Italian men have a reputation for being like their cars: lovely to look at but unreliable on the road. Fortunately when it comes to food and wine they fare a lot better, as I recently discovered after luxuriating in the warmth of Italian hospitality in Milano. Their recipes are simple to prepare, their meals delicious - using the freshest of ingredients - and when it comes to their wines, a good Chianti or Barolo always offers rewarding fruit, spice, cigar-box flavours and texture.
My taste buds began to ooze when I received the invitation to a truffle dinner in Milano from my sophisticated friend Gloria, who markets one of the world's most exclusive fashion houses. My experiences of the valuable, musky potato-lookalikes had hitherto been restricted to scanty shavings. In true Italian style, Gloria and I walked miles looking for the perfect homemade pasta. By the time we found a fabulous deli in Milan, I felt like a war veteran. My feet were sore, my tourist-laden bag had seared a red groove into my shoulder, and I was thirsty.
Having found our Holy Grail, a seemingly endless deliberation followed to select the precise shapes to partner the white truffles. We then stood for a further 20 minutes while they rolled, cut and packaged it. The Italians go all the way for the perfect flavour - Bravo!
The setting was Gloria's classic home with clean lines, wooden floors and crafted cupboards built to house all her shoes identified by photographs pasted onto boxes. Gloria is the Immelda Marcos of Italy. I recall a time when we shared a tiny room in Paris with seven pairs of Gloria's boots - just for the week.!
Gloria's guest list that included an opera singer, chef, model and fashion designer might have graced any glossy magazine's diary pages.
The chef arrived in a flurry, brushing jet-black coifs from his forehead. I marvelled at his "little red riding hood basket" filled with precious truffles, toothbrush and a truffle-shaving knife. He greeted everyone then immediately started preparing dinner. He extracted the precious truffles from their bed of dry risotto, from where it had transferred its aroma since harvest the previous day.
Apparently the dinner had been postponed for my arrival so storing the truffles with rice or eggs was essential to conserve their aroma since they lose 5 - 15% of their freshness, weight and flavour every day.
We experienced our highly fragrant tuber which many wealthy gastronomes consider the king of all fungi, in various recipes - grated onto newly rolled fettuccini, fried eggs, risotto or teamed up with a young flavourless cheese in a fondue.
Party guests chatted animatedly in Italian about fashion, opera, conductors and food, throwing in a few English words every now and then to make me feel at home. The male dress code was strictly crisp white shirts tailored to fit snugly down their backs with open cuffs, designer jeans and, of course, exquisite shoes.
While our dedicated chef stirred and sliced, we encouraged Bernardo, the opera singer, to treat us to an aria. As though plucked from Puccini's La Bohême, he sang with relish until the apartment windows rattled and the neighbours joined in with shouts of "encore" from the courtyard.
We taste the white truffles from Piedmont and Umbria which are reputed to be superior in taste and price when compared to the highly aromatic, pungent black truffles from Périgord in France. You can also get grey truffles- which connoisseurs regard unworthy of attention - from North America.
Fraudulent dealers buy fungi which they colour or create imitations from egg white, truffle juice and seasonings which they sell as black truffles, although their texture and taste have no resemblance to the real truffle. The French are ready to slaughter Chinese imposters infiltrating the Lalbenque market with inferior truffles, which they sell at exorbitant prices.
When a dish of pasta with white truffles at the Café de Paris in Monte Carlo sells for 150 Euros a bowl, black truffles at Fauchon in Paris for 1 950 Euros a kilogram and at Dean and Deluca in New York for $1,400 it brings home the rarity of this food that so resembles the hands of peasants in a Van Gogh painting.
A week after returning to South Africa, I received an email from Gloria saying: "I still have some truffle crumble in a vase of rice that I'm keeping for whenever you come back!" What better reason would I need to return to Milan?
