pasta again? i know. i need an intervention. or not. so i heard of bottarga one day, and then i heard of it again. and then i bought some from zingerman’s in a dried powder form where it is somewhat unfairly billed as ‘caviar for pasta lovers’. you can see how i might have gotten sucked in. but this stuff was as similar to caviar as i am to pamela anderson, being that we are both female…
(for the record - i totally stole this anology from the ’restaurant widow’s’ post of nearly 3 years ago where upon a visit to french laundry, she compares a caesar salad as one might know it, to keller’s ‘caesar’ where he used bottarga…)
anyway, as a newbie to bottarga, i liked the powdered stuff ok. but then i saw another version at market hall foods - this time in cake form. and then, being that this is a pricey product, i asked in a past post if anyone wanted to go in on some with me and i got a taker. and then i ordered it. and while it was making its way east i researched the stuff and i’ll be damned if there’s not a bottarga.net AND of all things a bottargaclub.com. and although it is still somewhat unclear how one becomes an actual member, this amused the hell outa me because one of my fave bloggers had the same experience with squab and squab.com.
and then the takers, who weren’t really takers at all - more givers, showed up with a great bottle of chianti that they’d actually bought in tuscany this past summer. and we cooked. just minutes before we were nearly strangers in a strange cyber land and then there they were in my kitchen, chris and lisa - slicing and dicing. it was a blind blog hook-up without the sex. now it didn’t look anything like this as we’d hoped… this is the ultimate beautiful bottarga post from fx cuisine. this is the reason to go the extra mile and to not take dried up brown bottarga for an answer. no siree!
our bottarga was kinda ummm, different. it wasn’t bad. but it was kinda ummmmm, not amazing?
as you can see, our piece seemed extra super dried with no trace of the glistening orange eggs. i even called market hall who kindly offered me a refund. but i said that i was sincerely going for the full-on bottarga experience - not so much for my money back. so we decided to give it another try and they’re hand picking me a piece and shipping it on monday. but it may just be the way ‘ittica d’or’ does their bottarga. either way, i am officially on a bottarga mission and try if you like you can’t stop me. no one can.
now in case you’re wondering, bottarga is either a dried mullet roe sac (sardenia) or a dried tuna roe sac (sicily). there seem to be two ways of serving this fishy, salty delicacy and that’s either sliced paper thin with lemon, or shredded on pasta. i opted for the latter because well, it’s pasta. and i love pasta more than carol loves bacon. i think. if nothing else the debate would be interesting but she’d probably kick my ass being the incredibly smart, witty and accomplished woman that she is.
but anyway, i love pasta. there you have it. we used garlic to flavor the oil, lemon rind, chili’s and parsley. and then we grated the bottarga liberally. it was nice. but you see, therein lies the problem. that whole nice thing is just never quite enough. for me…
so we had some bruschetta, drank wine and ate our pasta while telling stories as a means of introducing ourselves. and we learned about our bottarga together. bottarga 101. the intermediate class is being scheduled soon. that would be bottarga 201.
14 responses so far ↓
1 muffintop // Oct 11, 2007 at 4:22 pm
You wanted to be Blown. A. Way.
You weren’t. I hope it was nice, even though.
I wouldn’t expect to be B.A.W. by, oh, fish sauce or even anchovy paste, just for example. Though I like them.
I’m jealous of your experiment (I must do some ordering of my own), and sorry it was… lax.
2 CeeElCee // Oct 11, 2007 at 10:19 pm
While the bottarga was transcendent, the whole experience of the meal was. Sign me up for Bottarga 201. Where do I matriculate? Will it make me go blind?
3 Maffy // Oct 12, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Looks like the bottargaclub.com has the kind you were expecting, so you may need a Bottarga 301! Their website is not easy to navigate for purchasing on line, since I would start with just the pequeno, but we’ll see what happens. Right now I’m in “fret” mode after a 2-week trip to tuscany where my fiance went through a chef’s course, and I ate each day’s “assignments” - YUM!
4 claudia // Oct 12, 2007 at 12:31 pm
maffy - what’s the pequeno? and yes, i have a feeling i may be ordering again from another source. but we shall see! but hey, enough of me. tuscany? a chef fiance? oh do tell me more…
5 claudia // Oct 13, 2007 at 10:51 am
muffin! hooray! it’s youuuuuu!
as for me and my bottarga… i have not yet begun to master this…
6 Amy // Oct 13, 2007 at 12:13 pm
I’m so glad you posted this when you did. Last weekend I had a bunch of euros left and some time to kill in the Malpensa airport, so I picked up some items from the Peck duty-free area. Grated bottarga was one of them, and just like you, I found it fine but a little eh. I’ll wait to buy the compressed stuff after reading your master class post!
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8 Klinde // Oct 15, 2007 at 6:17 pm
I am so jealous of Smiley!!
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