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Grazie Mille!

My reward for reaching 1,000 followers on Medium

My wife, Silvia, and I recently went out to dinner to celebrate the honor of achieving just over 1,000 people following me on Medium.com. I realize all these people know about Medium already, but this article will be posted to Facebook, where I have a wider social network of whopping 137 friends — only a few of which have ever heard of Medium.

I joined Medium in January of 2020. One of my friends sent me a link to an article here in late 2019, and after finding way more than 3 interesting articles per month I signed up. It wasn’t until February of 2020 that I realized anyone could publish stories on the platform. Here’s my first story:

To date, it has 312 “views,” 100 “reads,” and has earned me just under the cost of one month here on Medium, given I lire in Italy, where Medium costs $6.23 with the current exchange rate. But if money was my prime motivation to write on Medium, I would have stopped many articles ago. Instead, I have come to realize that what motivates me to write and publish here is seeing how many people read my work.

This is a link to my most widely read story:

It has over 3,900 views and over 2,100 reads. You’d think I would have made a bundle on this story, but most of those reading the article (that’s what the earnings are based on) were non-members — and nothing is earned from a non-member read. I did earn a bit more than a month of Medium with this article, but the real satisfaction came from reaching so many people with it

But this article is really about the meal we enjoyed, so let’s get to it!

We went to a restaurant called Tabui. Tabui is billed as a ristorante (restaurant) and truffle bar. The name is taken from the regional dialect (Piemontese) and means a dog skilled at finding truffles (the mushroom, not the candy). Truffles are a big deal here in Italy and especially in the region of Piemonte, where the best are found. There are two general varieties of these precious fungi — black and white. Black truffles are the more common and are the less expensive variety.

The white truffle is much rarer and commands extremely high prices. When you order some to top a dish on the menu, they bring the truffle to the table along with a scale and what looks like a carpenter’s plane. They first weigh the truffle in front of you, carefully shave microscopically thin slivers of truffle over your food, and weigh it again, so you know how much extra to expect on your bill. A few months ago, Silvia and I went to a restaurant that offered white truffle as an additional garnish. Ten grams (less than half an ounce) of the white fungus cost €35.

At Tabui, however, the plates have the truffles added in the kitchen. And, as we are past the peak of white truffle season, they had black and a type called bianchetto, which are rarer than the black, but nowhere near as expensive as the white.

We both went for the Menu Degustazione Tartufo — the truffle tasting menu. The antipasto was a taste of five different plates you could get as a full-on antipasto.

The Uovo al padellino con tartufo bianchetto (fried egg with the lesser-white truffle) is a classic truffle dish. My pallet has grown quite a bit while here in Italy and eggs with a runny yolk are new for me.

Another thing that’s new for me is eating raw meat. The’ Battuta di Carne con Tartufo Nero (chopped meat — in this case, beef — with black truffles) is prepared by cutting up the meat with knives, rather than being ground. This is also a classic dish from the region.

The Fonduta con Tartufo Bianchetto is a truffled twist on a dish from the mountains of Piemonte (which means the foot of the mountains) — those mountains being the Apls. Melted fontina cheese with truffles on top.

Robiola con tartufo nero: Robiola is an Italian soft-ripened cheese. It’s from the Langhe area of Piemonte and made with varying proportions of cow’s, goat’s, and sheep’s milk. It’s a mild cheese that allows the flavor of the truffles to take the starring role.

And finally (as in the last appetizer) was the crostino di paté di fegatini con tartufo nero. That’s a fancy name for chopped liver on a cracker with black truffles. Paté is another new item on my recent foods list. As is often the case, I forgot to do the close-up shots of two of the items.

From there, we went on to the primo — the first plate. This will typically be a pasta or rice dish. In our case, it was a tajarin al tartufo bianchetto. Tajarin is a traditional Piemontese egg-based pasta — the name is a dialect for tagliolini (thin, flat noodles).

The protein plate, or secondo, was filletto alla Rossini. Also known as Tournedos alla Rossini, it is a dish of the French culinary tradition. The region of Piemonte was once ruled by the French House of Savoy, which accounts for the French sound and feel of the local dialect and some of the cooking traditions. The history of this dish is that it was created in the 19th century by the French chef Moisson in honor of the composer and gourmand Gioacchino Rossini. The recipe for this dish is quite simple and only a few ingredients go into it — what makes this dish special and refined is the use of high-quality raw materials. The Rossini fillet is nothing more than a beef fillet, cooked in butter, accompanied by a foie gras escalope, and scented with black truffle and Madeira. While not as tender as we expected, it was tasty, to say the least.

Dessert was probably the most intriguing plate of the meal: Crumble con Crema Pasticcera, Cavolfiore e Tartufo Nero (crumble made with custard, cauliflower, and black truffle). Silvia and I were both impressed and agreed that if we hadn’t seen on the menu that it was made with cauliflower, we’d never have guessed it was one of the ingredients.

For those reading this who are familiar with my articles on nutrition, as I often point out, it’s important — at least for me — to have these occasions where my regular low-carb diet takes a night off. I go into a meal like this knowing full-well it’s not low-carb but also that the next day, I’ll be back on the low-carb train.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and thank you to 1005 of you who inspired me to celebrate!

Hopefully, it contained something you found entertaining.

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