it was freshly dug in tassie by laughing-fi... thanks laughing-fi, now i can cross off one from my bucket list...
in order to maximise the use of the black gold, we went gourmet food shopping and parted with even more $$... we discovered the simon johnson in castlecrag was just as well stocked as the main shop in pyrmont, complete with a cheese room too!
we decided to keep it simple - homemade pasta with burnt butter sauce and shaved truffle, accompanied by truffle-butter and bread, and cheese and quince paste for after dindin... all the ingredients we bought at SJ, except the cultured butter i was deforsting from the freezer (from the good food farmer's market)
the tipo OO flour was really dear! $9 for a kg...next time i am going to a homely italian deli eg the one in burwood plaza...
the pasta turned out good though:
600g tipo OO flour
6 whole eggs
and the star of the show was double wrapped in zip lock bags (two of them) then the container... in my mushroom textbook by carluccio (later)... it was noted that truffles should be stored with dry rice grains to absorb x-s moisture! our one actually just started to sweat alittle, we managed to save it with a bit of rice...
as the truffle laid dying / decaying in the container, it emitted pungent aromas (which laughing-fi claimed that it fumed her entire car)... the decay and lingering aroma would last for only 2 weeks for the t.malenosporum... (the white even more pungent t.magnatum only lasts about a week! (well, these could not be "cultivated" yet and they cost a bomb)) ... after which the black gold becomes black dirt as it would have no tastes or smells...
out nugget was 23g and at $2/g it was not cheap! (although it was below recommended retail price of $2795/kg, as we got it at farm direct)
i got my mushroom text book in the uk directly from antonio carluccio! signed and all!! of course my other treasured signed and all book was the original jamie O "naked chef" (b4 he was world famous TV chef)... tank Q mcduck!
the pic below was our presentation guide...
pasta making was a real 2-person job...
the dough was first kneaded and rest with clingfilm in the fridge for 1/2 hour...
constant flour dusting was essential to keep everything non-stick... 
so i reckon an extra 100g flour was used just for dusting....
it got thinner and thinner and smoother and smoother each time...
lovely, like satin sheet....
then we cut the sheet into taglionili
boiled in salted water for 3-4 minutes...
poured on our burnt butter sauce... our pan was too small to have the pasta being tossed in it...
then the truffle shaved on top after being salted and parmasened...
our 2-person celebratory truffle meal had to be stretched to feed 4 people at the end as snowflake and mcduck hovered around and won't go away...
hence our share of shaved truffle also was halved...
we ended up shaving 1/2 knob into out truffle (cultured) butter...
and that was delish with bread!
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