Adventures in eating, Part 2

The next day, Thursday, June 15, Peter sent us off to the clan behind the Sapori Italiani ("Italian flavors") truffle products line. (The name is actually changing to Sapori Molisani--let's hear it for Molise pride!) The plan was to go out with one of their truffle-hunting dogs, then have a home-cooked, truffle-centric lunch.

We ate breakfast and hurried out to the town of Busso for the 10 a.m. start time. Once we arrived, however, we discovered that Teresa, the family matriarch, had prepared a sumptuous breakfast of  coffee, pastries, ham, fruit salad, and a wonderful salame-spiked egg torta sort of thing. It seemed impolite not to indulge.

Then it was off to the truffle hunt. The dog, Jimmy (Gimi?), seemed a little young for the job and rather easily distracted, which obviously disappointed his handler. But even so the dog managed to smell out a bagful of the dark, rough-skinned fungi. Luckily for us, we were not out in the dense woods nearby but in a cultivated truffle field of evenly spaced oak trees surrounded by grass, designed to be an ideal truffle-growing environment. 

It was a beautiful day in a beautiful place, but I'd somehow fantasized that we'd be getting a lot of exercise, when in fact we mostly stood around admiring the dog and the landscape. 

Back at the house, we got a tour of the production facility in the ground floor of the family home. This was the haul from the morning's hunting, plus a few more, since Jimmy's production apparently didn't come up to expectations that day.

My inadequate stock of photos doesn't show Teresa or her son-in-law, Mario, who led the tour in excellent English. He's the sales and marketing end of the business. Molise produces 40 percent of Italy's truffles but doesn't have nearly the name recognition of Alba, which is world-famous for its white truffles. Mario intends to change that.

Here's Pinuccio, Teresa's husband, cleaning one of the truffles. He then grated it into a little pool of olive oil and made us all bruschetta. These summer black truffles are milder than the more pungent winter whites, with a subtle herbaceousness when they're raw. The family ships fresh truffles to clients in Europe and also produces a variety of truffle products in jars--truffle slices, grated truffles, truffle butter, and dozens of other things, all out of the little facility in their house. 

After the tour it was time for lunch. Teresa dished out a gigantic spread--truffle-spiked sausages and other salumi, a truffle frittata, two pastas with heaps of fresh-sliced truffles on top. Pinuccio grilled steaks over the open fire and served them topped with arugula, Parmesan shavings, balsamic vinegar, salt, and, of course, truffle shavings. Next came the truffled cheeses with homemade onion relish, followed by their own sour-cherry liqueur, and then tiramisu and coffee. All of it was sensationally good, and I'm sorry that I was too busy eating to take pictures. Even Steven, whose appetite seems bottomless, started to look like he was going to pass out.

Later Mario told us that Teresa had served us a light lunch. When far-away friends come to visit, he said, she usually offers a lot more dishes.

The next day Peter informed us that if you clean your plate or empty your glass, Southern Italian hospitality dictates that your host give you more. If we're going to survive this trip, we have to stop being members of the Clean Plate Club. But that's hard when the food's so good.

That night Steven's mom, Janice, arrived from Glasgow. This was our first chance to meet her, after all these years (four) of Lina and Steven being a couple. Steven celebrated by cooking up some pasta at our place--a carbonara and a pasta with truffles we;d bought from the truffle family earlier in the day.

The carbonara

The truffle pasta

Steven adds olive oil while Lina and Janice admire his handiwork

And reader, we ate it all.