Spelt with porcini mushrooms and truffle fondue

• 15  minutes to prepare • 35 minutes to cook • Serves 4

 

 

Tuber terrae

No matter where you are from, fondue evokes images of winter dinner parties with colourful little forks over a pot filled with melted, warm cheese.

It might make you think of Switzerland, and cold nights in the mountains around a bubbling pot of gruyère. But here's another recipe to know: a delicious specialty from Piedmont, which has had its share of culinary exchanges with its northernly Swiss neighbors.
Piemontesi do what they are capable to do best with their dishes: they add truffle.

Piedmont is one of Italian biggest truffle growing regions, and it is famous for that most prized fungi of all, the white truffle, which is gathered in the forests around Alba. Truffles are an extremely precious ingredient - but they are so abundant in this area, particularly at this time of the year, that they are featured in a number of Piedmont's most traditional recipes. And despite the price tag that comes with a truffle, its best is brought out in simple, homely dishes.

This fondue is just the thing. The recipe, which comes from Alba, is the simplest recipe for fondue you could ask for; it is asked to accompany today a marvellous preparation of spelt and porcini mushrooms.
Keep it warm, take a fork, and watch it happily disappear.


Here's what you will need for the 4-serving recipe:

 

300 g spelt
100 g porcini mushrooms
2 shallots
1 l vegetable broth
200 g Fontina cheese
50 g butter
100 g cow milk
EVO oil
truffle oil
salt and pepper

1. Chop shallots and braise them with 2 tablespoons of EVO oil until golden, then pour the spelt into the pan and let it toast for 1 minute
2. Cook the spelt, adding a spoonful of boiling vegetable broth at a time, as for a normal risotto. This should take approximately 30 minutes
3. Meanwhile, wash porcini mushrooms and cut them into thin slices. Then, cook them in another pan with 1 tablespoon of EVO oil
4. A few moments before the rice is done, stir in the porcini mushrooms
5. Warm butter, Fontina cheese - cut into small pieces - and milk together over a bain marie. Keep stirring with a wooden spoon until the mixture is homogenous and soft. Add freshly ground pepper, salt (if needed) and 1 teaspoon of truffle oil
6. Serve your spelt and porcini mushrooms dish with some truffle fondue on top

In the following, Nutrition Facts of this dish are indicated. Data is provided per serving.

Post hunc tradentur tubera, si ver tunc erit et facient optata tonitrua cenas maiores.
Tibi habe frumentum, O Libye...dum tubera mittas
(Juvenal, Satyrae)

*If the spring will bring peals of thunder, we will have the desired truffles.
Keep your grain, Libya...and send us truffles