It seems everywhere I turn around someone I know or someone on Instagram is showing their latest pictures from Italy and it got me thinking of my honeymoon in July 2015.
I remember I couldn’t wait to embark on our culinary adventure in Italy and all the food we were going to taste and hopefully make! Honestly, I easily gained 5 pounds on this trip. I came back swollen, but it was all worth it!
If you are fortunate enough to travel to Tuscany, I highly recommend a truffle hunting and cooking class. You will not regret it one bit!
During our stay, we took our little Ford Fiesta from our hotel Villa La Borghetta and we drove to a little town named San Miniato. San Miniato has become world famous for their black and white truffles. We met with our tour guide Salvatore and his trusted dog Billie and went on a treasure hunt for black truffles (white truffles are only in season around November).
Hunting for truffles is a lot more than I anticipated. You require a special licence to be able to hunt and can only search for the treasured item in a location that you have been granted permission to enter. You require a trained canine (these dogs are trained from a very young age and are priceless in the truffle world, if you would like to purchase a truffle hunting dog they can easily go for 10,000 euros) and let their nose do all the work.
We managed to find some beauties and we brought them back to Salvatore’s home where his daughter, Letizia was ready to teach us a variety of tuscan dishes infused with truffles.
Our culinary class began with Letizia creating a delicious chickpea puree with freshly shaved black truffles and olive oil.
She then took a small ceramic pot and placed it over her gas stove and fried an egg inside. She shaved some more of that black truffle and it was to die for!
Our favourite dish of all, was the tortellone stuffed with fresh ricotta and shaved black truffle. These were to die for!
She topped off the meal with a special dessert, did you guess it? Of course! Truffle ice cream! I know it doesn’t sound so appealing, it’s a fungus/mushroom (whatever it is!) infused in ice cream, but rest assured, it was divine! It was so good that this is the only photo we have of it as we gobbled it all up (I know it’s soo blurry!)
I knew right away I had to somehow get these truffles back home! I spent an arm and a leg to purchase them and once I arrived at my uncles I vacuum packed them at least 4 times. After a sweaty and nerve-wrecking pass through customs, I managed to bring them home! This is another story of its own, but let’s just say I spent a lot of my data googling how can I bring back truffles without getting in trouble!
Once we returned home I somehow managed to remember the steps to creating the tortellone (although mine are more like tortellini) and decided to make them at home and I have to say they were amazing!! Mine aren’t as pretty as Letizia’s rendition, but it sure did taste good!
Now to only find a way to have truffles some shipped to me?
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