It’s Truffle Season – What To Know & How To Cook With It

Peel and slice your onions finely. Cook over a medium heat with plenty of oil and salt until lightly caramelised. Put in the fridge to chill.

Roll out the pastry to 2cm thickness. Top with the caramelised onions.

Peel and slice the potatoes thinly, arrange on top of the onion overlapping but not too much and leaving a 2cm border for the crust to rise, then brush with a little truffle oil. Season with salt, pepper and thyme. Top of with some crumbled goats’ cheese or curd.

Bake in the oven at 170°C for about 18 minutes, the potatoes should be cooked and pastry golden.

Add fresh rocket and truffle oil to finish.

First, make the pasta. Put the flour and eggs into a bowl and mix together really well, kneading until smooth. Cover with clingfilm and put into the fridge for 30 minutes.

Now make the filling. Heat a little olive oil in a medium saucepan and cook the artichokes gently for 8 minutes. Add the cream and lower the heat. Let the artichokes simmer until soft, at which point use a slotted spoon to remove them from the cream, put them into a food processor and blitz until smooth. If the mixture is too thick, add a little of the cream from the pan. Allow the purée to cool, then add the parmesan, salt, pepper and truffle.

Using a pasta machine, roll out your pasta gradually, starting from the thickest setting down to the thinnest it will go, about 0.5mm. Fold the pasta back together and repeat. It should be super-stretchy. Lay out the pasta on a floured surface, and on one half of the sheet put grape-size blobs of the artichoke purée, allowing 3cm free all around. You should be able to make 30 ravioli from this amount of pasta.

Run your finger, dipped in cold water, around the sides of the filling, then fold over the other half of the pasta and gently press down so that it sticks, avoiding any air.

Cut out the ravioli between the mounds of filling with a cookie cutter, one that allows a 2-3cm rim around the filling – a 6cm one should do. Store in the fridge, on a baking sheet dusted with semolina.

When ready to cook, bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil and cook your ravioli for 3 minutes.

In another saucepan, melt the butter and gently cook the turnip leaves for 2 minutes, or until just wilted. Using a slotted spoon, remove the ravioli from the water and add to the butter and turnip leaves. Add a tbsp of the pasta water and let it bubble so that the sauce emulsifies. Keep the pasta moving at all times to avoid them frying like dumplings.

Turn out onto a serving dish and garnish with the crushed hazelnuts and freshly grated cheese.

Wash the artichokes well, then scrape off the thin outside layer with a kitchen knife. Cut the artichokes into thin slices and soak in water for 20 minutes, then drain.

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the onion and fry for a few minutes to soften, then add the chopped bacon and fry for another couple of minutes. Next add the artichokes and pour in the stock. Bring to a gentle boil, add the salt, and simmer for 20 minutes.

While the soup is simmering, in a frying pan, heat the olive oil for the croutons and gently fry the garlic. Add the rye bread strips and sauté for about five minutes. Sprinkle with salt, then drain on kitchen towel until cooled and crispy. Just before serving, drizzle them with the truffle oil.

In another frying pan, fry the four rashers of bacon until crispy, then remove from the pan, drain on kitchen towel and chop.

Remove the soup from the heat, pour into a blender or food processor and blend to the desired consistency.

Serve the soup with the bacon and chopped parsley sprinkled on top. Finally, drizzle each soup bowl with a little extra truffle oil and serve the rye bread croutons either on top or on the side.

Preheat oven to 200°C.

Warm the milk, but don’t boil it. While the milk is warming, melt the butter, then add flour – cooking for a couple of minutes on a medium heat. Then add the warmed milk, a little at a time while whisking to create a lump-free white sauce.

Prepare the mushrooms by checking for any dirt and remove with a brush or cloth. Don’t wash the mushrooms as they absorb water like a sponge, which then means that they never fry to an appetising golden-brown colour. Chop the mushrooms to whatever shape pleases your eye, but just keep them roughly the same size so as they all cook at the same time.
Cook the mushrooms in the olive oil, then when they’ve taken on that almost chestnut-like colour from sautéing over a relatively high heat, they are ready to be added to the white sauce.

Add the prosciutto, cream, parsley, and any salt and pepper you feel it needs, and bring the sauce to a boil and take it off the heat.

Assemble the vincigrassi by first lightly buttering a baking dish big enough to feed six people. Cover the bottom with a layer of lasagne sheets. Then spread a layer of the white sauce, and a good handful of parmesan cheese. Repeat this process until you have about 4 layers, or until you run out of mushroom white sauce, but make sure you finish the dish with the white sauce as the top layer, and finish with parmesan.

Bake for around 20 minutes, or until the top of the vincigrassi is that irresistible shade of golden brown. It will be volcanically hot. So, while you’re waiting for it to cool maybe knock up a simple green leaf salad with lemon vinaigrette, and all that remains is to serve with as much white truffle as you like, or a drizzle of good-quality truffle oil.