Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [90]
OPTIONAL: a tiny amount of chopped hot red chili pepper, to taste
Recommended pasta Sardinia, it would be malloreddus, a small, gnocchi-shaped pasta made from hard, semolina flour. You can successfully replace malloreddus with spaghettini, thin spaghetti, preferably of high-quality, imported Italian pasta. If you would like to have the sauce with homemade pasta, it would be very good with tonnarelli, the thick, square noodle.
1. Weigh the bottarga roe and cut off 1 ounce of it. Strip away the membrane enveloping it. Use a swiveling-blade peeler to slice it paper thin, then chop it as fine as you are able with a knife. If you hold the tip of the blade down on the cutting board, and rock the knife up and down over the bottarga, you will be able in seconds to grind it down to very fine soft grains. (If you are making more than this recipe calls for, you can use the food processor.)
2. Put the scallions or onion in a small saucepan together with a large pinch of salt and 1½ tablespoons butter. Turn on the heat to medium and cook, stirring from time to time, until the scallions or onion become lightly colored.
3. As soon as the pasta is cooked, drain it and put it in a warm serving bowl together with 1 tablespoon of butter. Add all the contents of the saucepan, toss 2 or 3 times, then add the parsley, the grated lemon peel, the optional chili pepper, and the ground bottarga, and toss again thoroughly to coat the pasta strands with an even distribution of sauce. Serve at once.
Note The chili pepper is, to my mind, unnecessary and competes with the flavor of bottarga. Many people do enjoy it, however, so it is up to you to decide.
Scallop Sauce with Olive Oil, Garlic, and Hot Pepper
THE SMALLEST—and perhaps the tastiest—of several varieties of scallop found in Italian waters is called canestrelli, smaller, when shelled, than the nail of a child’s little finger. When fresh, North American scallops are exceptionally good too, particularly the sweet ones known as bay scallops, but they are larger than canestrelli, and should be cut up so that, like canestrelli, there will be more little pieces available to carry the seasoning.
For 6 servings
1 pound fresh bay OR deep sea scallops
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon garlic chopped very fine
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
Chopped hot red chili pepper, to taste
Salt
1 to 1½ pounds pasta
½ cup dry, unflavored bread crumbs, lightly toasted in the oven or in a skillet
Recommended pasta As in so many other seafood sauces, spaghettini, thin spaghetti, is the most congenial shape, but spaghetti is an equally valid choice.
1. Wash the scallops in cold water, pat thoroughly dry with a cloth towel, and cut up into pieces about ⅜ inch thick.
2. Put the olive oil and garlic in a saucepan, turn on the heat to medium, and cook, stirring, until the garlic becomes colored a light gold. Add the parsley and hot pepper. Stir once or twice, then add the scallops and one or two large pinches of salt. Turn the heat up to high, and cook for about 1½ minutes, stirring frequently, until the scallops lose their shine and turn a flat white. Do not overcook the scallops or they will become tough. Taste and correct for salt and hot pepper. If the scallops should shed a lot of liquid, remove them from the pan with a slotted spoon, and boil down the watery juices. Return the scallops to the pan, turn them over quickly, then turn off the heat.
3. Toss thoroughly with cooked drained spaghettini, add the bread crumbs, toss again, and serve at once.
Fish Sauce
THIS SAUCE is based on the observation that the sweetest, most flavorful morsels in a fish are trapped within its head and that all that stands in the way of one’s enjoyment of that savory meat is the bony matter that surrounds it. When the heads are mashed through a food mill, all their flavor is extracted, and the pesky, little bones are left behind. It’s the same technique used to heighten the flavor of fish soup.
Most markets dealing in whole, fresh fish have available the heads they usually take off when preparing