Italian Piedmontese Tajarin with Butter and Alba White Truffle | Tajarin al Burro e Tartufo Bianco d'Alba
Tajarin are counted in yolks, not in grams. Ask a cook in the Langhe how she makes them and the answer begins with a number: twenty yolks, thirty yolks, forty for a wedding. The flour is whatever the dough will absorb. That one habit of measurement explains almost everything about this pasta, from the deep orange colour to the way a strand meets melted butter.
With butter and shaved white truffle there are three ingredients that matter and nowhere to hide. There is no sauce in any conventional sense, only a pale emulsion of butter, starchy cooking water and a restrained amount of Parmigiano Reggiano, and then truffle shaved over the top once the plate has left the stove.
This is how it is cooked in Alba during the eight or nine weeks when the truffle is worth eating, and the dough is worth learning long before the season opens. The same strands take a ragu, a sage butter or a veal roasting juice for the other forty weeks of the year.
Yield: 4 servings. Prep: 45 minutes. Rest: 45 minutes. Cook: 10 minutes. Total: about 1 hour 40 minutes. Difficulty: advanced. Course: primo piatto. Region: Piedmont, the Langhe and the hills around Alba.
The Story
The name comes from the Piedmontese verb for cutting, and it describes a shape rather than a recipe: ribbons cut so narrow that a cook working by hand folds the sheet loosely and runs the knife almost without stopping. Before pasta machines reached farm kitchens, width was a measure of skill, and a woman who could cut a sheet into strands the thickness of a shoelace was said to have good hands.
The extravagance of yolks was not extravagance at all in context. A Langhe smallholding of the nineteenth century had hens long before it had cash, and eggs were the one thing the courtyard produced daily without a market transaction. Flour was bought and meat slaughtered once a year, but eggs simply accumulated. Pouring thirty into a dough was the cheapest way a poor house could make a rich pasta, and the yolk count became a quiet measure of how much a family wished to honour the table.
The whites did not go to waste, which is why Piedmont has so many meringue and almond sweets. Brutti ma buoni, spumini and the amaretti of Mombaruzzo all exist because tajarin left a bowl of whites behind every Sunday. Butter rather than olive oil is the other regional marker: these are the valleys below the Alps, dairy country, where the fat of the kitchen comes from a cow. The truffle arrives late in this history, as an autumn windfall from the same woods.
Ingredients
For the tajarin dough
Italian 00 flour, 2 1/4 cups (280 g), plus more for dusting
Egg yolks, from large eggs, 14
Whole egg, 1
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tsp (5 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1/4 tsp (1.5 g)
Semolina flour, for the trays, 2 tbsp (20 g)
For the butter emulsion
Unsalted butter, cold, cut into cubes, 7 tbsp (100 g)
Parmigiano Reggiano, aged 24 months, finely grated, 1/3 cup (35 g)
Reserved pasta cooking water, about 3/4 cup (180 ml)
Fine sea salt for the pasta water, 2 tsp (12 g) per 4 quarts (3.8 l)
For finishing
Fresh Tartufo Bianco d'Alba, brushed clean, 1 1/2 oz (45 g)
Freshly ground white pepper, to taste
Parmigiano Reggiano for the table, a small piece
Preparation
Step 1
Mix the dough. Mound the flour on a wooden board, make a wide well and break the yolks and the whole egg into it with the oil and the salt. Beat the eggs with a fork inside the well, pull flour in from the inner wall until the centre is a thick paste, then scrape everything together with a bench scraper. The dough will look dry and shaggy. Resist adding water: a yolk rich dough hydrates slowly and comes together under the hands, not in the bowl.
Step 2
Knead and rest. Work the dough for 10 to 12 minutes, pushing it away with the heel of the hand and folding it back, until the surface turns smooth and takes a light sheen. It should feel firm, closer to modelling clay than to bread dough. Wrap it tightly and rest it at room temperature for at least 45 minutes. The gluten has to relax and the yolk fat has to distribute, and a dough rolled too soon tears at exactly the thinness you want.
Step 3
Roll the sheet. Cut the dough into four pieces and keep three covered. Flatten one and roll it out on a lightly floured board or through a machine, one setting at a time, never skipping a number. Aim for a sheet thin enough to read printed text through, around 1/32 inch. Yolk dough takes this thinness better than a whole egg dough because it holds so little free water.
Step 4
Dry the sheet briefly. Lay each rolled sheet on a clean cloth for 8 to 10 minutes, turning it once. The surface should lose its tackiness while the body of the sheet stays supple, so the folds do not weld together under the knife. Taken too far the edges turn brittle and crack, so watch the sheet rather than the clock.
Step 5
Cut the tajarin. Dust the sheet generously with semolina, fold it loosely into a flat roll about 3 inches wide and cut across it with a long sharp knife in quick, decisive strokes. Aim for strands about 1/16 inch wide, narrower than tagliatelle and noticeably narrower than tagliolini. Lift each cut section with floured fingers, shake it into a loose nest and set the nests on a semolina dusted tray without piling them.
Step 6
Build the butter emulsion. Bring 4 quarts (3.8 l) of water to a rolling boil and salt it with 2 teaspoons (12 g) of fine sea salt, less than you would use for dried pasta, since this dough is already seasoned and the water will be concentrated into the sauce. Put a wide saute pan over the lowest flame with 1/4 cup (60 ml) of that hot water and swirl in the cold butter a few cubes at a time, adding more only as the previous ones disappear.
Step 7
Cook, mantecate and finish. Drop the nests into the boiling water, stir once and cook for 45 to 75 seconds, tasting a strand at 45 seconds: fresh tajarin are done the moment the raw flour taste goes. Lift them into the butter pan with a spider, carrying some water with them, and toss off the heat for 30 to 40 seconds, adding cooking water a spoonful at a time. Add the Parmigiano away from the flame, toss until glossy, then plate and shave the truffle at the table.
Plating
Warm the plates to about 140°F (60°C) before anything is cooked. A cold plate is fatal here: the emulsion carries very little water and no thickener, so it stiffens the instant it loses heat, and the truffle needs a warm surface under it to release its aroma.
Serve in shallow bowls rather than flat plates. Lift a portion with a carving fork and a spoon, twist it into a low, loose nest and set it slightly off centre. Keep the nest wide instead of tall, because a tight tower traps steam and the strands underneath go soft while the top cools.
Shave the truffle last, over the hot pasta, with a proper slicer set fine, in front of the person who will eat it, because the first thirty seconds after slicing carry most of the aroma. Allow about 1/3 oz (10 g) per person. Nothing else goes on the plate: no parsley, no oil, no pepper mill. Put the wedge of Parmigiano and a grater on the table instead.
Professional Technique
The defining technical problem of tajarin is a dough that is almost all yolk and almost free of water. Yolk brings fat, lecithin and protein but very little of the moisture that lets gluten stretch, so the dough starts stiff and rewards long kneading and a long rest far more than a standard egg pasta does. The lecithin then works in your favour at the pan, because it is an emulsifier already present in every strand.
The butter emulsion is a beurre monte: a little water held below a simmer, cold butter swirled in cube by cube, the temperature never past about 190°F (88°C). Above that the casein and water separate from the fat and the sauce breaks into oil. The butter is cold on purpose, since each cube cools the pan as it goes in, and the starch arriving with the pasta stabilises the whole thing.
The third technique is restraint with cheese and heat at the end. Parmigiano goes in off the flame for the same reason a carbonara is finished off the flame: its proteins tighten and string when pushed, and a grainy coating cannot be repaired. Thirty five grams for four people is deliberately small, there to add salt, glutamate and a little body behind the truffle rather than to compete with it.
Texture and Moisture Control
Three moisture decisions govern this dish. The first is in the dough, where the temptation to add water has to be refused: every extra spoonful weakens the sheet, and a tajarin rolled thicker to survive the knife loses the delicacy that justifies fourteen yolks. The second is the brief surface drying before cutting. The third is at the pan, where cooking water is the only liquid allowed.
Plain water is no substitute for that cooking water. Fresh yolk pasta sheds starch quickly into a small volume of liquid, so the pot ends up holding a cloudy, faintly viscous water that behaves like a weak sauce in its own right. Those starch granules hold butterfat and water together in the pan, and they make the coating cling to a strand instead of running to the bottom of the bowl.
The finished texture should be glossy and fluid enough to move slowly when the bowl is tilted, never thick and never pooled. If it tightens, a spoonful of hot cooking water off the heat opens it again. If a yellow film appears at the edges the emulsion has broken from heat: pull the pan off the flame, add a tablespoon of cold water and swirl hard. Serve within a minute either way, because nothing in this sauce holds.
Professional Mise en Place
The pasta can be made hours ahead, the sauce takes four minutes and the truffle is handled only at the last moment. Organise the station around that division and the service stays calm.
Equipment and tools
Wooden board, bench scraper and a long thin bladed knife
Pasta machine or a long rolling pin, plus clean cloths for the sheets
Wide saute pan, low sided, for the emulsion
Spider skimmer, ladle, carving fork and large spoon for plating
Truffle slicer with an adjustable blade and a soft dry brush
Prepared ahead
Dough mixed and wrapped, up to 24 hours ahead, refrigerated then brought back to room temperature
Tajarin cut into nests on semolina dusted trays, up to 4 hours ahead, at cool room temperature
Parmigiano grated fine within the hour and kept covered
Butter cut into cubes and kept cold until the pan is on
Truffle brushed clean, wrapped in paper, refrigerated in a closed jar
Service setup
Salted water at a rolling boil and a ladle of it already in the saute pan
Plates warming to 140°F (60°C), never above
Emulsion built and held just warm, off any direct flame
Cooking water reserved in a jug within reach
Truffle and slicer brought out only when the plates are down
Chef Tips
Buy the truffle by smell and use it fast. A good one is firm, heavy for its size and smells of garlic, ripe cheese and wet ground. One that smells faintly of ammonia has started to turn. Perfume is lost measurably every day, so plan the meal around the truffle rather than the other way round.
Never wash a white truffle and never store it in rice. Water drives the aroma out and pushes dirt into the surface, so use a dry soft brush and a damp cloth only where the brush will not reach. Rice pulls moisture out and leaves it spongy within a day. Wrap it loosely in absorbent paper and change the paper daily.
Use the best butter you can find and do not brown it. A cultured butter of around 82 percent fat gives a cleaner emulsion, and its faint lactic tang lifts the truffle. Browning would add a toasted note that is lovely elsewhere and at odds with a dish whose point is a neutral background.
If fresh Alba truffle is out of reach, do not use truffle oil, which is a synthetic aroma compound and tastes like one. Make the same pasta with butter and sage and call it what it is. Tajarin al burro is a complete dish and was eaten far more often than the truffle version ever was.
Common Mistakes
Adding water to the dough. The mixture looks impossibly dry for the first five minutes and almost everyone panics. Keep kneading. The yolks hold more moisture than they appear to, and a dough slackened with water will never roll as thin or hold its bite in the pan.
Cutting the strands too wide. A tajarin at tagliatelle width is simply a narrow tagliatella, taking longer to cook and carrying far less sauce per mouthful. Aim for 1/16 inch, because surface area is the entire reason this shape exists.
Boiling the butter emulsion. Pushed past roughly 190°F (88°C) the sauce separates into oil and watery liquid and no amount of stirring fixes it on the flame. Build it over the lowest possible heat, hold it warm rather than hot, and finish the pasta off the fire.
Overcooking fresh tajarin. These strands need 45 to 75 seconds and go from perfect to soft in about fifteen. Start tasting at 45 seconds and lift them while they still have a faint resistance, remembering that they keep cooking in the pan.
Shaving the truffle into the pan. Heat destroys the volatile compounds that make white truffle worth its price, so anything shaved into a hot pan is aroma spent on the extractor fan. It goes over the plated pasta, at the table, seconds before the first forkful.
Wine Pairing
Gattinara DOCG: Nebbiolo from the volcanic porphyry of the Alto Piemonte, leaner and more acidic than its cousins in the Langhe and better for it here. The acidity scours butterfat off the palate, while the iron and dried rose character sits alongside the truffle without crowding it.
Ghemme DOCG: The neighbour across the river Sesia, grown on glacial gravel rather than porphyry, which gives a rounder and slightly sweeter fruited wine with the same bright spine. That extra flesh is useful against the salt of the Parmigiano, and the faint bitter almond finish lengthens a dish that can otherwise end abruptly.
Ruchè di Castagnole Monferrato DOCG: An aromatic red from a handful of villages in the Monferrato, light in tannin and full of rose petal and black pepper. Its perfumes run parallel to the truffle rather than head on, and the modest structure leaves the butter untouched. Serve at 57°F (14°C).
Valle d'Aosta Petite Arvine: For anyone who wants a white, this alpine bottle from the valleys just north is the sharpest tool available. Grapefruit, white flowers and a saline finish give it the cutting acidity a butter emulsion needs, and its mineral austerity leaves room for the truffle to occupy.
Oltrepò Pavese Metodo Classico DOCG: A dry traditional method sparkling wine built on Pinot Nero, from the hills just east of the Piedmontese border. Bubbles and high acidity lift fat off the tongue more efficiently than any still wine, and the bread and hazelnut notes from lees ageing echo aged Parmigiano.
Storage & Reheating
The plated dish does not store, so store the parts instead. Uncooked tajarin keep on their semolina dusted trays at cool room temperature for 4 hours, refrigerated loosely covered for 24 hours, and frozen for up to 1 month. Freeze the nests solid on the tray first, then bag them and cook them from frozen with about 20 seconds added. Never thaw them, since they come apart into a single mass.
Wrapped dough keeps refrigerated for 24 hours and rolls better after 30 minutes at room temperature. The butter emulsion cannot be stored. Grated Parmigiano dries and loses aroma within hours, so grate it at the last moment rather than keeping it in a tub.
Cooked tajarin with butter can be revived the next day, badly but edibly. Put the leftovers in a pan over low heat with 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of water or milk, cover for a minute, then toss until the coating comes back together. Never use a microwave, which boils the butter and splits it, and do not expect the truffle to still be there.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 servings:
Calories: 690 kcal
Total Fat: 38 g
Saturated Fat: 20 g
Trans Fat: 1 g
Unsaturated Fat: 15 g
Cholesterol: 690 mg
Sodium: 560 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 57 g
Fiber: 2 g
Total Sugars: 1 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 24 g
Lactose: 0.6 g
Principal micronutrients: vitamin A, vitamin D, choline, selenium, phosphorus, calcium, vitamin B12
These figures are estimates. Cholesterol is unusually high because of the fourteen yolks, and the sodium depends on how hard the cooking water is salted.
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