Ricardo Pina wins the Laumont Prize for the best black truffle recipe of 2023

Ricardo Pina, from Lillas Pastia restaurant in Huesca won the first prize of €3,000 in cash and a 20% discount on Laumont products in the Laumont professional shop.

" Fake calçot onion with orange caramel and doubled truffled cream". This is the recipe that has been chosen as the year's best black truffle recipe in the first edition of the Laumont prize, which is being held this Sunday (5th february) in Vic as part of Trufforum, an event that promotes the black truffle as a key food in the country's gastronomic panorama.

Out of a total of 40 proposals from different chefs from all over Spain, three recipes were selected to participate in the final phase. Miquel Vila of the Baena restaurant in Canovelles, Ricardo Pina of the Lillas Pastia restaurant in Huesca and Lucía Campos of the Cancook restaurant in Zaragoza competed for the first prize of €3,000. The prize was won by the chef of the Lillas Pastia restaurant, thanks to his recipe "Fake calçot onion with orange caramel and doubled truffled cream".

The first edition of this competition was very positively appreciated by Laumont, a leading company in the distribution of truffles in Spain and organizer of the competition. Miquel Ramon, Head of Communications at Laumont, said: “As this was the first edition, we did not know how it would be received and we were surprised by the number of proposals we received and by their level. For the final alone, two Michelin-starred restaurants competed, and some were screened out.»

The prize was awarded by a distinguished jury: David Seijas, a sommelier with a renowned career who worked for years at the El Bulli restaurant; Josep Sucarrats, a food journalist who worked as director of Cuina magazine for fifteen years; and Fermí Puig, considered to be one of the most important chefs in Catalan cuisine and chef of the Fermí Puig restaurant.

The jury appreciated the creativity of the three participants, who made very innovative and unusual uses of the truffle, without losing the coherence and combination of foods required for a product as gourmet as the black truffle. David Seijas concluded that "it was a very difficult decision, but in the end, we opted for the false Welsh onion because it is a masterful combination of a seasonal product in all its glory, the Welsh onion, and the black truffle".  One of the few recipe requirements were that it should contain fresh black truffle and canned Laumont black truffle.

With this event, Laumont hopes to fulfil one of the company's main objectives: to stimulate the use and knowledge of truffles in the catering sector. Catalonia and Aragon are two key regions on the world gastronomic scene and the fact that they are truffle-producing regions with some of the best restaurants in the world should be a decisive factor in making the black truffle an even more important product in our restaurants in the coming years.