Best Birthday Ever

And it's not even my birthday yet. Theresa arranged for us to go truffle hunting with a family in Certaldo this morning. Giuseppina and her husband Luigi live on a large piece of land not far from where we are staying. This morning, Simone, one of their sons, met us in town and took us back to the family's property where we met Luigi and his dogs, Bianca and Luna.

Bianca:



At 3 months, he began giving Bianca and Luna milk with truffles grated into it so truffles are literally mother's milk to them. When they get a little older, they have the dogs play with truffles like toys, throwing them and having them fetch. Then, they hide truffles in the forest and take the dogs to find them.

As we began walking, Bianca almost immediately started digging.



"Ferma! Ferma!" Luigi shouted. Stop! Stop!




He had to push her away.



He stuck his trowel into the ground and held out his hand to us. A perfect black truffle.






The dogs got lots of treats for finding truffles.



Sometimes they got treats just for digging, even if there were no truffles. Clever dogs, sometimes they dug just to get a treat.



Unlike white truffles, the scent and flavor of black truffles is delicate. But wonderful. We walked for maybe an hour, and the dogs found 7 or 8 beautiful truffles. Several of them had small bites out of them before Luigi could wrest them away from the dogs, and Luna managed to eat an entire one before we caught up with her.

Luigi told us that in the fall, the white truffles can scent the entire forest. The black truffles were only a few inches under the surface but the white truffles grow much farther down--up to 18 inches. Which is probably a good thing because, while the dogs eating the black truffles was all very funny, white truffles sell for several thousand dollars a kilo and are a serious source of income for the family.

When we had enough truffles (and the dogs were starting to get distracted) we drove to the Centro Storico--the historic, medieval hill town of Certaldo--where we were met by Giuseppina at her cooking school.







There was a beautiful plate of salume on the table, and one with cheese and fig jam.




She sliced some bread, spread it with spuma di gota (an herbed pate of pork fat), shaved our truffles over the pieces, drizzled them with olive oil, grated a little pepper on



and gave us this plate of unbelievable deliciousness:





The next course was fried eggs covered in shaved truffles and olive oil.



Then fresh young fava beans, raw in the pod, to be eaten with the prosciutto.

Then a little salad of thinly sliced raw baby artichokes dressed with lemon juice, salt and olive oil and topped with pecorino.


Accompanying all of this food was wine made by Giuseppina and Luigi's other son, Lucca, from Trebbiano grapes grown in the family's vineyards.

Finally, dessert was strawberries tossed with lemon juice, lemon zest and sugar. And espressi, of course.



What a way to turn 42!