Page 61 - PROTAGONIST-120

DIAMONDS Hunting for tuffles. Photo by Alessandro Sgarito.

Courtesy Ente Turismo Langhe Monferrato Roero. With contribution of Claudio Battaglino

(NOT ONLY)

IN THE

KITCHEN

Every autumn “the same magic” repeats itself, especially For those born or living in Alba, the histo- it together with other vegetables and legumes,
ric Piedmontese town about 60 kilometers and to Pliny the Elder, who in his Naturalis Hi-
from Turin that UNESCO declared a World storia described the Romans' appreciation for
on a sunny day: an explosion of yellows, oranges, and Heritage Site in 2014 and a Creative City for the tuber terrae, whose culinary use they had
Gastronomy in 2017, celebrating its traditions borrowed from the Etruscans. In Piedmont the
browns that burn the undulating hills following the and preserving its gastronomic heritage are white truffles became “popular” in the 1600s.
a natural condition, not an imperative. It was Its rarity made it as precious as a diamond and
exactly in Piedmont that the Slow Food move- distinguished it from the more common black
Tanaro River and cast light onto a maze of narrow ment was born, and it is in Piedmont, in Pol- truffle used by French "competitors." Sear-
lenzo, that you can find the University of Ga- ching for it became a ritual, too. Vittorio Ame-
cobblestone streets crowded with people, sounds, stronomic Sciences, an international center deo II and Carlo Carlo Emanuele III, passiona- Courtesy Ente Turismo Langhe Monferrato Roero. With contribution of Claudio Battaglino
for training and research in the field of sustai- te truffle hunters, often invited all their guests
nable agriculture and diverse bio-culture, de- and foreign ambassadors to join their "hunting
languages. Small talk with a glass of Barolo or scribed as "the first university of taste in the expeditions." Camillo Benso Conte di Cavour
world." According to one of his most illustrious is known to have used it as a much apprecia-
Barbaresco and hazelnut desserts fill the air. And sons, Giacomo Morra, in fact, "God put Alba in ted "diplomatic gift." But every charming tale Page 58: Langhe landscape. Photo by Antonio Rino Gastaldi.
the middle of the Langhe and the Langhe has about the Alba white truffle—described by
given back all its goods."
the Turin medical doctor Vittorio Pico as Tu-
above all, the pungent, earthy, and gaseous fragrance Piedmontese say, the trifola. If a legend told by end of the eighteenth century—cannot forget
The truffle, we were saying, or, as the ber Magnatum (the truffle of the Mighty), at the
of the most precious and seductive resource of this the poet Juvenal attributes its birth to a thun- Giacomo Morra. A man called by The Times
derbolt hurled by Jupiter near an oak, a tree "the King of Truffles."
Born in 1889 into an important family of
consecrated to the Father of the Gods, the
land–the white truffle first, real proof of its consumption dates back farmers—his father worked for the Counts
to 1600–1700 BC, to the Sumerians, who used Falletti of Castiglione—after a turbulent work

58 Food Protagonist Protagonist Food 59