No Salsa Tartufata listed. And then Jamila went to an Italian wedding in Tuscany while vacationing at home in Belgium and brought us back a jar of Tartufitalia Salsa Tartufata (Mushroom and Truffle Sauce). It workedwe bought some chopped black truffle concoction and a small jar of white truffle oil. Bob bought a little 50 cent truffle recipe book The 100 Best Truffle Recipes in Rome. We went a few times and loved the truffle dishes, especially the fettuccine. Daniela liked hers, we loved ours. Loaded with fresh semolina bread and fettuccine from our trusted supplier Carlino's, we were confronted by a temporary infant lactose intolerance preventing Daniela from touching milk products (no cream, no cheese), so we divided the tartufo sauce into her portion and the rest, and used lactose reduced milk for hers. And in our kitchen prepared the sauce for fresh fettuccine as explained to her. 2. Called tartufo in Italian, this is also the name for a delicious chocolate ice cream dessert best tasted in Bar Tre Scalini in Rome's most famous tourist square Piazza Navona, so named because it is a small pleasure treasure like the real thing. We called up the US importer for exactly what our empty jar of memories (and crucial search strings) used to hold.

Truffles made their way onto the best seller list with delightful passages from Under the Tuscan Sun and The Hills of Tuscany, fairy tales for truffes et nos champignons séchés Americans dreaming of living as foreigners in rural Italy. They bought some ugly black truffles from their trusted supplier for pasta, but alas, there are no guarantees with these uncivilizable funghi, this batch was a dud. Meanwhile there was no pot large enough to do the whole 1.5 lbs of fettuccine at once, so bob got the brilliant idea of draining the boiling water into a smaller pot for the remnants and finishing them off in a second shot. Slender asparagus was on sale so we got 2 lbs and did it up with 3 pressed cloves of garlic and the juice of one lemon to go with the pasta. The caviar of the forest with matching price tag. Since bob is notoriously without wheels in Rome, it is a rare occasion that he finds himself at the Metro out in the burbs, their equivalent of Costco or B.J.'s, the big wholesaler shopper's clubs requiring an annual membership. The best aged parmigiano reggiano at half the airport duty free prices, okay duty free is a rip-off even compared to the regular stores and supermarkets, but this was still a good deal at the Metro.

Mostly just adding cream to the jar in our favorite 4 qt chef's pan and then mixing with the pasta and parmigiano when ready. 4. We tried this for Valentine's Day 2000, the date of Jamila's e-mail reply, but at the last minute had to go with the imported Italian dried fettuccine since our Monday fresh pasta source only had penne. Both were very tasty, but the fettuccine clearly had too much creamtypical in American Italian restaurants. 1. Made in San Anatolia di Narco, Umbria, Italy, imported by Urbani USA, relatives of the Italian company which bills itself as the world leader in truffle production, guide ultime des truffes not yet on their web product list but available for immediate shipping. But we bought a few jars of mushroom-truffle spread that kept our truffle dreams alive back in philly, at least for a while. We used a little over a cup of heavy cream for the pound plus pasta for the rest of us and combined our parmigiano after tossing our pasta and sauce. 4. ADD AROUND HALF CUP OF CREAM AND THE PARMIGIANO.

We waited to add the parmigiano just before combining with the al dente pasta in the chef's pan. And mom and pop Sark, with paul. And only quarts of heavy cream were on the shelf at our two Main Line food stops so we went with light cream (quarts?---this stuff is laden with fat!). Pasta with truffle sauce. Then the Philly Book and the Cook Fair supplied us with a free sample of pasta with truffle sauce, yum! It seemed simple enough, butter, cream, parmigiano, the black truffle jar, bingo! 3. ADD THE TARTUFATA. 5. ADD SALT AND PEPPER. It needs fresh fettuccine and just enough cream. But our version in comparison really needs more, so our original guess at 1/2 c has been "kicked up a notch" to a range of 3/4 to 1 c, depending on ones fear of fat. We'd vaguely been aware of truffles before but they remained only an abstraction until that moment. 15 bucks a pop, not cheap, but for truffles, reasonable for special occasions. But when we did it, it just wasn't the same. Besides, how do rank amateurs figure out how to make a dish that measures up to the heavy reputation it carries.