Blessed are the bottarga. Bottarga is mullet or tuna roe, cured with salt and air-dried, and in my top-5 favorite ingredients. It’s BIG in Sicily and I think there’s also a decent Bottarga scene in Florida where the mullet run wild like the Salmon of Capistrano.
One of the reasons I’m writing this blog post, dear reader, is because it’s surprisingly hard to find a good recipe for bottarga. Using this recipe as a starting point, I covered the roes in kosher salt for 3 days, then a quick rinse and up they went to hang in the garage for 2+ weeks. Then I smoked them in the Weber at 225 degrees over applewood for about 3 hours.
