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Martha Stewart’s palate is expansive. While the lifestyle mogul enjoys cheap eats like hot dogs at NYC institution Papaya King and her mom’s homemade pierogis (her favorite comfort food), she also has a taste for the finer things in life. One of her favorite foods is fish tartare with caviar, after all. So, it comes as no surprise that one of her must-eat pasta dishes is topped with bottarga, a Mediterranean delicacy.
In an Instagram post that showed her whipping up the recipe for her show, the culinary guru explained that she first tried bottarga during a visit to the Italian island of Sardinia. Bottarga is basically the Mediterranean’s version of caviar. Specifically, it’s the extracted roe sac of a fish, typically from grey mullet or tuna, that is preserved via salting, pressing, and drying. Produced predominantly in Sardinia and other Mediterranean coastal regions, bottarga has a punchy, salty taste and looks somewhat like sausage thanks to its shape and its golden brown hue. You can purchase the high-end ingredient from specialty food stores in person or online, such as Supreme Bottarga Store’s “Sardinian Gold” bottarga. It is typically eaten in thin slices along with toasted bread or grated over pasta dishes, just like Stewart does.
Other ingredients that make Martha Stewart’s bucatini with bottarga so special
The sauce for this decadent pasta dish involves combining olive oil with pungent cloves of garlic, briny capers, and unexpectedly, golden raisins. The latter, which Ina Garten enjoys in her favorite oatmeal breakfast, are sweeter and softer than regular raisins. As such, the dried fruit likely serves as a nice contrast to the aforementioned savory ingredients. The recipe also calls for the diced peel of a Moroccan preserved lemon that has been pickled in salt and its own juice for weeks.
Once you have all those components in your pan, you’ll want to grab some chicken broth, lemon juice, and a full stick of butter. Legendary chef Julia Child, who never shied away from using plenty of butter in her cooking, would surely approve. Another unique ingredient that Stewart adds to the sauce is Aleppo pepper, a crushed chili pepper that gets its name from the city of Aleppo in Syria. The dish is then topped with breadcrumbs, Parmesan, chopped parsley, pine nuts, and bottarga shavings. If you’re going to make it, don’t forget to pick up some bucatini pasta.
