuber melanosporum

Brouillade de truffes (scrambled eggs with truffles)  

It is certainly one of the best truffle recipes, simple and truly from the Provence ‘terroir’ and which illustrates the affinity between egg and truffle.

2 eggs per person

3-5 grams truffle per egg

10 mL liquid fresh cream per egg

Beat the eggs, add chopped truffle 4 to 5 hours before cooking to allow the scent to diffuse (keep you preparation in the fridge). Pour the preparation in a metal bowl, add 8 to 10 g butter (into pieces) per egg. Heat in a water bath, stirring constantly with a whisk, scrape out the sides and bottom. As eggs thicken, pour in the fresh cream, keep thickening.

Serve in bowls.

Toasts à la truffe fraîche  (toasts with fresh truffle)

After a recipe from M. Jean-Pierre Van Cappel

50 g of fresh truffles, brushed and washed

50 g butter

½ tea spoon of cognac

¼ bouillon cube wafer

pain de campagne (country bread) or pain de seigle frais (or fresh rye bread)

Mix all the ingredients until obtaining a smooth butter. Spread over thin bread slices. Place briefly in a hot oven. On leaving the oven, you can also add on the toasts topped some very thin truffle slices.

An excellent champagne is required.

Brie à la truffe (truffled brie)

Choose a nice Brie cheese, starting to reach good maturity but that doesn’t flow yet.

Cut it in two discs horizontally (requires some skills!), insert good size truffle slices (at least 1 mm thick) in between the two discs, then close and wrap in plastic film and leave at cool temperature for 24 h. Serve with great bread and wine.

Truffle Oil

When you're making your own truffle oil, you really just have to experiment to find the recipe you like, I've outlined an example below for a Black Truffle Oil, but you can use any truffle you like.

Ingredients

250ml Extra Virgin Cold Pressed Olive Oil

25g Black Truffle

Step One

Sterilize your bottle and any tools you will be using. Then wash your fresh truffle in fresh cold water. You're trying to preserve the truffle, so it is very important that you don't get any contamination!

Step Two

Shave or grate your fresh truffle. The more surface area of the truffle you expose to the oil, the more the truffle will infuse with the oil. You may want to leave some of your truffle shaved, so that you can see full slices of truffle in the completed oil.

Step Three

Put your truffle in the bottle and pour over the oilve oil.

Step Four

Seal your oil and leave for 48 hours to infuse.

Step Five

Taste your oil and enjoy!

It is really easy as you can see and storing truffle in olive oil will preserve it for 3 months. The aroma of the truffle will be lost over that time and it is important to keep the oil refrigerated to reduce the rate at which this happens.

Even though the oil may go cloudy in the fridge or even solidify, taking it back to room temperature will make it go clear again. 

Truffle Butter

Truffle butter is a great way to keep black truffles for cooking. Black truffles have a more robust flavour than the white truffles and can therefore be used in dishes that require more cooking.

Truffle butter is really simple to make, and quite literally involves blending the truffle with salted, or unsalted butter.

Ingredients

20g Truffle

250g Butter

Instructions

Get the butter to room temperature, so it is really soft. Dice the truffle finely. Mix the truffle with the butter and make sure you get an even distribution of the truffle in the butter. Mould into the shape you want. Refrigerate to harden.  

You can even make small patties of truffle butter and serve with a steak and voila! You have a perfect simple supper to impress.

Truffle Salt

Truffle salt is really popular with chefs because it is such an easy way to add magic to any dish.

To make truffle salt, you can choose to either preserve a whole truffle or to thinly slice the truffle and distribute throughout the salt.

Unlike truffle oil and truffle butter, with salt there are no fat modules to connect to the compoud the truffle excretes (The aroma), but the salt itself reacts with the truffle capturing the aroma.

As with oil is is important that you sterilize the container you use to store the salt, but after that, it's really easy.

Ingredients

150g Good quality Rock salt

20g truffle

Instructions

After sterilizing the container you will use to store your truffle salt, thinly slice the truffle. Put the truffle in the container and add half the salt. Seal the container and shake to mix the salt with the truffle. Add the remaining salt and shake again. Seal.

It really is that simple. You can then dip into your truffle salt whenever you're cooking.

Truffle salt probably lasts the longest of any of these methods, at 4 months, although I'd always suggest using it as soon as you can.

Black Truffle Risotto

Ingredients

·        1 L (4-5 cups) chicken or vegetable stock.

·        2 tablespoons of butter

·        2 shallots, peeled and finely chopped

·        2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

·        200 grams (1 cup) Arborio rice

·        50-100ml of medium/dry white wine

·        5 grams (1-2 tablespoons) finely grated black truffle

·        80 grams parmesan cheese grated

·        Salt/pepper to taste

1.      In a small pot, heat stock until just under a simmer, then turn the heat down to medium low, enough to just maintain the simmer.  

2.      In a medium to large pot, melt butter on med-high heat and add in the garlic and shallots, cooking until they

 are soft and translucent. Then pour in the rice, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon in order to coat the

 rice with butter (and keep it from burning) cooking for another minute of two.

3.      Deglaze everything with a generous splash of white wine, continuing to stir. Once the liquid has been absorbed from the wine, add in about 100ml of the stock, stirring in a figure 8 pattern while the rice absorbs the liquid. Once it has absorbed the liquid, add another dose of stock to the rice, stirring continually, and repeat until the rice is soft and creamy, with an al dente texture. If you feel the rice is not soft enough after all the stock has been added, feel free to continue adding hot water until the rice is cooked to your desired doneness. If you feel the rice is ready before all the stock is used up, that’s fine too.

4.      Take the rice off the heat and stir in the grated truffle and parmesan cheese. Add any salt/pepper to taste if desired and serve. Optionally, you can garnish with a couple of slices of fresh truffle to dress the dish up a little bit.  

The internet is a great source for Truffle recipes