Bottarga

Dried and salted tuna or mullet roe. This is what bottarga is… nothing fun to look at but a whole other story to taste.  It’s a typical ingredient from Sardinia, the huge Italian island famous for the colour of its seas, the stubborn attitude of its inhabitants, the roasted suckling pig and the amazing MIRTO liquor made from myrtle berries and leaves.

I like to use the original mullet bottarga, given Tuna is overfished and I have stopped eating its meat and all other bits. Because of its strong taste, every bottarga based dish , in my opinion, needs to be kept as basic as possible. Its taste is so strong that I can dare defining it “the truffle of the sea”.  It is generally eaten on spaghetti, tonnarelli or lingune, however I also like it with paccheri.

In my view it is murderous to use bottarga in a pasta sauce that contains tomato. I sometimes see this association in restaurants outside Italy, and it makes me cringe.  I am afraid to say that this was also the case in Otto, Mario Batali little child in NYC. I have never liked the food there, but having ordered spaghetti alla bottarga once, I specifically asked the waiter whether they also contained tomato sauce. He looked at me in some patronising way, saying that of course, they did not.  He was wrong. The spaghetti were terrible.

When I (very rarely) buy bottarga, I keep it very simple. I sautee the olive oil, let some thinly cut zucchini cook in it for 10 minutes, add the pasta, and grate a great deal of the golden stuff on them, sometimes adding some lemon. Easy…. Summery…. Quick. Otherwise just grated over pasta with olive oil.

You can find bottarga in New York at The Lobster Place, (in Chelsea Market or Bleecker Street); BuonItalia, and Zabar. Otherwise online.