Pasta with Ancient Caviar, Please

if it's not from 600 BC, I don't want it

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Hello to all of my sea creatures!

You already know I love my vongole, my fresh tomato sauces, and my pestos, too. But nothing captures the full breadth and simplicity of a summer pasta like salted and dehydrated grey mullet roe. Right??

For real though. Fresh fish is great and everything, but depending on where you live or where you shop, acquiring it can be dicey, just like in the olden-olden days, when the people who lived in Byzantium were trying to figure out how to keep food from going bad without refrigerators.

We have those industrious folks and preservation-minded cooks from places throughout the mediterranean, China, Japan, and Korea to thank for the dried fish roe sacs we’re still eating today. The Italians call this bottarga, and that’s the first and last time I use the word “sac” in this newsletter.

Methods for making bottarga vary from place to place, but the key steps are salting and drying the roe, which transforms it into a firm and shelf-stable product that can be sliced, chopped, or grated. Kind of like cheese! As with cheese, it’s best to buy it whole and put a knife to it at home.

I was inspired to write this recipe after my mom, Carole, cooked spaghetti with bottarga for me and my dad a few weeks ago in lieu of the usual Lalli Family’s Spaghetti with Clams. Even she couldn’t put her hands on acceptable littlenecks! The methods for the two sauces are incredibly similar and couldn’t be easier—essentially variations on aglio e olio.

Carole dishing up her Friday-night bottarga. And yes, she did use that adorable little pitcher for her pasta water.

Carole’s take was fantastic. The main intervention I made when working this version up at home was to add some lemony breadcrumbs for their texture and aroma, and to squeeze some some lemon juice into the sauce, for brightness.

Getting your hands on bottarga can be a little tricky: if your fish shop doesn’t have it, try an Italian grocer, or just order it online. It offers all the convenience of jarred or tinned fish—unlike fresh seafood, it never goes bad, can be stored in the pantry, and it’s there for you when the craving hits.

What’d you think it was going to look like???

A lot of bottarga is made in Sardinia, a place I’ve never been. A lack of experience has never stopped me from channeling the vibe, so let’s go. Hot dry nights, seaweed-stained fishing boats, women wearing a lot of silver jewelry, stray tabby cats sunning their bellies on stone windowsills. (I’m making this up, but I’m into it.)

Then there’s you (or me), freshly showered, bedecked in white linen, a smattering of freckles visible across the bridge of the nose, thanks to a day spent by the pool or hiking ruins, or whatever.

The pasta that comes to the table—expertly made by somebody’s mom—smells of lemon trees, fruity olive oil, toasted garlic and, um, dehydrated grey mullet roe. In a good way!

You twirl your pasta, you sip a fridge-cold Vermentino, you laugh, you sing, you sigh, you recline. It’s a good dinner. The best part is knowing that life for you is a lot better than it was for those Byzantiumians. I don’t think those guys even had running water!

xoCLM

P.S.

I rounded up the ingredients and tools needed to make this recipe, including my favorite pasta pot, the bronze-die spaghetti I love, a perfect straight-sided skillet for making the sauce, and a source for the bottarga, among other things. Everything can be found here.

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The (new, previously unpublished) recipe for Spaghetti with Bottarga and Breadcrumbs is posted below for paid subscribers. Thank you for supporting my work! This newsletter would not exist without you.