Piedmont in Autumn: White Truffles, Hazelnuts, Gianduja, Barolo and the Fog That Makes It All Taste Better
Piedmont is the corner of Italy that leans toward France, and in autumn it hides. From October into December the hills of the Langhe, Roero and Monferrato, south of Turin, fill with a fog so thick the locals have a word for the way the vineyards float above it, and under that fog the best two months of eating in Italy take place. The grapes have just come in. The hazelnuts are being roasted. The white truffles, which grow nowhere else in such quantity or quality, are being dug at dawn by dogs and sold in Alba by the gram at prices that make people laugh nervously. This is the region at its season, dish by dish, and the shelf that brings it to a Denver table.
The truffle
The white truffle of Alba, Tuber magnatum, is the reason the world knows the Langhe. It cannot be farmed, it grows in symbiosis with the roots of oak, poplar and willow in the region's damp clay, and it is found from October to December by trained dogs and their trifolau, who go out before dawn to keep their spots secret. Alba's international truffle fair has run every autumn for nearly a century, and on its weekends the town smells of the thing itself. The truffle is never cooked; it is shaved raw over warm food with a little fat to carry it: a plate of tajarin, the hair-thin egg pasta made with an absurd number of yolks, a fried egg, a fonduta of melted Fontina, a risotto. Our truffle guide explains the species, the chemistry and the honest products; for a Denver autumn, a few drops of real-infused white truffle oil over the porcini risotto, and a pinch of truffle salt on a fried egg, are the closest honest approximation.
The hazelnut and the chocolate
Piedmont's other great crop is the Tonda Gentile hazelnut, round, sweet and thin-skinned, grown on the same hills and harvested in September, roasted through the autumn. In 1806 Napoleon's blockade cut Turin's chocolatiers off from cocoa, and they stretched what they had with ground local hazelnuts; the result was gianduja, the smooth hazelnut-chocolate paste that is Piedmont's gift to the world's dessert menus and the ancestor of every hazelnut spread on every supermarket shelf. The gianduiotto, the little foil-wrapped ingot, is the Turin confection. Our chocolate history puts the blockade in context; a bar with Piedmontese hazelnuts from our chocolate shelf and a bowl of roasted hazelnuts from the nut shelf are the autumn pairing.
Bagna cauda
The dish that most tastes of the season is a warm bath. Bagna cauda, "hot sauce" in Piedmontese, is garlic and anchovies melted slowly into olive oil and butter until they dissolve into a pungent, silky dip, kept warm over a flame at the center of the table while everyone dunks raw and cooked vegetables into it: cardoons, peppers, cabbage, Jerusalem artichokes, boiled potatoes. It is peasant food from the wine harvest, eaten to celebrate the end of the picking, and it is the reason Piedmont, three hours from the sea, has one of the oldest anchovy trades in Italy; the salt-cured fish came up over the mountains from Liguria on the backs of mules for centuries. Our anchovy guide has the fish. The recipe is a head of garlic, a tin of anchovies, a cup of good olive oil, a knob of butter, and patience.
The pasta, the beans, the meat
Piedmont's pasta is egg pasta: tajarin, and the small, pinched agnolotti del plin, filled with roast meat and served with the roasting juices or with butter and sage. The hills grow good beans, and the Piedmontese white beans with truffle on our shelf are that tradition in a jar, warmed with oil beside a sausage. The meat is the Fassona beef of the region, eaten raw and hand-chopped as carne cruda, or braised for hours in Barolo. Everything is rich, because autumn in the Langhe is cold and the work of the harvest is done.
Barolo, and the vermouth before it
The Nebbiolo grape, named for the fog, makes Barolo and Barbaresco on these hills, wines of tannin, tar and roses that need years and are the reason the region's food is as rich as it is; nothing else stands up to them. Before the wine, Piedmont drinks vermouth, which was invented in Turin in the 1780s from local wine and Alpine herbs, and the aperitivo hour that Spain later made its own began here, in the cafés of the city. A glass of vermouth, a few grissini, the thin breadsticks Turin invented in the seventeenth century, and a bowl of hazelnuts is how the region begins an autumn evening; a zero-proof version of the same bitter, cold idea works in its place.
The Piedmontese table at home
Grissini, roasted hazelnuts and something bitter and cold to begin. Bagna cauda if the guests are brave, with a pile of raw vegetables and boiled potatoes. The porcini risotto, or egg pasta with butter, finished with truffle oil and truffle salt. The truffled beans warm beside it. A square of hazelnut chocolate and a glass of something red or a strong coffee. The fog is not available, but Denver in November does a passable job. The truffle products, anchovies, olive oil, beans, hazelnuts and chocolate are at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com. If you are ever within reach of Alba in October, go, and bring a grater.
