Salsa Vegetariana (Vegetable Truffle Sauce)

The hunter's own jar: mushrooms carrying summer truffle, made vegetarian.

Salsa del tartufaio means the truffle hunter's sauce, and this is the jar the house is built on. The Savinis have hunted around San Miniato since the 1920s — Giuseppe with his dog, his son Zelindo full-time, Luciano who first cooked the finds into jars, Cristiano who leads today. The kitchen side of the family began with this sauce.

It is a fine paste of mushrooms carrying summer truffle through it, and the version Casa brings in is the vegetarian one.

Warm it gently — never boil it — with a spoonful of pasta water and a knob of butter, and it coats a bowl of spaghetti in the time the pasta takes. Spread it warm on crostini before dinner. Stir a spoonful into a risotto off the heat, or fold it through mashed potatoes.

Once open it lives in the fridge, under a film of oil, and rarely lives long.

Meet the House: Four generations of Tuscan truffle hunters. The family who unearthed the largest white truffle in history.

Complete your table: Spaghetti, Mancini — the ten-minute truffle pasta · Peranzana Extra Virgin, Muraglia — loosens the jar into a sauce · White Truffle Oil, Savini — a few drops on top doubles it.