Spaghettini With Bottarga and Colatura
In the Middle Ages, monks on Italy’s Amalfi Coast were tasked with preserving anchovies, the local catch. They discovered that the amber liquid exuded by the aging fish — colatura di alici, literally “anchovy drippings” — could be used as a briny seasoning. Nodding to this tradition, the chef Diego Rossi, at the acclaimed trattoria Trippa in Milan, unites colatura and bottarga di muggine (cured gray mullet roe) in a pasta that is powerfully marine. The sauce isn’t cooked: Instead, he lets the ingredients — bottarga, yellow tomato sauce, colatura, basil, garlic, lemon and chile — melt among the strands of hot spaghettini. The sweetness of the tomato tempers the bitterness of the bottarga. (It’s best to make the pasta in single servings, to control that bitterness, and to eat it immediately.) The umami is everywhere, in the bottarga, the tomato, and, delicate yet insistent, the colatura, calling back to a remembered sea. Ligaya Mishan
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