They not only market the salsa tartufata on-line (still only 15 bucks a pop), but some interesting new products including tartufo butter, truffle puree and truffle fondue. No Alton Brown or Giada de Laurentis for us, but in the other open demo areas program, the Urbani brothers were on only 30 minutes after we entered, so serendipity saved the day. Wondering why they both mispronounced tagliatelle (tag-li-a-te-lli instead of tal-ya-te-lli), the pasta they used for their truffle demo main course, bob asks Christian after the show about their connection with the Italian company and gets a short version story of their good fortune. Of course bob doesn't cook in Italy, so any food acquisitions must be hand carried back to the home kitchen, and glass containers merit carry-on treatment, so the choices must be careful and restrained. On the summer 2002 trip bob gets lucky after an afternoon beach visit with father and son friends who need to pick up dinner on the way home to mom. Too bad self-importing is the still the only simple way for us to bring these products home.
We finish off the whole pound with only salad to break the intake. Slender asparagus was on sale so we got 2 lbs and did it up with 3 pressed cloves of garlic and the juice of one lemon to go with the pasta. 4. We tried this for Valentine's Day 2000, the date of Jamila's e-mail reply, but at the last minute had to go with the imported Italian dried fettuccine since our Monday fresh pasta source only had penne. We checked back with Urbani USA in 2006. Its website had been down at least a year or more. Apparently the New York branch of the family business got so in debt to the mother company in Italy by 2002 that drastic action had to be taken. Well, every family has its less talented (maybe unlucky?) members. 3. By roast, Jamila means saute, but just a moment because garlic looses its potency very quickly when overdone. Back at home, we finally break open a small 1.5oz bottle of Urbani shaved black truffles (truffle carpaccio) given to us 2 summers earlier (with an expiration date 6 months later, i.e., expired 1.5 years, but that did not deter us for one moment), determined to break the whole truffle inaction curse.
The idea was to make a simple sauce for some whole wheat cheese-filled ravioli from Carlino's: cream and shaved truffles, salt and pepper and parmigiano; we expanded on this by sautéing some pressed garlic in 1T each of oil and butter, and adding a little light cream left over in the fridge to warm up, and chopping up about 1oz of the truffles, adding them just before the al dente pasta. Too bad our pasta diet is now rather limited due to the carb revolution. We'll have to figure out what to do with the stuff this time. Loaded with fresh semolina bread and fettuccine from our trusted supplier Carlino's, we were confronted by a temporary infant lactose intolerance preventing Daniela from touching milk products (no cream, no cheese), so we divided the tartufo sauce into her portion and the rest, and used lactose reduced milk for hers. Valentine's Day with the in-laws. We waited to add the parmigiano just before combining with the al dente pasta in the chef's pan.
We used a little over a cup of heavy cream for the pound plus pasta for the rest of us and combined our parmigiano after tossing our pasta and sauce. 6. Piero's return trip through Baltimore after an observing run at ESO Chile combined with our get acquainted visit with Mauro and Daniela's 2 month old son Marco to offer our next test of the recipe. And only quarts of heavy cream were on the shelf at our two Main Line food stops so we went with light cream (quarts?---this stuff is laden with fat!). The big box stores are typically reachable only by car, and this applies to Italy as well. Tentazioni dell'Umbria tartufata products we grabbed up the day before our summer 2006 return flight through Heathrow London in turn only days before the liquid bomb terrorist plot threw a monkey wrench into airport security. The result was lighter colorwise and fatwise but no less flavorful. Meanwhile there was no pot large enough to do the whole 1.5 lbs of fettuccine at once, so bob got the brilliant idea of draining the boiling water into a smaller pot for the remnants and finishing them off in a second shot.
