Zadar Carbonara - Zadar Black Truffle in Good Sea Company

It is similar, but not identical, to the famous truffle from the French province of Périgord. That is why Matak called this type of expensive underground mushroom Zadar Truffle and that is also the name of the Matak family farm.

A Unique Cherry Liqueur with Truffle Aroma - "Uzorita"

Naturally, in his long walks Matak finds other types of truffles, such as a summer black and a much rarer, expensive white truffle, as well as other mushrooms, so today the Matak family farm offers about 40 different truffle-based delicacies. In addition to whole truffles on the market, either in specialty stores and restaurants, the Matak brand offers olive oils with truffles aroma, spreads and creams, truffles in combination with other mushrooms such as porcini, then tartufata, which is very popular in catering, produced according to their own secret recipe, and even dry venison sausage with the smell of truffles, and an exclusive drink - maraschino cherry liqueur with truffles aroma called "Uzorita". For liqueur lovers, but also for everyone else, this drink is an extraordinary new experience.

Needless to say, truffles had been growing discreetly in Zadar region even before Ivica Matak returned to his city, after living in Pula for several years due to work. In Istria is where he gained his first knowledge about truffles and how to hunt for them. There is evidence of a truffle hunt in this part of Croatia in archival records several centuries old, and the daily newspaper "Jutarnji list" reported in 1999 of a large black truffle discovery in Maslenica  near Zadar. The accidental finder determined only later that it was an expensive mushroom. And the story that truffles were found by goats in Bukovica, a rocky part of Zadar hinterland, sounds anecdotal, but their shepherds could not figure out for a long time why their doelings were rummaging through the ground, because it is not in their nature.

Of course, it is not known whether there have been secret, unknown hunters for this black gastronomic gold in recent times. Nonetheless, Ivica Matak was the first to register his business and create the Zadar Truffle brand, and today he supplies Zadar restaurants with truffles and his other products.

Zadar Sea Carbonara Sprinkled with Black Truffles

One of the highest quality restaurants in Zadar, Seafood Restaurant "Foša", uses Zadar Truffles often and abundantly in a number of their dishes and in several variants of tasting menus. "Foša" is a restaurant of a long and glorious past, located in the port of the same name in Bedem, a defensive wall around the old part of Zadar from the 16^th century. Today, "Foša" is a place of fine dining pleasures for lovers of high standards in gastronomy, where a young chef, Saša Began, combines the culinary tradition of Zadar and the Mediterranean with modern trends in gastronomy in his creations. "Foša" is a member of the respectable international association "Jeunes Restaurateurs", and in recent years it has been regularly recommended on Michelin lists and put at the very top of all lists of best Croatian restaurants.

Saša Began uses the black Zadar truffle in a unique dish that he created by combining several original ingredients from Zadar region in a simple and fast way. He named the dish Zadar Carbonara because the method of preparation is very similar to the original Italian carbonara, but the ingredients are completely different. Chef Began created Zadar Carbonara from sea bass roe from the sea around Zadar, local extra virgin olive oil, hard sheep cheese from the island of Pag, white maraština wine by the "Fiolić" winery from Zadar, and an unusual and original product - smoked mussels.

This delicacy is prepared according to a secret recipe by the company "Adriatic Shell" from Ljubač near Zadar, from mussels from its own farm. The owner of this company, Marko Dušević, is also a passionate winemaker, and in addition to the aforementioned unique mussels, he also branded his own wine "Coral Wine", which is special because it ages deep in the sea for months, right at the bottom, where the bottles get naturally decorated with corals. Dušević provides this service to other winemakers, so smaller bottle quantities of the "Fiolić" winery age this way.

Anyway, chef Began starts the preparation of his Zadar Carbonara with smoked mussels by shortly aromatizing olive oil with two or three cloves of garlic. When he takes out the garlic, he adds sea bass roe to the oil, heats it very briefly and pours about two decilitres of maraština by Fiolić. He then adds about 25 dkg of already cooked spaghetti, then two or three tablespoons of smoked mussels, just enough to heat up and release the aroma into the spaghetti, and when he takes the pan off the heat, he sprinkles the dish generously with pepper and hard sheep cheese. Of course, when the dish is already on the plate, the final touch is a large amount of grated Zadar truffle by Ivica Matak.

The result is a "crazy" and unique combination of sea flavour, intense Zadar truffle, Pag cheese with approximately the same intensity of taste and smell, as well as smoke, owing to the top-quality Adriatic mussels. Such a simple and striking dish should be doused with a glass of serious wine – maraština by Fiolić, aged for four years using the sur lie technique.