A fresh summer truffle gives you about five days. After that you still have a truffle, but you no longer have the smell that made you buy it. So the useful question is not which single dish deserves your truffle. It is how to build four or five days of cooking around one box so nothing goes to waste. These are the recipes we cook ourselves during the June to August season, in the order we would cook them. Two rules apply to all of them. Shave the truffle at the table or at the last second before the plate leaves the kitchen. And use more than feels right - summer truffle is milder than black winter truffle, so 7 to 10 grams per person is the working number, not 2 or 3. If you are not sure which species you have or how to store it, the summer truffle season guide covers grading, storage and how to tell aestivum from its autumn cousin.
Before You Start: Cleaning and Shaving
Clean the truffle only when you are ready to cook. Cold water, thin stream, soft toothbrush worked into the crevices, then dry it completely with a cloth. Any water left on the skin will soften it overnight. You need a shaver. A truffle slicer with an adjustable blade earns its place immediately, because thin slices release far more aroma than thick ones. A sharp vegetable peeler or a mandoline set to its finest setting also works. A knife does not, unless your knife skills are unusually good. Save the trimmings. Every broken edge and every offcut goes into butter, which is the last recipe on this list and the reason nothing is ever wasted.
Day One: Tagliolini With Butter and Summer Truffle
This is the dish to cook first, while the aroma is at its peak, because there is nowhere for a mediocre truffle to hide. For two people you need 180g fresh egg tagliolini or tagliatelle, 80g good unsalted butter, a small handful of grated Parmigiano Reggiano, and 20g of summer truffle. Bring a wide pan of well-salted water to the boil. While it heats, melt the butter in a large frying pan over low heat with two tablespoons of the pasta water, and swirl it until it turns creamy and slightly opaque. Do not let it brown or sizzle. Fresh tagliolini cooks in 90 seconds. Lift it straight into the butter with tongs, add another splash of pasta water, and toss hard for thirty seconds until the sauce clings. Take the pan off the heat, add the Parmesan, toss again. Plate it, then shave the truffle over each bowl at the table. Ten grams per person looks like an indulgent amount of truffle sitting on the pasta. It is the correct amount.
Why Butter and Not Cream
Cream coats the tongue and mutes aroma. Butter carries fat-soluble truffle compounds without building a wall between them and you. Every Piedmontese kitchen we have bought from does it this way, and every time someone sends us a photo of truffle pasta that "did not taste of much", there is cream in it.
Day Two: Truffled Scrambled Eggs
Put the truffle in a sealed glass container with four whole raw eggs the night before. Aroma passes through the shell. This costs nothing and works better than most things you can do with a knife. The next morning, beat the eggs with a pinch of salt. Melt 20g butter in a nonstick pan over the lowest heat your hob will hold, add the eggs, and stir slowly and constantly with a spatula for six to eight minutes. The eggs should stay glossy and slightly wet. If they are setting fast, the pan is too hot: lift it off the heat and keep stirring. Spoon onto hot buttered sourdough, shave 6 to 8 grams of truffle per plate, add a little flaky salt. Eggs and truffle work because egg fat and truffle aroma bind chemically. This is the most reliable way to make a small truffle feel like a large one, and it is what we cook when the box is nearly finished.
Day Two or Three: Summer Truffle Risotto
Risotto rewards summer truffle because the dish is warm, starchy and quiet, which is exactly what aestivum needs. For four: 320g carnaroli rice, one small onion finely chopped, 1.2 litres of light chicken or vegetable stock kept at a simmer, 100ml dry white wine, 70g butter, 60g Parmesan, 30 to 40g truffle. Soften the onion in half the butter without colouring it, about eight minutes. Add the rice and toast it for two minutes until the grains look glassy at the edges. Pour in the wine and let it evaporate. Now add stock one ladle at a time, stirring, waiting until each addition is nearly absorbed before the next. This takes 17 to 18 minutes with carnaroli. Taste from minute 15 - you want the grain to hold a slight bite in the centre. Take the pan off the heat, beat in the rest of the butter and the Parmesan, cover, wait two minutes, then stir hard. The risotto should spread slowly on the plate, not sit in a mound. Shave truffle over each portion. If you kept the truffle in a jar of rice at any point, use that rice here and you get a second layer of aroma for free.
Day Three: Truffle and Parmesan Carpaccio Salad
Something raw and cold in the middle of the week, to reset the palate. Slice raw button mushrooms very thin. Dress them with lemon juice, a good olive oil, salt and pepper, and leave them for five minutes. Arrange on a plate with shaved Parmigiano and a few leaves of rocket. Shave the truffle on top, generously, and serve immediately at room temperature rather than fridge-cold. Chilled plates flatten truffle aroma more than any other mistake in this article. Beef carpaccio works the same way if you want it richer. Keep the dressing to oil, lemon and salt. No mustard, no capers, no balsamic - all three will bury the truffle.
Day Four: Truffle Under the Skin of a Roast Chicken
This is the classic use for cut-grade truffle, and it is where summer truffle beats its reputation, because gentle heat opens up the hazelnut character rather than destroying it. Take a 1.6kg chicken. Slide your fingers carefully between the skin and the breast to loosen it without tearing. Push thin slices of truffle, about 15g, into the gap on each side, along with a little softened butter. Salt the bird well, put a knob of butter and any truffle offcuts inside the cavity, and refrigerate it uncovered for at least four hours, ideally overnight. The aroma spreads through the meat during this rest, and skipping it wastes most of the effect. Roast at 200C for about 55 to 65 minutes, basting twice. Rest for 15 minutes before carving. Shave a few grams of fresh truffle over the carved meat as well. Cooked truffle and raw truffle do different jobs, and using both in one dish is not excessive.
Day Five: Truffle Butter
Whatever is left goes here, including every scrap and trimming. Grate or very finely chop 20g of truffle into 200g of softened unsalted butter. Add half a teaspoon of fine sea salt. Mix thoroughly, roll the butter into a log in baking paper, twist the ends, and refrigerate. Use within two weeks, or slice the log into discs, freeze them on a tray, and bag them once solid. Frozen truffle butter keeps its smell for around three months. What to do with it: melt a disc over steak, stir one through green beans or new potatoes, spread it on toast under a poached egg, or drop one into the pan at the end of a simple pasta. It turns an ordinary weeknight dinner into something worth sitting down for, and it means a box of truffle keeps paying out weeks after the fresh window has closed.
A Note on What Not to Do With Summer Truffle
Do not deep fry it. Do not add it to tomato sauce, curry, anything with chilli, or anything containing vinegar. Do not put it next to blue cheese or smoked salmon. Aestivum is a quiet ingredient, and every one of those will simply erase it. Also, do not buy truffle oil to "boost" a fresh truffle dish. Nearly all of it is made with a synthetic compound, 2,4-dithiapentane, and it will sit on top of the real aroma like a marker pen. Fresh truffle plus butter is enough.
Two More Uses Worth Knowing
Truffled Potato and Cheese Gratin
Slice 800g of waxy potatoes thin on a mandoline. Layer them in a buttered dish with 200ml cream infused with 8g of grated truffle, seasoning between layers, and finish with grated Gruyere or Comte. Bake at 170C for 50 minutes until the top is set and the point of a knife goes through easily. This is the one place where cream earns its position, because the potato needs a liquid and the slow bake gives the truffle time to spread through the whole dish. Shave a few fresh grams over the top after it comes out of the oven.
Truffle Honey for Cheese
Warm 200g of mild acacia honey to just above body temperature, no hotter. Stir in 10g of finely chopped truffle, transfer to a sterilised jar, and leave it in a cool cupboard for at least a week. It keeps for months. Spoon it over aged pecorino or a young sheep's cheese. This is a good way to use the last small pieces when there is not enough left for a proper dish, and it makes a better gift than most things you can buy. The same method works with black Perigord truffle in winter, though you need less of it because the aroma is far stronger.
Matching Wine to Summer Truffle
Summer truffle is mild, so a heavy wine will erase it as effectively as chilli would. For the pasta and the risotto, a Piedmontese white such as Arneis, or a light Chardonnay with no oak. For the chicken, a young Nebbiolo or a Pinot Noir. For the eggs, honestly, coffee. The general principle is to keep the wine lower in alcohol and lower in tannin than you would normally choose for the same dish, since both alcohol and tannin flatten the aroma.
Buying Fresh Summer Truffles for These Recipes
For the pasta, the carpaccio and the eggs, buy first class: whole truffles with clean skin that look good on the plate. For the chicken, the risotto and the butter, cut grade Tuber aestivum is the smart choice, since the flesh and aroma are identical and only the appearance differs. Our fresh summer truffles (Tuber aestivum) come in 250g, 500g and 1kg boxes, hand-dug from European MORINA harvests and packed within hours of coming out of the ground. A 250g first class box runs the full week of cooking above for a household of four with plenty left for butter. Orders are processed in 24 to 48 hours and shipped worldwide in temperature-aware packing. Plan the pasta for the day your box lands, since day one is when the aroma is strongest, and work down the list from there. We have been sourcing truffles since 2008 for chefs, distributors and home cooks. If you want advice on grade or quantity for a specific menu, write to info@trufflecart.com or call +1 (628) 226-5795 and we will tell you what we would actually order.
One Last Thing
The most common regret we hear has nothing to do with the cooking. It comes from people who kept the truffle in the fridge for a week waiting for the right occasion, and then found it had gone soft and smelled faintly of ammonia. Cook it on Tuesday. The occasion is that you have a truffle.