Alba: White truffles

Asti, October 31, 2010—

WE'RE IN A PLEASANT country hotel outside Asti, but we ate today a few kilometers south in Alba, because there was an exhibition there of Morandi landscapes that we didn't want to miss. Alba is of course the center of Italy's white truffle economy, and this is the season, so we did the expected.

But where? We didn't have time to look around, we'd got into town too late for that, and we're travelling without restaurant guidebooks, since we're mostly eating in hotels or agriturismi. So we parked near the center of town, walked past a couple of uninteresting-looking places, and settled on Pasta e Pasta, a chain I'm pretty sure (since I think I recall eating at one in Milan a few years ago).



Still, they had the requisite fungi. So we ordered tajarin, the Piemontese version of tagliarini, served dressed with good Piemontese butter, with fourteen grams of white truffles sliced thin on top. (You pay for your truffles by weight: they bring four or five to the table with a little scale, you choose the ones you want, they weigh them.) Afterward, we both wanted brasato Barbaresco, slices of beef braised in that red wine, polenta on the side. Nothing more but an excellent coffee, thank you; it was very good; I'd go back.

Arneis in carafe; Barbaresco in carafe

Pasta e Pasta, Via Cuneo 3, Alba (CN); tel. 0173/363825

Giaglione, 3: Chestnuts!

Agriturismo Crè Seren, Giaglione, October 30, 2010—

AFTER A MORNING of sight-seeing we were hungry, and had gone to Chiomonte, Lindsey's father's birthplace, so we lunched in the old Albergo there. We first ate there in the summer of 1974, when its kitchen was a bit better, I think; it's been under new management since the late 'seventies, and the kitchen's a bit pedestrian. Still, you can do worse: I had a plate of tagilatelle with Bolognese sauce, then a couple of veal scallopine in a thick flour-based sauce, washed down with the local red.



After an afternoon visiting new-found family — Lindsey's third cousin, I think, once removed — we dined back at our agriturismo with Andrea and Teresa, a third cousin twice removed and his wife, a pianist. Our hostess, Serena Sereno, having heard I liked chestnuts, arranged a dinner featuring them in almost every course, as follows:

Lettuce, onion, and sliced fennel salad, with slices of soft raw pancetta
Grilled chestnuts with lardo (all this is from the agriturismo, by the way)
Gnocchi malfatti in butter and oil


Tomato tartlet with peppers and chopped parsley
Tagliatelle dressed with chopped chestnuts, carrots, and leeks
Roast vitellone with roast potatoes


Chestnut crumble cake topped with chopped apples in jelly

White, Dolcetto, and Crè Seren Nero, 2009, as yesterday

Albergo Chiomonte, Via Levis, Chiomonte (TO)Agriturismo "Cre Seren", Frazione S. Rocco 10, Giaglione (TO), tel. 0122.62 92 64

Giaglioni, 2: Bagna Cauda

Giaglioni (Piemonte), October 29, 2010

LAST NIGHT WE SHARED the dining room of our agriturismo with nine noisy Calabrese who were celebrating a birthday. Tonight, after a fairly strenuous two-hour walk through forest, we had it all to ourselves. Too bad for the business, perhaps—though perhaps not, as in addition to looking after us they'd been busy with the last day of the Barbera harvest— but very nice for us.

It's a pleasant room, with tables for perhaps two dozen, with identical straight-backed but comfortably upholstered chairs painted various muted pastels, photos of local attractions (including the goal of today's walk, an ancient abbey across the valley), and nice lighting.






We began with two unusual and very tasty salads, one of apples and cabbage flavored with a delicate vinaigrette, the other of red-stalked Torinese celery, walnuts, and the local Brùc cheese, a sort of soft-hard creamy tomme, something like Castelmagno but without any runniness or blue-streaking. These were chopped fine and served in a delicious green olive oil, no vinegar, but a discreet amount of salt. Both of these will be imitated when we get home.






Then came red and yellow peperoni, the yellow a bit more peppery than the red, sweated in oil, cooled to room temperature, and served with a dollop of particularly unctuous bagna cauda: lots of anchovy taste, just the right whiff of garlic (it was steeped in hot milk, then discarded), and a little butter. A version of bagna cauda (one of the Hundred Plates) to contend with.

Afterward there was a plate of agnelotti filled with ground veal, pork, and a little bit of lamb, with rosemary, thyme, and garlic, all ground up very fine. And then came a local delicacy, a beautiful example of cucina povera or peasant cooking: mutton, laurel leaves, salt, garlic, and nutmeg, layered in a high narrow terra-cotta vessel, weighted with a stone on a plate the right size, and left to itself for a week.






I suppose it's a distant relative of the Provençal boeuf daube, or the Spanish olla podrida, the sort of dish that makes a virtue of necessity — my kind of virtue.
Whatever its relatives — and they probably extend to Hopi country — it was a delicious thing, very rich, unctuous, challenging, memorable.

We finished with a delicate and very flavorful apple sformata, nothing but apples, eggs, and sugar, mixed in the right proportions and allowed to take shape. With a tiny garnish of whipped cream it was all you could ask.

Zal blanc, Chardonnay and local white grapes, Azienda Agricola Martina (Piemonte), 2009; Dolcetto, Azienda Agricola Martina (Piemonte), 2009; Cré Seren (Pinot nero and local red grapes), Azienda Agricola Martina (Piemonte), 2009

Giaglioni, 1: Cena Piemontese

Giaglioni (Piemonte), October 28, 2010

MAMMA MIA, SIAMO ancora in Italia, we're back in Italy. I liked the food in Lanslebourg: hearty mountain rustic French fare. But Italy, well, Italy's another matter. We ate just as locally, in an agriturismo we found by chance; but the locale is devoted to a bigger range, a more tellingly considered, a more finely executed cuisine.


And this is what we had:

Vitello tonnato
Frittata di erbellina e carote
Capelleti al prosciutto e ricotta
Arrosto di vitello con spinaci
Formaggii
Torta di castagna

Everything made in the kitchen; everything grown in the garden or raised in the adjacent pasture. The cheese was perhaps not of this very house, but was certainly of the neighborhood. The grissini and the bread, even, were made here. I wouldn't be surprised if you told me its wheat had been grown here, though I haven't seen any wheatfields hereabouts.

The tonnato was exceptional, not at all from a delicatessen, a small dollop of wonderful tuna sauce centered on each thin slice of perfectly cooked veal. The capeletti were made of potato and were in fact gnocchi in the semicircular shape of cappeletti; the filling was refined and perfectly balanced between prosciutto, ricotta, and sage flavors, and the texture very delicate and soft.


The roast veal was nicely salted, sliced very thin with the grain, and set off by sweet fresh spinach with very light butter flavor. The cheese was the least exceptional course, but welcome; and the torta was everything a chestnut-lover could ask, dense but not at all heavy, with a very interesting, rewarding texture, a rich chocolate sauce at one end, smooth cream at the other.



It was, in fact, perhaps the most satisfying meal of the trip so far, and a memorable one.

Seven grappas were offered; I contented myself with one, the genepì, as good as I've tasted anywhere, and I've tasted my share. Lindsey's Fragolina was delicately flavored with raspberries; the straight dry grappa was pure, refined, and delicious. All from the em>proprietà.

Zal blanc, Chardonnay and local white grapes, Azienda Agricola Martina (Piemonte), 2009; Dolcetto, Azienda Agricola Martina (Piemonte), 2009; Cré Seren (Pinot nero and local red grapes), Azienda Agricola Martina (Piemonte), 2009; grappe: genepì; alla frutta secca

Agriturismo Crè Seren, , Frazione San Rocco, 10, Giaglione; tel. 335.608.3966

Lanslebourg, 3: filet de boeuf

Lanslebourg, October 27, 2010—

WE TOOK A CLOSER look at the menu today, and noticed the cuisine and patisserie were both credited to Pierre Gagnaire. He's a little too important to spend much time in Lanslebourg, I think, so we must have been eating sous-vide, vacuum-packed stuff from a central kitchen god knows where. We eat it gratefully, of course; it's about the only show in town, and we do get hungry.



Tonight I began with a cheese tarte with a mixed salad, thankfully lacking beets tonight, and went on to a beef filet in peppercorn sauce, with broccoli en velouté. Dessert was a tarte à myrtilles, the dish that attracted me to this hotel two years ago, and it was exactly like the cheese tarte, a rectangle of puff-pastry, berries instead of cheese.

Mondeuse, 2009

Lanslebourg, 2: Raclette

Lanslebourg, Savoie, October 26, 2010—

SOME OF YOU WONDERED about the video I uploaded to Facebook a few hours ago, Street Cows. (It's also on YouTube, but I don't know how to tell you where exactly.)

There are cows in Savoie, and their job is to eat grass (and flowers when they find them), and to give milk. They go to work in the morning and come home in the evening, and that's when I made the video of them yesterday.

The milk is made into cheese: Reblochon, Tomme, Beaufort. And more ordinary cheeses, perhaps at this time of year when pasturage isn't nearly as fragrant.

Tonight we had Raclette, the other main dish of Savoie — the first being Tartiflette, as far as I'm concerned its superior. Tartiflette is one of my Hundred Plates, though I can't tag it properly until I'm back at a computer; Raclette is amusing, substantial, pleasing on a cold night, but not one of the Hundred Plates.

After a generous serving of mixed salad and charcuterie Madame the hotelkeeper brought steamed potatoes and a platter of cheese — three kinds: Tomme de Savoie, something she said was not Reblochon but very like Reblochon, and Raclette, probably a quite ordinary cheese suitable for cooking. (Of course what's quite ordinary here would cost a pretty penny at home in California.)

Also on the table was a curious flat disc held up by three legs. It was plugged in, which required our moving from last night's table to another closer to a socket. We put slices of cheese on its non-stick surface, watched them bubble, paddled them around with little wooden sticks, and took them up with forkfuls of potato or slices of baguette. They were, of course, delicious.

Roussette de Savoie, "Altesse", Edmond Jaquin et fils, 2009

Lanslebourg: Tartiflette!

Lanslebourg, France, Oct. 25, 2010—

WE ARRIVED HERE today after a snowy crossing of the Montcenis pass from Italy. I've written a bit about the trip, and this area, at The Eastside View, and won't repeat here: let me just say I'm back in tartiflette country after a little over two years, and happy to share it with Lindsey.

After a cold afternoon of touring we settled down in front of the hearth with a bottle of Apremont, then went into the hotel restaurant for

salad with cheese packets in fyllo dough
tartiflette
mousse au chocolat

and all was exactly as it should be. I love these provincial hotel-restaurants: the cuisine's far from great, but it sure is satisfying.

Oh: tartiflette is baked cheese with sliced potatoes, but you have to have the right cheese. One of the Hundred Plates.

Apremont, Mireille Cartier, ?2009

Hotel-Restaurant 2 Cols, 66 rue du Mont Cenis, Lanslebourg Mt. Cenis; tel. 04.79.05.20.64