There’s a show on public television here in America called “Moment of Luxury” in which the host very generously enjoys all manner of fine things on our behalf and then shares his collected pensees about the experience. Traveling around the food blogosphere lately has felt like a surprisingly similar experience for us since our three month old prevents us from experiencing any luxury ourselves.

Tough titty, I hear you cry. Fair enough, we have lived rather high on the hog these last several years and have been blessed with several unforgettable moments of luxury along the way, but like the princess and the pea, we are finding our current rather straightened circumstances somewhat uncomfortable.

Turning over a new (year’s) leaf, determined to gripe no longer and return to being active participants in our (gastronomic) lives, we had a deuce of a time this past weekend putting together some foie gras and wild mushroom ravioli, in the hope we would be able to enjoy at least one or two moments of luxury. Inspired by ZenChef’s oxtail and foie gras ravioli and our experience eating escargot-stuffed ravioli in France (both) around this time last year (when we bought the can of foie gras we used), we took a brief flight of fancy in the accompanying sauce, combining porcini stock, balsamic vinegar and red currants into a sort of impromptu agrodolce. Some dry roasted wild mushrooms completed this, quite frankly, sublime dish.

Savoring these rich and blissful parcels certainly felt like a moment of luxury. Indeed, when we were roused moments later from this temporary reverie by infantile caterwails echoing from the nursery, these few seconds of pleasure were all the more significant providing much-needed encouragement for us to gird our loins once more for our nightly skirmishes with our darling offspring.

So much of what we think we know of Haiti is bad – from the massive human suffering and destruction caused by January’s earthquake, to decades of political and social unrest, to blood-curdling tales of voodoo curses and zombies – that one might be forgiven for wondering how the inhabitants of such a benighted country make it through the day. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s often the case that where there is the greatest suffering, there is also the most joyous celebration – think the wildly over the top bedazzled costumes and deafening samba baterias coming out of the most ravaged Rio slum at Carneval – and so it is in Haiti, and nothing says celebration to a Haitian like griyot.

Grillot/griyo/griyot/griot (pronounced gree-oh) and its accompaniments of sauce ti malice (sos ti malice) and rice and beans constitute one of Haiti’s handful of national dishes, and no Haitian party can be considered a real knees-up without it. This is particularly so on January 1, Haiti’s National Day, recalling the country’s 1804 declaration of independence from France and its arrival on the international scene as the first independent nation in the Caribbean and Latin America, as well as the world’s first black republic, and from whence it took the lead among non-English speaking nations of the western hemisphere in promulgating ideas of liberty and equality. This early split from the colonial power and the country’s several subsequent lapses in to chaos have allowed Haitian culture and cuisine to preserve its African heritage and develop in its own distinct way, largely undiluted by external influences. Ways of which we were almost completely ignorant until we ate our first meal at Kombit – a Haitian restaurant we were lucky enough to have in our neighborhood

We quickly became regulars at Kombit, the sheer novelty of having a Haitian eatery close by (not to mention the raft of delicious and completely unknown dishes) took a long while to wear off. Possibly due to the fact that we were consistently among the few non-Haitian diners, or perhaps because we always asked stupid questions about their food, owners Pascale and Marie began to recognize us, and, eventually, took rather a shine to us two inquisitive but entirely ignorant enthusiasts. Each time we visited they would patiently and smilingly respond to our inane inquiries without ever really revealing much about how the dishes we were enjoying griyot, sauce ti malice or their unbelievably special rice and beans, were made.

Ever since that first experience some six or more years ago, we’ve wanted to try to home-make griyot, and after recently getting our hands on one of two Haitian cook books in print in the United States, we reserved most of a weekend and set to work. The weekend reservation was necessary because – like many flavorful and traditional dishes, preparation ahead of time and patience are necessary – griyot is, as you’ll see if you scroll down, one of several dishes that are dependent on each other, and, if you’re not Haitian and, therefore likely to have some of these staples already hanging around, you have make them in a certain order.

Starting with the griyot – a very rustic and filling dish of marinaded, then braised, then fried pork chunks – you must be prepared to wait at least 24 hours after starting the preparation to eat it, but it is well worth the wait. The texture of it, crispy on the outside and soft inside, combined with the myriad tropical flavors filling your mouth, is quite something in itself, but when paired with its natural partner of rice and beans, it transcends its rusticity to become a truly world-class dish. In complete honesty, Haitian rice and beans are, by a margin, the best I have ever eaten. Smoky, savory and satisfying, these rice and beans are so freaking good that you would be perfectly happy to have a plate, by itself, for dinner. Every night.

We wrote way back in the spring about the Burmese national dish, Own-o Kow Swear, and noted that condiments played a crucial role in that country’s cooking. So it is in Haiti, except that there are far fewer condiments, and the few they have, are used with the same regularity as ketchup in America or olive oil in Greece. Rather handily, both of the two principal Haitian condiments, piklis and sos ti malice, work magnificently with griyot, though since the former is a fiery concoction of scotch bonnet peppers, allspice and vinegar, one should demonstrate restraint in its use in order to avoid the obvious pitfalls.

It sounds anything but appetizing, but sos ti malice – a reddish-brown, thinnish gravy, scattered with a few bits of onion and pepper – is served by the bowlful at Kombit, and we almost always have to order extra it is so good. They serve it with all sorts of dishes, but it is most appropriate with griyot because (although Pascale and Marie never revealed this to us) both the marinade and cooking juices from the griyot are used in its preparation, giving it an incredible complexity and satisfying savoriness.

Please don’t be intimidated by the length of preparation time, the seemingly exotic ingredients or the long list of recipes below. All are very easy to make, the ingredients are fairly easy to find even in an average supermarket, and most of the time you can put your feet up or do something else entirely. Out of the 24 hour (36 hour for piklis) preparation time, you’ll probably be only actively cooking for around 3 hours at the absolute most.

So, for your next celebration meal, consider making griyot and its associated dishes. They really are almost indescribably good and after eating them you’ll certainly be thinking about Haiti in a whole new light.

In the very infancy of this blog, back when we had no appreciation for plating, lighting or anything else remotely aesthetic, my wife wrote about the first course of a truly memorable dinner we shared in the famous Florentine trattoria, Coco Lezzone. What she didn’t mention was that even though we were getting towards the end of our nearly month long sojourn in Italy that encompassed our wedding and honeymoon, by the time we wound up in that jewel of the Renaissance, we were feeling rather sorry for ourselves.

Two days earlier, we had arrived in Genoa after a magnificent and occasionally hair-raising drive through the rugged terrain of the lower reaches of Piemonte and Liguria, to find that the guest-house we had booked was expecting us the day before. Twenty-four hours off schedule, and with a large shipping conference dominating Genoa’s hotels for the rest of the week to complicate matters, we were unceremoniously turfed out of said accommodation the following morning. While I, who have been invited to leave much less salubrious establishments than this, met the news with a certain equanimity, without a roof under which to shelter, and quite literally no room at the inn, the combined strain of having single-handedly planned a wedding and honeymoon from New York suddenly hit my poor wife like a tidal wave, and gushing tears of frustration and exhaustion ensued. Where comforting nuzzles from Tim the hotel dog weren’t enough, a liter carafe of white wine and two dozen fried anchovies seemed to have a medicinal effect, but, as calming as that lunch was, in a fit of pique we still decided to put Genoa in our rearview mirror and hit the E80 autostrada down the coast into Tuscany.

After a magnificent drive, framed on our right by the sparkling Mediterranean and on our left by the often white, marble-rich mountains of the Ligurian Apennines, we rolled in to Florence just as the westering sun was painting the city’s monuments the luminous color of dried apricots. Spirits partially restored, and safe in the knowledge that our reservation for the night was kosher, we immediately set out to find something delicious as a salve for our emotional wounds.

Among the several traditional Tuscan comestibles we over-indulged in that evening was a rabbit roll, or involtino di coniglio, stuffed with prosciutto, boiled egg and sage. Dressed very simply with Luccan olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar, it screamed the Spartan simplicity for which Tuscan fare is best-known. In some ways, it also exemplified the ethos of our trip. I suspect some of the wedding guests may quibble, but in our opinion, both wedding and honeymoon, had a pared-down, no frills sense about them. Only a hard core of essential people attended the wedding, and there was little time for luxuriating on a honeymoon in which we banjoed our way around 10 northern Italian cities in a tiny, canary yellow motor.

On our gentle post-prandial stroll, feeling all rosy and content from food, wine and warm night air, we encountered a pair of English honeymooners who asked us in charming pidgin Italian, “por favore, it’s nostra luni da miel…!” to photograph them in front of Santa Maria del Fiore. We were then playfully accosted by a group of tipsy Sicilian students from Catania who made us sing football songs with them and insisted we all shake hands in the traditional, forearm-grasping Roman-style before they would let us depart. This memorable meal and displays of unprovoked goodwill sent us to bed marveling at how such basic pleasures can make ones mind transcend apparent troubles. An important lesson.

In truth, we are fully aware that this was just another sybaritic moment in a month of indulgence, and not worthy of anyone’s sympathy, but I was reminded of this experience and its underlying moral recently when the trepidation induced by the impending arrival of our first-born began to get the better of me. I suspect we shall be leaning heavily on these twin crutches of simple dishes and human kindness very soon.

He’s certainly not the first to make such a remark, but when in a recent episode of his PBS show Mexico: One Plate at a Time, chef Rick Bayless commented that Mexican food may be the first “fusion cuisine” in the Americas, the concept resonated with me. The collision of cultures and culinary traditions that resulted from the European conquest of the Americas had as profound and delicious consequences for its Spanish, French and English protagonists as it had on the diets of its unwilling Native American and African antagonists. Indeed, and here I understand that I’m on sensitive ground, in cultural terms one might venture that one of the few short term benefits, that became a long term legacy, of this brutal period was the fabulous variety of new dishes that resulted from this coming together of New World, European and African ingredients and techniques.

Anthropologists and historians generally agree that apart from Brazil, the islands of the Caribbean are the most “Africanized” countries of the Americas because the extraordinarily harsh conditions, and consequential high slave mortality rate, in these places required that the plantation’s human capital be almost constantly replaced, continually refreshing African traditions. This sad history has allowed for the persistence of several West African cultural traditions, in syncretic religions like Haitian voodoo and Brazilian candomblé, as well as a variety of typical dishes, in the New World. Chief among the latter of these is the filling cassava mush known throughout much of Central and Western sub-Saharan Africa as fufu.

Most commonly served with a tomato or peanut based soup – which is sometimes garnished with seafood – fufu (fufuo, foufou, fougou) is believed to have originated in Twi-speaking regions of modern-day Ghana where the word foufouep (p is silent) means white and refers to the color of the cassava flour used in its preparation. When cooked with hot water and stirred to a similarly thick consistency as polenta or grits, and served on the side of a bowl of soup (or on a central platter), the diner takes a pinch of fufu, rolls it into an olive sized ball, makes an indentation with their thumb and uses it as an edible spoon for the soup.

The traditional shrimp and grits of the American South is, among many other variants, a direct descendant of fufu, where the American staple cornmeal has replaced cassava. In modern-day Cuba, one of the most traditional Afro-Cuban dishes, fufu de platano, has an even more direct bloodline to its African forebear in its use of that other West African starch, the green plantain.

Very similar to Cuban fufu is the joyously monikered mofongo of Puerto Rico – a dish that is so unbelievably delicious that it is even more fun to eat than it is to pronounce. Whereas fufu is often just mashed boiled plantains, mofongo (sometimes mofongu) is fried plantains that are then doused in a heavily-garlicked olive oil sauce while being pounded in a mortar. The mofongo is often then mixed with chopped up chicharrones (deep-fried pork belly cracklins), and shaped into a mound, before being dressed in an intensely savory tomato and shrimp-stock based gravy and garnished with sauted or fried shrimp.

More or less understood to be one of, if not the, national dishes of Puerto Rico, mofongo represents the creole (criolla) culture of that island in a truly unique way. The exotic tropical plantains native to Africa blending seamlessly with Caribbean-influenced sofrito used in the sauce and the typically Iberic flavors of olive oil and garlic into a colorful feast for the senses.

And a feast dish mofongo truly is. A Puerto Rican festival is said to be incomplete without mofongo, and this on an island where the perennial feast-time favorite, the long slow roasted pork dish called pernil is accompanied by both rice and beans and tostones. The competition in terms of delicious flavors being nothing short of extreme on that blessed island. Of course, we tend to wax lyrical about all the food we make here on WANF, but I want to stress that you have no idea just how amazing mofongo is, you just have to trust us and try it. It’s so rich, so intensely flavored, so texturally intriguing, and so quite unlike anything you’re likely to have eaten before. It’s a stunning combination that is as easy on the soul as it is invigorating for the intellect.

We first ate mofongo at one of a pair of fascinating restaurants in our Brooklyn neighborhood that have been serving the flavors of home to the area’s Caribbean population for more than 40 years. El Viejo Yayo (and El Viejo Yayo II) (meaning, roughly, the old man, or the grandfather), are the kinds of places – bright, harsh lighting, giant portions, patronized mostly by Latinos – that are a dying breed in our gentrified nabe, but can be relied upon for traditional island cuisine for these exact reasons. El Viejo Yayo serves a variety of mofongos, some as mains, others (almost unimaginably given their size) as side dishes, some with seafood, others with pork, and no matter how hard we try, it’s nearly impossible not to get one, in spite of the other wonderful offerings on their menu, including an outstanding soupy rice with seafood. [A propos of nothing, it's always interested me that they also make a mean brandy alexander, just one of many retro cocktails that they, unlike trendier places, never stopped making.] Under the bright strip lights, perspiring gently as pork and carbohydrates flood our system, we’ll often look around at our fellow diners – elbows on tables, giant plates or bowls in front of them, talking loudly and energetically gesticulating – and remark how lucky we are to have all this delicious diversity on our doorstep.

It sounds rather trite to conclude any piece about food in this way, but out of the myriad sadnesses of a shameful past shrouded in human misery, suffering and squalor, has risen, in mofongo (amongst the New World’s many great dishes), a gastronomic legacy that is truly a cultural phenomenon to celebrate and be proud of. And, perhaps, therein lies one of enduring maxims of great national dishes, that they speak simultaneously of what is ugly and painful as well as beautiful and serene about a country’s character, while reflecting the shared joy and peace to be found in the simple pleasures of the table.

In our humble opinion, there is a serious and shameful lack of sodas made with real sugar available in America today. When we were in Argentina last year, among the most (of many) pleasurable experiences was drinking a Coke out of a small bottle and having it taste like it used to. The fact that soda companies in America are now releasing “special” and “old school” editions that contain sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup just lampoons this ridiculous situation.

Now, we’re not exactly giant soda drinkers, and when we do indulge, we tend to go for things like San Pellegrino’s limoncita, except of course when we’re enjoying Mexican tortas (sandwiches) for lunch at the Mexican-run deli on our Brooklyn block. Then, we will always get a nice cool bottle of Jarritos, and most commonly, the flavor is pineapple (piña). Imagine our delight then, when we were recently invited to sample all 11 varieties of Jarritos.

Since 1950, Jarritos (meaning “little jars/jugs”) have been making a bevy of sodas that are as varied in flavor as they are brightly colored. Less carbonated than typical American sodas, and due to their containing actual sugar, they can taste a little over sweet and syrupy to the modern American palate. It’s a sweetness I happen to enjoy, and so I’m delighted that Jarritos is now challenging the US soda behemoths and selling their drinks over here too. And, to further sweeten the pill, as it were, Jarritos are, for a limited time, holding the JarritosNation! contest, in which you can gather points from each bottle of Jarritos soda to win digital cameras or a trip to Hawaii, which is strange given that Jarritos is made in Jalisco, Mexico.

Of course, slurping one down with a chorizo, ham and guacamole torta is one thing, but cooking something imaginative with a highly flavored and sugary soda is another thing entirely. In all honesty, we didn’t make a giant mental leap in using pineapple flavored Jarritos to make tacos al pastor given the pineapple that is central to that preparation. However, it was fantastically delicious!

It’s thought that tacos al pastor are a fairly recent invention in Mexican cuisine, and are a fusion of traditional Lebanese shwarma-type lamb kebab preparations (hence al pastor, meaning shepherd’s style) that the Mexicans changed to suit their taste for slow-cooked pork marinated in vinegar with a smoky pepper sauce. In Mexico, it’s usually found in specific tacos al pastor stands where fat elephant legs of juicy, spicy, sweet pork are shaved off and slapped between a couple of corn tortillas and served very simply with a zesty avocado salsa and a couple of chunks of pineapple.

Pineapple, both sliced and in juice form, is used in the marinade and the cooking sauce for tacos al pastor, and we decided to substitute it in the former with Jarritos piña in order to add some sweetness and pineapple flavor to the acidity of the vinegar that is used to tenderize the pork. It was not clear whether this necessarily added a huge amount of pineapple flavor to the pork at this stage because we subsequently baked it in a roasted guajillo, ancho and pasilla puree liberally studded with slices of pineapple for an hour and a half until it was fall apart tender, but I like to think it played its role in what is, however you make it, a dish made up of many layers of flavor.

Sitting around the table last night with gusts of strong breath coloring our domestic atmosphere, Amy and I were considering the profound effect garlic has on Spanish cuisine, and we wondered aloud whether any other national cuisine makes such abundant and varied use of the perfumed rose. Certainly, French and Italian food incorporate garlic with spectacular results, as do Greek, most other Mediterranean cuisines, as well as Chinese and Indian, but if there’s a cuisine that, to us, is characterized by garlic, it’s Spanish.

All of which is great, unless you happened to be sitting next to us this morning on the subway, as last night we ate two of the most highly odoriferous dishes in the Iberian canon – patatas a lo pobre and pollo al ajillo. The humble, peasant roots of both these dishes (the former translating as poor man’s potatoes) rely heavily on large quantities of garlic to elevate the otherwise prosaic ingredients to a higher plane. The garlic somehow acts both as a spice and an acid, flavoring the dish while simultaneously cutting through and balancing the olive oil.

We recommend you make enough of both these dishes to share, not just because they make delicious tapas-style small plates, but because you’ll want to surround yourself with similarly pungent folk to avoid people covering their faces and shuffling away down the train as if you had the plague. On the other hand, you do far worse than gain a little extra personal space in this congested city of ours. Maybe we’ve hit on a smart new commuting tactic?

Do you ever wish you had a secret power? I don’t mean like some stupid superhero who can fly, make it rain, or look great in a unitard. I mean like a gerbil’s ability to store tasty bits in its cheeks for later, or a tiger’s ability to eat 30lbs of wild boar at a single sitting, that kind of thing. No? Hmm, well, I do, and sometimes, in my more reflective moments, I find myself wishing I was blessed with a gizzard. After all, would not my diet be expanded and my ‘intestinal transit’ made smoother if I possessed a specialized second stomach that enabled me to grind up and enjoy commonly indigestible foods?

Having recently questioned a sample group of poultry, reptiles and fish (the only three genera of animals that possess gizzards) about this, I can tell you that 9 out of the 10 chickens surveyed credited their gizzards with giving free reign to their more fibrous dietary proclivities. In the course of my survey, I also learned that while addiction and dependency issues brought on by knowingly being bred for slaughter are a big problem for young roosters, the greater worry among concerned hens is the utter disregard for their gizzards demonstrated by the carnivorous public.

“That’s my son’s (second) stomach they’re throwing them away!”, cock-a-doodle-doed one plump mother of 700 chicks, while another squawked that, “they (humans) should be so lucky to have a gizzard of their own. Ingrates!”

Chastened by these plaintive cries, and encouraged to make a salad we ate at a fabulous gastropub in Lille, France, over New Year’s, we recently explored the potential of confit-ing chicken gizzards. We found that nothing could be easier and more delicious, nor could this preparation be more suited to making the best out of what is a potentially tough part of the giblets.

We served our gizzards and some similarly confit’d chicken livers over a green salad with some boiled eggs, just as we had eaten it in Lille, but an alternative preparation typical to the Dordogne region of France, especially the town of Perigeux/Perigord, serves the gizzards over a lettuce salad with walnuts and croutons, which would be just as good, no doubt.

Made during the horrid, self-reflective, and, frequently, gassy hours aboard a trans-Atlantic flight this past weekend, our New Year’s resolutions swore us to no less than three weeks of Spartan, monkish grazing on whole grains, green vegetables and lean protein in order to trim ourselves of burgeoning, lumpy mid-sections brought on by the combined Holiday calories of three Thanksgiving dinners, two Christmas roasts and a New Year’s trip to France.

However, we have since surprised, or dismayed, even ourselves with the deplorable level of willpower demonstrated in abandoning our resolutions after just three days. Only slightly less amazing is that three days of salads could drive us to such an extreme. Perhaps the only positive we can draw is that at least we’re starting 2010 with a gastronomic bang instead of whimpering abstemiousness.

The chivito is, informally, the national dish of Uruguay and legend has it that it came about when an Argentine tourist from the city of Cordoba, visited the establishment of restaurateur Antonio Carbonara in the beautiful beach resort of Punta del Este, and asked for a sandwich of roasted young goat meat (a specialty of her native province), known as chivito*. Having no goat, Senor Carbonara proceeded to prepare a steak sandwich for his Argentine guest, topping it with just about everything he had to hand in his kitchen. The resulting sandwich was such a great success that it became a permanent item on Carbonara’s menu, and its fame spread across the country like wildfire, becoming known in the process as the chivito.

As with nearly every “national” dish, there are a few variations on the theme, but the chivito is basically a sandwich made of a thin piece of beef, often skirt steak (churrasco) topped with melted mozzarella cheese, grilled or pan fried red pepper, bacon, ham, egg (either boiled or fried), lettuce, tomato, sliced onions, mayonnaise, sliced pickles and olives on a bread roll. The two principal variants on this theme are the Chivito Canadiense (Canadian chivito) which substitutes Canadian-style bacon for the crispier kind, and the chivito al plato, a deliciously messy platter of all the typical ingredients served without a bun on a plate and often with fries, or, maybe even more commonly, with ensalada rusa (Russian salad – potatoes, mayonnaise, carrots, peas, tuna, onion, parsley, and, occasionally, boiled egg and sliced beets). Note: Chivitos may also substitute chicken or veal escallopes for the steak.

On our final night in Montevideo last spring, instead of our usual giant steak dinner at one of that city’s wonderful parrillas, we tasted our first chivito at a small sidewalk cafe in the quiet neighborhood of Pocitos. Until that moment, we had been led to believe that the United States was the home of the world’s most ambitious and artery-busting sandwiches — indeed, it is home to most of them — but we now know that the Uruguayans, in their charmingly understated and apparently ego-less manner, have created something which can challenge for that title.

Whether you choose to make yourself a chivito now or later, as a reward for an extended period of fasting, is entirely up to you, but since last night’s regimenal aberration we have remade our vows to gastronomic penitence. How long we keep them this time is, as yet, unknown, but the mere sight of a chivito tends to focus your mind on, ahem, one’s weighty personal issues.

*The word chivito refers, specifically, to a young goat that has been weaned and fed on solid food. It, therefore, differs from the cabrito, or baby goat – an unweaned animal – by being some months older.

For a while last year and earlier this year, bottarga, it seemed, was the new black. Like truffles, it had become, if perhaps more temporarily, the new foodie trend obsession and blogs everywhere were doing all kinds of inventive things with it, like this, this, even this. Never wanting to feel left out of something, we fell into contact with a very nice gentleman, Robert, from Florida, via our friend Claudia at Cook, Eat, Fret who generously supplied us with a sizable shipment for free!

Robert, on top of being such a kind-hearted soul, is a craftsman of some note who actually hand-makes his own bottarga (smoked, dried roe/fish egg sacs) from Gulf of Mexico mullet, and after hearing our plaintive cries took pity and sent us some in the mail. I am absolutely positive that he thinks us the most ungrateful and churlish tykes in this hemisphere as this was no less than six months ago and we have nary said a word to publicly acknowledge him, his delicious product (which you can learn more about here), or our indebtedness, since.

Excuses are of little use here, and Robert, if you’re reading, we are not only sorry for not getting around to this sooner, but ashamed because we’ve actually been enjoying your bottarga at regular intervals in the meantime as we figure out how to use it in a new and interesting way. As you’ll see from the links to other friend bloggers above, the most common way of serving it is in the traditional Sicilian dish of spaghetti alla bottarga, a delicious pasta dish created with lemon juice, parsley, and olive oil, but since we were way behind the curve on this, we thought it better to let sleeping dogs lie rather than reprise dishes others had made and pretend we weren’t copying them.

So, after six months of thought, testing and increasing panic, we made a fantastically simple, yet elegant, and unbelievably good appetizer with firm, unfrozen diver scallops quickly pan-fried in butter served over a platform of wilted spinach and topped with excitingly colored blue-black lumpfish roe caviar and decorated gaily with the gratable sunshine that is bottarga. A little brown butter (beurre noisette) sauce contrasted with the marine flavors of the double fish egg effect nicely offering a touch of fattiness.

Of course, this wasn’t the only way we’ve enjoyed Robert’s bottarga, we’ve also enjoyed it sliced very thinly on blinis with sour cream and chives, and most recently, as a fabulous brunch dish (or appetizer) topping loose scrambled eggs. Bottarga’s strong flavor may not be loved by all, but when worked into dishes that balance it with fat or starch or when used sparingly over lean proteins, it makes a meal that truly warrants all the foodie hysteria, not unlike truffles, in fact.