When I turned thirty I toured around Italy in my campervan cooking everywhere I went
I did some amazing things which changed my life forever and I'll never forget it
thanks to Food Tube I can now share these things with you guys and I'm really excited.
I got introduced to a group of lads who invited me to a picnic in the woods as blokes do
the thing was, we had to find our food first, not nuts and berries, but one of the most expensive hard to find foods;
truffles.
There's this place, I think it's a good place to find the truffles
So basically, truffles are kind of like a fruit, it's a spore, a funghi underground in the roots ..near the roots of the tree
They come back in the same place, he says but you have to keep it really secret because they're worth quite a bit
of money and you don't want to tell anyone where you got them from because then they nick your truffles
A little goes a long way with truffles, you don't need much to add an incredible flavour to a dish and good job
too as they were really hard to find
even the specially trained dogs couldn't find too many.
It's too difficult to find.
He's covering his tracks when he digs up a truffle so that no one else knows the spot and takes them next year
yeah it looks like they're very competitive
Okay so the dog's found one but he doesn't know where it is yet
just as I was starting to think snoopy would have done a better job
we struck gold
Ahhh bianco. No nero. Ahh I see it's opened up
so, basically the dogs find a black truffle which can go for £50-120 per kilo and they get a biscuit in return
we were on a roll and we went foraging for mushrooms too but I didn't expect to find a slice of home
in these lovely Italian woods
(cheering)
It's called a St George's mushroom because it comes up a week before St George's day and
goes a couple of weeks after
and it Latin it's called espina de gamba, I dunno what gamba means but spine means big stalk.
In Italy it is the best mushroom.
We've got beautiful mushrooms in England, no one picks them. Everyone's scared of them and thinks
they're gonna die if they eat them.
It's danger that, if you eat that you kill...you dead.
Oops! turns out I wasn't such a mushroom expert after all best to listen to someone that really knows their mushrooms
So I cracked on with cooking instead and what a fantastic place to do it, the ingredients picked
only a few metres away...absolutely magical
we picked these mushrooms but you could use any mushrooms and I'm just gonna fry it in a pan
of course when they're ready you could throw tagliatelle in or crack some eggs in and make an omelette
I've got neither of those things
So I've got some bread we'll do a little bruschetta
this is pork fat you could use butter of course
any mushroom cooked in this way you know if you can't get pork fat use a little bit of smoked bacon
smokey bacon and mushrooms are delicious but these have a particular taste.
Two garlic.
Okay we'll use two garlic, so just squash the garlic in to the pan and now the mushrooms go in...this is great fun
If you wash them they'll be full of water, they'll boil.. boiled mushrooms...horrible, fried mushrooms very nice
Here we go.
Minta.
Nothing tastes like a truffle, but you can get truffle oil in the sort of special selection area
and you know you only have to use a couple of drips and put it in with some normal mushrooms
and it lifts the whole thing.
Just a little.
Say when you want it.
One little chilli. Bitta chilli, bitta salt, bitta pepper
just need to cut up some cheese, put it on this toast, and now we're gonna put the truffles over the top
Fantastic, I've never done this in my life.
Salute.
Little bit of the lard, you could use oil, bitta cheese, pecorino, truffle.
Mmmmm it's really good.
Squeeze it in see, the St George mushroom rocks.
Very easy, very simple but is natural , is all natural.
And you know why he said that? cos he told me what to do his way
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