FOOD NEWS
The Simple And Unique Pasta Dish Anthony Bourdain Called Absolutely Perfect
BY Autumn Swiers
In a "No Reservations" episode, Anthony Bourdain and his wife visited her hometown of Sardinia, an island off the coast of mainland Italy, where they ate spaghetti con la bottarga.
As Bourdain said of the bottarga-centric pasta dish, one of his favorites, "It's a perfect dish. This is absolutely perfect. Just extraordinary. So simple, so beautiful, so good."
Intensely umami-forward but not overly fishy, bottarga is salt-cured fish roe sacs. The sac is carefully removed from the fish and then left to cure for as long as several months.
As it cures, the sac dries, yielding a toothy, chewy, aged-textured bottarga you can slice or grate. Note that bottarga's laborious production and rarity make it quite pricey.
Spaghetti con la bottarga uses both slices and sprinklings of bottarga. Bourdain loved the dish so much that he even included a recipe for it in his "Appetites: A Cookbook."