There are two kinds of bottarga, which is the salted, pressed and sun-dried roe of either grey mullet (muggine) or tuna (tonno). You should be able to find it in 50g or 100g blocks in good Italian delicatessens. Most of it comes from Sardegna and, since it is such a regional speciality, many Italians have never eaten it – my father never tasted it in his life, until I served it to him. Nowadays it has become something of a luxury, but I guess originally it was just another way for the fishermen to feed their families. They fished the grey mullet or tuna, cleaned them, took out the egg sac, sold the fish and then salted and dried the roe to eat at home.
If you visit the south of Sardegna they will tell you, categorically, that the amber-coloured grey mullet bottarga is best – partly because it is more rare, and because it takes two mullet to make one baffa (the commercial unit), whereas tuna are much bigger and the roe much more plentiful. Also, when the grey mullet roe is completely dry it becomes powdery, with a texture similar to Parmesan, and less powerful and salty-tasting. In other parts of the island and in Sicilia, though, they will insist that the tuna bottarga (which looks dark browny-grey and is slightly saltier and stronger and richer-tasting) is best.
Personally, I can’t say I like one better than the other; I love them both. For me, the best time to buy bottarga is in the spring; it is made all year round but early in the year the flavour is fantastic and the colour of the grey mullet roe is a brilliant yellow-orange. When the new batches of spring bottarga come into the kitchen, I have to stop myself just sitting there, slicing it and eating it then and there – it is beautiful on toasted bread, with some quite strong olive oil (as with Parmesan, never buy bottarga ready-grated, as all the flavour will be lost. Buy it in a piece and grate it yourself just before you need it). It is a curious flavour, a little like caviar, that opens up in your mouth and then you are hooked.
In Sardegna, grey mullet bottarga is usually served sliced, as part of the antipasti, with lots of olive oil and lemon juice. In Cagliari, in the south of the island, they serve it in a very purist way, just shaved, like a truffle, over pasta, with only a knob of butter and some pepper (no salt as the bottarga is salty enough). Butter seems to help the flavour of the bottarga, though it can also make it a little heavy, and because it has such a high fat content it needs plenty of seasoning with pepper or lemon juice – or something fresh like shavings of fennel – to cut through it.
Tuna bottarga is also produced in Sicilia, where you will sometimes find it served in a pasta sauce made with olive oil, chilli, garlic and parsley. Either way, it is an acquired taste, with such an intense flavour that when you serve it as a starter you set a very high note at the beginning of the meal, which you have to follow with powerful flavours.
Insalata di ravanelli e bottarga di muggine Grey mullet roe and radish salad
Near to our house in London is a small Sardinian restaurant, a family affair, very local, offering simple things – the kind of place I used to know when I was growing up. We would often take Margherita there for a pizza, and the owner, who is also the chef, would always bring us out a plate of beautiful bottarga with carasau, the famous crisp bread of Sardegna. After a while, I got talking to him, and he told me he brings in the bottarga himself from Sardegna, where his brother still lives. So we started to buy some from him. I liked the way he served just a little of it before the meal, with a drink, and so we began experimenting with something you could serve to people in a Chinese spoon – one mouthful of flavour. In spring, when I believe the bottarga to be at its best, English radishes are also in season, and the two are just brilliant together. There is something about the heat that comes at the end of the radish that complements the salty bottarga experience, which carries on in your nose and mouth in the same way as that of truffles. Remember, though, that the radish and celery need only to be very lightly seasoned with lemon juice, as the bottarga is very salty.
As a variation, instead of the radish (which incidentally in my region of Lombardia we call rapanelli, not ravanelli), we often serve the bottarga grated over a salad made with two large fennel bulbs, sliced thinly, seasoned lightly and tossed with the lemon juice and half the olive oil. Then we deseed and quarter two tomatoes, again lightly season them, and arrange them in the centre of each plate. We mix the fennel with a bunch of chives, cut into batons, and pile it on top, scatter over 50g grated bottarga, and drizzle with the rest of the oil. Or sometimes we do it in exactly the same way, but with green beans instead of the fennel. Just blanch the beans for a minute or so in boiling water, then drain and refresh under cold running water.
24 radishes
2 celery stalks
juice of 2 lemons
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus a little extra for drizzling
50g bottarga
salt and pepper
Thinly slice the radishes, using a mandoline or knife, then cut into matchsticks and put in a bowl. Cut the celery into similarly sized strips and add to the radishes. Toss with the lemon juice and half the olive oil.
Make a mound of radish and celery on each plate and finely slice or grate the bottarga on top.
Season with black pepper and drizzle with the rest of the olive oil.
‘The voice of the people’
I am a great believer in the idea that – as much as art or literature or poetry – cured meats are truly representative of the cultural background of society; they are the voice of the people, and have been over hundreds of years. You have to remember that Italy was traditionally an agricultural country; so at one time most families would have kept a pig and used every part of it. In our region a typical dish was cazzola, made with a whole pig’s head, trotters and ribs, and Savoy cabbage. What wasn’t eaten fresh would be cured to feed the family for the next year. In every larder there would have been hams and salame hanging from hooks in the ceiling, each representing the taste, produce and microclimate – the real rural roots – of a particular community. In some villages, on the feast of St Anthony Abate, they still run a lottery to win a pig which runs around the village for a year before being slaughtered to feed the winning family.
In the Northeast around Trentino-Alto Adige, where it is more rainy and often cold, you are not going to cure anything in salt alone as easily as in Parma, so you tend to have salumi that is also lightly smoked, such as speck (smoked prosciutto). Or you first marinate the meat in wine to speed the curing process, as in bresaola, the speciality of Valtellina, in my region of Lombardia. Though the majority of salumi is made with pork, in Northern Lombardia we have more cattle than pigs, so the bresaola is made with beef, first marinated in red wine, and then air-dried. Sometimes, too, they make bresaola with horse meat or venison. And in the mountains, the leg of a kid goat is often cured, like a ham (violino di capra), or made into salami.
In Colonnata in the mountains above Carrara in the Northwest of Toscana, they traditionally make lardo, which is hard pig fat from under the skin of the animal’s back, covered with salt, garlic, peppercorns, spices and herbs like rosemary, then matured in a closed container for six months, so that the oils in the seasoning impregnate the snowy white fat. (In ancient times, it