Chefs take an adventurous approach to preparing truffles
The days when truffles were so abundant they were used as stuffing are long gone, but some cooks still push the boat out
As the white truffle season follows the European summer black truffle season, and will in turn be followed by the Australian summer truffle, Hong Kong diners have become more than familiar with the pricey fungus. Often it comes to us shaved over pasta, or in scrambled eggs or an omelette. These dishes are well-liked, but a look at historic recipes and new dishes from adventurous chefs shows that the ingredient can be more versatile.
By conventional wisdom, white truffle, mainly found around the town of Alba in Piedmont, Italy has always been given the Italian cooking spin - a good ingredient treated simply, with little technique.
Black truffles can be handled very differently under the influence of the more complicated techniques of French or Spanish chefs and cooking styles.
Chef Gabriele Milani at modern Spanish-Italian restaurant Vasco is from Tuscany and says that if he were a more traditional chef, he might make cheese fondue emulsified with egg yolks and truffles. That is on the menu at the more relaxed Isono downstairs. Or he might make tagliolini, he says.
"Traditionally, we take this fresh pasta made with lots of eggs and cook it in chicken stock for a little meat flavour and then sauté it in truffle butter."
A northern Italian menu might also include scrambled eggs, risotto and pasta. His current white truffle menu is a little more complicated. The restaurant has a six-course white truffle menu that even includes the fungus in the dessert. Milani's watercress risotto with snails and burrata is his take on snail paella.