Spaghetti with Bottarga

Pasta cooked risotto-style in an anchovy and garlic oil, finished with cold butter and a shower of grated bottarga — cured, dried tuna roe. The cooking water is deliberately unsalted: the anchovy and bottarga bring all the salt the dish needs.

Untested: I have not cooked this one yet. It is here because the Offal dive needed it, and it is adapted from the source named in the Notes.

Ingredients

• 11 ounces (320 g) spaghettoni
• 3 anchovy fillets, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, peeled

Extra-virgin olive oil

• 1 1/2 ounces (40 g) butter, cold from the freezer, cubed
• 1 1/2 ounces (40 g) tuna bottarga, for grating

Directions

1. Flavour the oil. Warm a few tablespoons of olive oil in a wide pan with the whole garlic clove until it browns. Lower the heat, add the anchovies and let them melt into the oil. Remove the garlic.
2. Cook the pasta in the pan. Add the dry spaghettoni to the pan and cook it like a risotto, adding boiling unsalted water a ladle at a time and stirring, until al dente.
3. Finish. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the cold butter until creamy.
4. Bottarga. Grate in most of the bottarga, toss, and grate the rest over each plate.

Notes

Source Adapted from GialloZafferano, “Spaghetti con la bottarga” (translated).

Bottarga Bottarga is salted, pressed, dried roe — tuna in Sicily, grey mullet in Sardinia and Greece. Mullet bottarga is milder and works here too. Keep it wrapped in the refrigerator, and grate it with a fine rasp.

The Offal dive on the Food site covers this part in depth.