Italian Tajarin with Alba White Truffle | Tajarin al Tartufo Bianco d'Alba
There are perhaps six ingredients in this dish and two of them are flour and salt. Tajarin are the thin hand cut egg noodles of the Langhe, made with a yolk count that would look absurd anywhere else in Italy, and from late autumn to the first weeks of the new year they are eaten in Alba under shavings of Tuber magnatum Pico, the white truffle that made the town famous.
The sauce is butter. Not butter and cream, not butter and stock, not butter and garlic. Good butter melted slowly, loosened with the starchy water the tajarin cooked in and swirled until two liquids become one glossy coating. In the older houses of the Langhe a spoonful of sugo d'arrosto, the juices from a Sunday roast, goes in as well, and that is the only permitted addition.
The truffle is never cooked. It is shaved raw over the pasta at the table, into the steam rising from the bowl, because the compounds that make it worth its price are volatile and break down within seconds of meeting real heat. Everything below exists to put a hot, correctly seasoned, faintly buttery surface under that shaving and then get out of the way.
Yield: 4 servings. Prep: 50 minutes. Cook: 10 minutes. Dough rest: 1 hour. Total: about 2 hours. Difficulty: advanced. Course: primo piatto. Region: Langhe and Roero, Piedmont. Season: October to January.
The Story
Tajarin is the Piedmontese dialect form of tagliolini, and the name marks a real difference rather than an accent. The dough of the Langhe carries an extraordinary quantity of yolk, historically twenty to forty yolks to a kilo of flour, in a countryside where eggs were plentiful and the whites went elsewhere, among other places to the cellars of Barolo and Barbaresco for fining wine. The result is a deep yellow pasta, silky rather than springy, that cooks in barely a minute.
They were festive food. In the farmhouses between Alba, Asti and Bra, tajarin appeared at Christmas, at weddings and on patron saint days, cut by hand on a wooden board and served under whatever the household had: the juices of a roast, sometimes chicken livers, occasionally nothing but butter and sage. The truffle version is not a recent restaurant invention either, but for most families it was rare, because a good truffle was worth selling rather than eating.
The white truffle of Alba has its own season and its own institution. Tuber magnatum Pico grows underground in symbiosis with oak, poplar, willow and linden along the valleys of the Tanaro, cannot be cultivated, and is found by dogs working at night from late September to the end of January. The Fiera Internazionale del Tartufo Bianco d'Alba has been held every autumn since 1929, and it is why a town of thirty thousand people fills with buyers from Tokyo and New York each November.
Ingredients
For the tajarin
Italian 00 flour, 2 1/4 cups (280 g)
Egg yolks, 12
Whole egg, 1
Fine sea salt, 1/4 tsp (1.5 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tsp (5 ml)
Semola rimacinata for dusting, about 1/3 cup (50 g)
For the butter sauce
Unsalted butter of high quality, cold and cubed, 7 tbsp (100 g)
Reserved pasta cooking water, about 1/2 cup (120 ml)
Sugo d'arrosto, optional, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Fine sea salt, to taste
Coarse salt for the pasta water, 1 1/2 tbsp (25 g) for 4 quarts (3.8 l)
For finishing
Fresh white truffle from Alba, 1 oz (30 g), roughly 1/4 oz (7 g) per serving
Parmigiano Reggiano aged 24 months, finely grated, 1/4 cup (25 g), optional
Freshly ground white pepper, a very small amount
Preparation
Step 1
Make the tajarin dough. Sift the flour onto a board, open a wide well and drop in the yolks, the whole egg, the salt and the oil. Break the eggs with a fork and pull flour in from the inner wall until the mixture holds together, then work it with the heel of your hand for 12 minutes. A dough this rich in yolk resists at first and then turns suddenly smooth and satiny. It should feel firm and slightly tacky, never sticky.
Step 2
Rest the dough properly. Wrap it tightly and leave it at room temperature for a full hour. This is not an optional pause: the water in the eggs needs time to hydrate the starch evenly, and a dough rolled straight after kneading tears at the thin settings and springs back as fast as you press it. After an hour it rolls out with almost no resistance and holds its width.
Step 3
Roll the sheets. Cut the dough into four pieces and keep three wrapped. Roll the first through a pasta machine, one setting at a time, to about 0.8 mm, thin enough to see the shadow of your hand through it. Do not flour heavily between passes, since a rich dough needs very little. Lay each sheet on a cloth and dry it 10 minutes, until the surface is matte but the sheet still bends without cracking.
Step 4
Cut the tajarin by hand. Dust a sheet generously with semola, fold it into a flat roll about 3 inches (8 cm) wide, and cut across it with a long sharp knife at intervals of roughly 1.5 mm, blade vertical, cuts even. Shake the ribbons out at once into loose nests, dust them again and spread them on a tray. Cut by machine they come out thicker and more regular, a genuine loss of texture but not a disaster.
Step 5
Prepare the truffle. Brush it clean with a soft dry brush, working into the folds, and wipe it with barely damp paper only if soil remains. Never wash it under running water, which pushes moisture into the flesh and starts it rotting within a day. Store it wrapped in kitchen paper inside a sealed glass jar in the refrigerator and change the paper daily. Rice is a bad idea despite the folklore, because it dries the truffle out.
Step 6
Set up the butter. Put 5 tablespoons of butter into a wide saute pan and melt it very gently over the lowest heat, so it stays pale and creamy and never begins to colour. Browned butter is delicious and completely wrong here: its nutty roasted aroma sits on top of the truffle and cancels it. Keep the remaining 2 tablespoons cold and cubed beside the stove, and warm the bowls.
Step 7
Salt the water and cook the tajarin. Bring 4 quarts (3.8 l) of water to a rolling boil and salt it at about 1 1/2 tablespoons (25 g). Shake the semola off the nests first, or the sauce turns pasty. Drop the tajarin, stir once and cook 60 to 75 seconds only, from the moment the water comes back to the boil. They are ready when a strand has lost its raw core and still feels slightly firm between the teeth.
Step 8
Emulsify and finish. Add a ladle of cooking water to the melted butter, raise the heat to medium and swirl until fat and water come together into a pale, slightly thickened sauce. Lift the tajarin in with tongs, add the sugo d'arrosto if you are using it and toss about 30 seconds. Take the pan off the heat, work in the cold butter in two additions and loosen with more water until the strands slide freely.
Plating
Warm the bowls to around 130°F (55°C), a little hotter than for most pasta, because the rising steam carries the truffle aroma up to the person eating. Use plain white or pale ceramic and keep portions modest, around 3 oz (85 g) of cooked pasta each. This is a rich plate and a large bowl of it stops being a pleasure halfway through.
Twist each portion into a low loose nest with tongs, set it in the centre and let the butter settle around the base rather than pooling on top. Bring the bowls, the truffle and the shaver to the table together and shave in front of the guest. Hold the truffle close to the surface so the shavings land flat on the hot pasta, and add the optional Parmigiano before the truffle, never after, so nothing sits between the shavings and the nose.
Professional Technique
The single technique that matters here is the butter and water emulsion, because there is no other sauce to hide behind. Butter is roughly 82 percent fat, 16 percent water and 2 percent milk solids, and those milk solids are the emulsifiers that let it combine with starchy pasta water instead of splitting into a greasy pool. Adding water to warm butter and agitating hard builds a temporary emulsion; cold butter off the heat thickens it further, because the fat crystals melt slowly and stay dispersed. Keep the pan between 150°F and 175°F (65°C and 80°C) and the sauce stays pale and glossy.
The second is restraint with the truffle itself. The aroma of Tuber magnatum comes largely from bis methylthio methane, a sulphur compound perceptible at extremely low concentrations and so fragile that it dissipates within minutes of the truffle being cut. That is why it is shaved at the table onto food that is already hot, and why a truffle warmed in a pan tastes of very little. Shave thin, shave last, serve immediately.
Texture and Moisture Control
A tajarin dough is about 45 percent egg by weight and almost all of that is yolk, so the fat and lecithin in the yolks already do part of the work of the sauce. The noodles come out of the water with a slick tender surface rather than the firm bite of durum pasta, and they release starch fast. Sixty seconds is genuinely enough. Ten seconds past it they go from silky to soft and the strands break when you toss them.
The moisture balance of the finished bowl is narrow. Too little cooking water and the butter coats the pasta in a thin greasy film that separates on the way to the table; too much and the tajarin sit in a pale puddle that dilutes the truffle. Aim for a sauce that clings visibly to each strand and leaves only a thin gloss on the pan when you tilt it. Keep half a cup of water back, because the pasta absorbs right up to the first mouthful.
Professional Mise en Place
Almost the whole dish is preparation and the cooking takes ninety seconds, so the only discipline is having the truffle, the butter and the bowls ready before the pasta goes near the water.
Equipment and tools
Wooden board and a long sharp knife for cutting by hand
Pasta machine for the sheets, or a long rolling pin
Wide saute pan, big enough to toss all four portions
Truffle shaver with an adjustable blade, and a soft dry brush
Digital scale accurate to 1 g for weighing the truffle
Prepared ahead
Dough made and rested, up to 4 hours ahead at room temperature
Tajarin cut, dusted with semola, loose on a tray up to 3 hours
Truffle brushed clean, wrapped in fresh paper, in a sealed jar
Butter divided into the melting portion and the cold finishing cubes
Sugo d'arrosto, if used, strained and warmed
Service setup
Pasta water at a rolling boil and correctly salted
Butter melting gently, pale, never coloured
Bowls warming at around 130°F (55°C)
Truffle and shaver on a small tray ready to go to the table
Half a cup of cooking water reserved before the pasta is lifted
Chef Tips
Buy the truffle by smell and by weight in the hand, not by size. A good one is firm under light pressure, heavy for its bulk and aromatic from a foot away. Soft patches, a damp surface or a faint smell of ammonia mean it is past its best, and a large truffle in poor condition is worth less than a small one in perfect condition.
Use the whites. Twelve yolks leave twelve whites, and in the Langhe they went to the cellars for fining wine. At home they keep refrigerated 4 days or frozen 3 months, and they are exactly what you want for meringue or amaretti.
Weigh the truffle portion. A quarter of an ounce, about 7 g, per serving is generous and shows on the plate. It is easy to shave far too little, which wastes the exercise, or far too much, which turns the aroma flat and slightly metallic. Portion it before service so nobody judges under pressure.
If you have no truffle, do not substitute truffle oil. It is almost always synthetic and smells of one compound rather than of a truffle. Make the same dish with butter and sage, or with a spoon of roast juices, and call it what it is.
Common Mistakes
Washing the truffle. Running water drives moisture into the flesh, the truffle softens within hours and the aroma drops away sharply. Brush it dry, wipe it with barely damp paper only where soil remains, and change the storage paper daily.
Cooking the truffle. Heating it in the pan or baking it destroys the volatile sulphur compounds that carry the aroma and leaves an expensive garnish that tastes of almost nothing. Shave it raw, at the table, onto pasta that is already hot.
Browning the butter. Beurre noisette has its own nutty roasted character, and it sits directly on top of the truffle and silences it. The butter here must stay pale and creamy, which means the lowest heat and a pan you watch.
Overcooking the tajarin. At 0.8 mm with twelve yolks in the dough these noodles need 60 to 75 seconds and no more. Past that the surface goes slack, the strands break during the toss and the bowl arrives as a soft tangle.
Adding too much cheese. A heavy handful of Parmigiano competes with the truffle on the same savoury register and wins, because there is far more of it. Either leave the cheese out entirely, as they often do in Alba, or use a very light dusting under the shavings.
Wine Pairing
Barbaresco DOCG: The classic answer and the one poured in Alba itself. Nebbiolo grown on the Tanaro side of the hills gives high acidity and fine grained tannin with aromas of rose, tar and dried cherry, and with a few years in bottle it develops an earthy, faintly mushroomy depth that runs parallel to the truffle instead of arguing with it. The acidity also cuts cleanly through the butter.
Barolo DOCG: Bigger and more tannic than Barbaresco, and best here with real bottle age behind it. A young Barolo has tannin enough to roughen a dish this delicate, while one at ten or twelve years has softened into leather, dried rose and forest floor, the exact register the white truffle occupies. Decant it and serve at 61°F (16°C).
Nebbiolo d'Alba DOC: The everyday Langhe bottle and an honest match when the grand crus stay in the cellar. It carries the same red cherry and rose aromatics as its famous neighbours with lighter tannin and a shorter finish, so it refreshes between mouthfuls rather than demanding attention. This is what most local families would actually open with tajarin.
Roero Arneis DOCG: The white option, from the sandier hills directly across the Tanaro from Alba. Arneis gives white pear, chamomile and a soft almond finish with moderate acidity and a slightly waxy texture that sits comfortably under a butter sauce. It has aromatic presence enough to be noticed alongside the truffle and no tannin to interfere.
Alta Langa DOCG: Piedmont's own metodo classico, from Pinot Nero and Chardonnay grown at altitude and aged at least thirty months on the lees. The bubbles and sharp acidity scrub the butter off the palate between bites, while the bready autolytic character of long lees ageing shares direct common ground with the truffle. Serve at 46°F (8°C).
Storage & Reheating
The truffle is the one thing that genuinely will not wait. Wrapped in fresh kitchen paper inside a sealed glass jar in the coldest part of the refrigerator, paper changed daily, it holds usable aroma about 5 days from purchase and is noticeably weaker by the fourth. Do not freeze it whole: the cell walls rupture and it thaws into a grey, watery, almost odourless lump. If you cannot use it in time, shave it into softened butter, roll that into a log and freeze the log, which holds its perfume for 2 months.
Uncooked tajarin hold 3 hours at room temperature dusted with semola on a tray, or 24 hours uncovered in the refrigerator. For longer, freeze the nests on the tray until solid, bag them, and cook from frozen with 15 seconds added. Never seal them damp in a container, where they fuse into a block.
The finished dish is not designed to keep. Refrigerate leftovers a maximum of 24 hours and reheat in a wide pan over low heat with 2 tablespoons of water, moving the pasta until the butter emulsion comes back, under a minute. Shave fresh truffle over the reheated portion if you have any left, because whatever went on the first time has vanished. Never use a microwave.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 servings:
Calories: 680 kcal
Total Fat: 38 g
Saturated Fat: 21 g
Trans Fat: 0.8 g
Unsaturated Fat: 15 g
Cholesterol: 590 mg
Sodium: 480 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 55 g
Fiber: 2 g
Total Sugars: 1 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 22 g
Lactose: 0.2 g
Principal micronutrients: vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin B12, choline, selenium, phosphorus, iron
These figures are estimates. The cholesterol is high because of the yolk count and the butter, and most of the salt in the pasta water is poured away.
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