Italian jewel, the Alba White Truffle is world renowned for its quality and value. Truffles are hypogean mushrooms that grows and live underground, from few centimetres to a meter under the level of ground, living in symbiosis with roots of trees and plants; their favourite place is the root of oaks, lindens, hazels and poplars from which they catch the organic compounds.
Frequently, you will find white truffles on the foots of oaks, poplars, linden and hazel, hornbeam, turkey or English oak, whereas the black truffle prefers the roots of holm oak, turkey oak, linden, hazel and cistus. In any case, truffles needs clean and unpolluted soils, humid and with trees.
The so-called “trufolau” let their dogs, with masterly noses, off the leash from mid September to December in the tree-lined valleys of Langhe and Roero. The most profitable months are the autumn ones when truffles reach its maximum maturation. The precious truffles have a round and spherical shape if they grew up in a soft soil, whereas they shape is irregular and knobbed if they lived with stones, roots or soil irregularities.
The characteristic Alba Truffle, generally spherical and irregular, presents an external crust called “peridio”, clear, of a light yellow tending towards ochre. The internal pulp, called “gleba”, is solid with a milky colour or tending towards pink and brownish, covered by white veining, branched and thick.
The Alba Truffle is a real jewel to keep carefully to not altering its organoleptic properties. Truffles have to be kept rolled in paper towels and placed in glass containers closed inside the fridge (no under 3°); in this way you can keep them until a week.
Before eating, brush it with a soft brush, under cold water to remove the soil remained. It is forbidden to cook or heat it, the Alba White Truffle have to be eaten uncooked, better if cut really thin with the given tool.
Perfect with eggs, egg pasta and fondue.