Trufflage and Pasta

While flying back from DC earlier this month on Airtran, I was flipping through their magazine and they had a section on the growth and redevelopment of West Atlanta (more or less just west of the GT campus). Anyway, there was an Italian market listed called Toscano and Sons, and so we decided to go check it out. It was a pretty small place; they didn't have a huge selection of goods, but pretty much everything there was imports. They even had the San Pellegrino Chinotto drink that my brother likes. Anyway, we picked up a couple of random items, including a small bottle of black truffle oil, some vacuum-packed gnocchi, some dry pasta, some imported salami and a couple cheeses.

Anyway, I haven't had much experience with truffle oil (but boy does Iron Chef Sakai like to use it!), but I decided to experiment around. So I decided to make some fresh pasta infused with the black truffle oil:

Oil and ball of pasta dough (just AP flour, eggs, and the truffle oil). The oil was incredibly fragrant, but I think my sauce was too strong or something.

The final product. I put a little oil in the sauce as well, but I think the cheese might have been too strong so I couldn't really taste much of the truffle oil. I think next time I might just try a simpler approach of tossing the pasta with the oil, a little garlic and maybe a bit of fresh herbage and black pepper. I think I also need to let the pasta rest a bit longer after rolling it out (I don't have a pasta maker so I just do it with a rolling pin on the counter) because it seems to contract back a bit which makes it thicker and a little chewier than it should be.

Salami and cheese from the Italian market; sauteed asparagus in the background and my OJ.