Black truffle tagliolini recipe: Umbria's plain classic

Tagliolini al tartufo nero pairs thin egg pasta with shaved black truffle and little else, timed to Umbria's Tuber melanosporum season, which opens in November and runs into spring.

Norcia, in southern Umbria, is Italy's main source of prized black truffle, and the dish built around it is deliberately plain: butter, pasta water and parmesan form a loose emulsion that carries the truffle's smell rather than competing with it. The whole point is restraint.

Black truffle cooks differently to its white cousin. It can take a little heat without losing its character, which is why a few shavings go into the sauce itself here, with the rest finished raw on top at the table.

The whole point is restraint: the sauce carries the truffle's smell rather than competing with it.

Ingredients

• 320 g fresh egg tagliolini
• 60 g unsalted butter
• 35 g parmesan, finely grated, plus extra to serve
• 25 g fresh black truffle (Tuber melanosporum), brushed clean
• 1 small garlic clove, lightly crushed
• Fine sea salt

Method

1. Bring a large pot of generously salted water to the boil. Fresh tagliolini cooks in under two minutes, so have everything else ready before it goes in.
2. Melt the butter gently in a wide pan with the crushed garlic, just until it foams; do not let it brown, which would mask the truffle's smell. Remove the garlic once the butter is fragrant.
3. Shave roughly a third of the truffle into the butter and swirl in a ladle of starchy pasta water. The starch is what lets the fat and water bind into a sauce instead of separating.
4. Drain the tagliolini straight into the pan. Toss off the heat, adding the parmesan a little at a time, until the sauce coats the strands in a thin, glossy layer rather than pooling at the bottom.
5. Plate immediately and shave the rest of the truffle over the top at the table, where its smell will still be strongest; truffle loses aroma fast once cut and exposed to air.

What to pour, what to skip

A young, unoaked white from Umbria or a light Umbrian red both work; anything heavily oaked will fight the truffle rather than support it. Skip cream, which is how most versions outside Italy get this dish wrong: it mutes the aroma that is the entire reason to cook it.

The same method works with fresh black truffle through the rest of Italy's autumn and winter truffle season, though prices and availability shift from one region to the next as the season moves from white to black varieties.

Can white truffle be used instead? Yes, though skip stirring any into the sauce: white truffle loses its aroma the moment it meets heat, so all of it should go on raw at the end.