Lasagna Tartufo

On the first weekend of November Citta di Castello holds its annual truffle festival (check out A.J.s truffle festival blog post for more details.)  We were lucky to once again be able to go. 

On Saturday morning we started by heading to Arezzo for the huge Antique market, more on this in later posts. After an overwhelming day of being able to afford very little, we left with a fine coat, medical instrument, and fabulous liquor ad. We stopped home on the way and fed and loved the dogs for a short while and then off to our second event of the day: the Truffle fest.

We finally arrived, after following a car that must have been peddling, parked, and excitedly headed inside of the town walls to be greeted by our first festival tent. This tent was full of cheese, baked goods, and spices. The next tent full of crafts. The third tent full of truffles, truffle goods, and all full of people.  The town was flowing with people!  We walked around looking like wide eyed kids in a candy shop.  We decided on some truffle salsa (sauce like, not Mexican) and a porcini-truffle crème sauce to bring home and cook with.  Our decisions made we headed out tired from a day for festival exploration. We stopped on the way home for a yummy dinner at Nonna Geisa, but that’s another story.

Today’s story is about the beautiful lasagna that we made with the truffle salsa.

After waking with a day of down pouring rain, we decided it wasn’t a great day to go exploring so we decided to explore the world of lasagna. Two hours of fun in the kitchen provided us with a delightful lunch. Here’s the scoop:

This was our second go at homemade pasta. First, here’s the basic pasta recipe we use from Jeremy Holt who let us in on a little Italian saying “un ouvo per etto:” 1 egg to every 100 grams of flour. And that’s that for pasta.

Ingredients:

4 eggs

400 grams flour

3 small carrots

One medium red onion

1 large bunch of spinach

1 cup parmesan

1 cup fontina

2 balls fresh mozzarella

1 jar of truffle salsa

1 small container of panna cucina*

*Panna cucina is cream used for savory dishes. It is the thickness of sour crème and is different than the crème you would use for coffee or desserts.

Directions:

Place the flour in a large bowl and make a well in the middle. Add the eggs in the well and combine the eggs and flour with a fork. When combined, place dough on a floured surface and knead until smooth. Let rest about 15 minutes. 

For the filling we sautéed three smallish carrots, one red onion, and then added to wilt one large bunch of spinach.

We made a truffle crème sauce by adding 2/3 of the jar (180 g) of truffle salsa to one cup of panna cucina.  We combined in a small sauce pan and seasoned with pepper and salt.

Three cheeses were used for the filling: 1 cup shredded parmesan. 1 cup shredded fontina. And two balls of fresh mozzarella.

After rolling the pasta until thin in our pasta machine, we cooked the pasta sheets for 30 seconds (about three 6 by 3 inch sheets at a time), then placed them in a cold bowl of water to stop the cooking, then rinsed them, and then laid them on a towel to dry. The pasta sheets must be rinsed of their starch or they will stick to the towel.

When all the noodles were cut, cooked, rinsed, and dried we started to layer. We put a thick layer of butter in the bottom of the casserole dish followed by layers of pasta, fontina and parmesan cheese, veggies, and truffle crème sauce. We topped the final layer of pasta with the remaining 1/3 of truffle salsa, the fresh mozzarella, and a drizzle of olive oil.

We baked for about 15 minutes at 200 C.  Let rest for 10 minutes.  It only gets better the longer it rests!

It was so good we even had it for dinner.