Someone said I had to try bottarga, a Sicilian and Sardinian delicacy of cured fish roe pressed into a brick.
So I went to Pegna, the fancy grocery store hidden in an alley near the Duomo of Florence, seeking my salty gold.
It’s expensive.
I followed a random recipe from the Internet.
…and it was awful.
It turned out it was just me… or my recipe, or maybe my bottarga. Some time later I’d have lunch with B and friends of hers at their farmhouse in the hills. The couple, an American woman and Italian man, bought the farmhouse decades ago, back when they were relatively cheap, and have spent the time since making it comfortable – electrifying, sewing an enormous edible garden. And we all went into the garden, spreading out, clipping what we wanted for lunch. S made a meal of it, along with bottarga pasta, which in his hands was amazing – deep and salty like anchovy, but done delicately, letting the pasta and olive oil speak (olive oil production being their trade).