Truffle season in Western Australia runs June to August, and the fastest way to taste it on a Tuesday night is a bottle of Margaret River Truffle Farm truffle oil. Real truffle character from down south, no truffle-market queue, and dinner in a quarter of an hour. This is the bottle we send home with anyone who asks how to cook with truffle without remortgaging.

The base is a brown-butter and parmesan emulsion — three pantry ingredients and a mug of pasta water pretending to be a sauce. It’s the technique the truffle farm uses under its marron ravioli, simplified for a weeknight. Brown butter is the quiet genius of the dish — sixty seconds past melted, it turns nutty and toasty and tastes like considerably more work than it is.

One rule, and it is the whole recipe: truffle oil never touches heat. Heat flattens the aroma. The oil goes in off the stove, at the end, always. Get that one thing right and the kitchen smells like a Margaret River cellar door in July.

What you need

400 g spaghetti or tagliolini
60 g butter
60 g parmesan, finely grated, plus extra to serve
2 tsp truffle oil
Truffle salt and black pepper

Method

Cook the pasta in well-salted water, one minute short of the packet time.
Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large pan over medium heat and let it go quietly nutty and flecked with brown. Take it off the heat.
Reserve a mug of pasta water, then drain.
Toss the pasta into the brown butter with a good splash of pasta water and the parmesan, tossing until it turns into a glossy sauce that clings — the starch in that water is what binds it, so don’t skip the mug.
Off the heat, add the truffle oil and toss once more.
Plate, then finish with truffle salt, black pepper and the extra parmesan.

If the 100 ml bottle keeps disappearing — it will — the 250 ml is the economist’s choice, and the rest of the truffle pantry deserves a slow browse while the season lasts. Winter is short; the pasta is fifteen minutes. The maths does itself.