Jakarta’s hottest new Italian restaurant, GAIA, brought the capitol’s epicureans to ecstasy with a sublime White Truffle dinner courtesy of Chef Diego Chiarini.
White truffles are one of the most prized ingredients in the culinary world, even rarer and more expensive than the black variety. Although the scent of white truffle is strong, the taste it imparts is refined, complex and subtle. It requires great finesse and precision to create dishes that utilize them to their utmost. It is exactly that kind of culinary craftsmanship that Chef Diego Chiarini displayed on the menu of his recent White Truffle Dinner at GAIA restaurant in Jakarta.
Chef Diego is an innovative Italian chef known for creating dishes that are equal parts elegant and rustic. After charming an audience full of guests during a cooking demonstration in the afternoon, the boisterous chef headed towards the back of the house to prepare for the night’s feast. His finesse in the kitchen was on full display at the dinner event, which featured four sublime dishes that emphasized different aspects of both white and black truffle.
The starter for this opulent meal consisted of thinly sliced kingfish. The tender, delicate fish was lightly grilled over an open fire and marinated in white truffle, lending an earthy richness to the buttery fish.
The pasta course that followed was a definite highlight of the night. It consisted of a single large raviolo filled with ricotta cheese and an egg yolk, bathed in a black truffle sauce. Egg yolk is considered by many chefs to be nature’s most perfect sauce, and its richness was a brilliant complement to the moreish truffles.
The fish course that followed featured fresh scallops, pan-fried with a golden brown crust and accentuated by sauce made from its own juices. Shavings of white truffles were again used to marry the scallops to rounds of delicately dense rounds of white radish. The elegance of this dish contrasted with the boldness of the following meat course: a portion of wagyu rib meat, made meltingly tender through four hours of roasting and intensely flavourful thanks to a combination of bitter ground coffee and earthy black truffles.
Some might be surprised to learn that white truffles were also made an integral part of the dessert: a creamy frozen parfait topped with white chocolate and glamorous gold dust. It’s a testament to the versatility of white truffles, and Chef Diego’s impressive skills, that the sweetness of this dessert was able to work with and even enhance the pungent fragrance of the mushroom.
Even if you missed out on this spectacular dinner, don’t worry. GAIA, as well as the other restaurants in the Altitude Complex, has already become well known for its frequent and fantastic gourmet events. Check their website www.altitude.co.id and their social media sites on Facebook and Twitter to find out what culinary occasion they’re cooking up next. And be sure to read our exclusive interview with Chef Diego on page 26.
(www.altitude.co.id)
