The surge of all the American wedding shows has arrived in Italy (finally!) and this has brought about consequent changes in Italian weddings. Wanting to emulate what they see in TV, Italian brides are wanting matching bridesmaids, outdoor ceremonies, and all the little matching details as well. When I got married here, they all thought I was crazy with all this stuff! Anyway, this weekend we actually took part in the first episode of the Italian Four Weddings for our friends’ wedding in Piemonte.

But only in Italy would the father of the bride (a truffle hunter) leave the actual ceremony to run home and bring us back more than 1 kilo of fresh black truffles. All it took was asking him one question about the truffles to bring us our very own! The only problem was then carrying them around all day at the wedding and keeping them cool. I even showed the TV crew, thinking that they would love to see a special part of the Piemontese culture but I guess all they cared about was the trashy stuff and the girls’ gossip. Well we definitely appreciated it!
Since these were the summer black truffles from the area, I decided to make something a little lighter than the classic Piemontese recipes like shaving truffles on tajarin fresh pasta with butter sauce, eggs, or carne cruda (raw meat). Normally the prestigious white Alba truffles are found and eaten in the fall and winter. Claudio and I popped open a bottle of Vajra’s N.S. Della Neve, a sparkling wine made from Nebbiolo and Pinot Nero and starting cooking up a three course menu.
The first course was seared scallops with spring onion purée and black truffles. Since scallops are extremely expensive and not very fresh here we decided to get only 6. (Did you know that they cost 17 euros/Kg and in Italy they always weigh each scallop with its huge shell!?) Instead of using pastes and oils we just used pure truffles!
For the second course we made simple flatbread pizzas with swiss cheese, grated pecorino cheese, salt and pepper with fresh truffle shavings on top. Keeping the ingredients plain and simple best exalts the delicate flavors of truffles.
We were going to make a salad for a king by ending our meal with fresh greens, radishes, hard boiled egg and of course truffles but we didn’t make it there! Even though I don’t know how my stomach will handle all this truffle, I think we are going to save the salad for the next day.
Certainly with all this truffle we will have leftovers which I will put in a bottle of olive oil to keep in the fridge and use whenever I feel like a touch of elegance.
This was an unforgettable wedding for many reasons! Contact me if you want the recipes:)