Around the World in Foodventures (Italy: MALLOREDDUS WITH WILD BOAR SUGO and SPAGHETTI ALLA BOTTARGA)

I'm about 75% Italian (with parts coming from both the mainland and Sicily).  I grew up eating Italian food at least every other day.  Both sides of my family have, combined, several (multiple hours long, obviously 😉) different sauce recipes.  We can make gnocchi from scratch, pretty much blindfolded.  (I even have a particular tiny knife that I've used for gnocchi making, and gnocchi making alone, since I was first allowed as a kid to touch knives.)  We judge Italian restaurants (which are ubiquitous where we live) by their meatballs.  These are just the very basics, of course -- lest we forget about holiday specialties: escarole soup, braciole, pizzelle, I could name things all day . . .

So cooking a typical recipe from Italy on this leg of my journey is essentially out of the question, because I've already made umpteen different things requiring varying degrees of skill, any number of times.  And to find an Italian dish that I wasn't already otherwise intimately acquainted with was, well . . . a bit of a challenge.

Please don't get me wrong, though -- I'm definitely not a snob about Italian food.  The vast majority of the stuff I consumed growing up (and still make to this day) is of the most simple variety; and I also do love me some Olive Garden once in a while just as much as the next person. 

Anyways -- I decided to thumb through Anthony Bourdain's "Appetites" cookbook (which I believe is the last thing he published, and which I had yet to cook anything from except Budae jjigae).  I settled on Malloreddus with Wild Boar Sugo and Spaghetti alla Bottarga, for (on top of sounding delicious) several reasons:

1. Malloreddus with Wild Boar Sugo includes a familiar-yet-still-uncommon ingredient (wild boar), and Spaghetti alla Bottarga utilizes something I'd only just recently heard of and had never used (bottarga);
   
2. Both are recipes from the family of Bourdain's wife, and therefore are Sardinian in origin (an area of Italy from which as far as I know neither side of my family comes).  Not only that, they are both considered classics; and
   
3. When I asked my friends to pick the next country for me to cook from (I intend to do every country, of course, but am for now following the list in the order they presented it to me), one suggested "Ancient Rome" -- and while these aren't ancient recipes, some research does tell me that bottarga "is discussed in "Libro de Arte Coquinaria," a book of Italian medieval cookery written around 1465 by Martino de Rossi, who is ... known as "the prince of chefs" or ... "the world's first celebrity chef."  Many of the recipes in the book ... were copied entirely by Bartolomeo Sacchi in his gastronomical treatise De honesta voluptate et valetudine, which has the distinction of being the first cookbook ever printed."  I'm calling it at least an ancient ingredient.

Wow, I think that's the most I've written in any of my Around the World in Foodventures posts!  So without further ado, here are the things. 

Usually I give a link to the recipes that I followed, but because I can't find these two in any first-hand sources online, I'm not completely confident that I wouldn't be violating copyright laws and/or recipe attribution standards were I to simply type out the recipes here.  So, I will instead refer you this time to Anthony Bourdain's "Appetites" and assure you that it's worth purchasing if for no other reason than the photos.  Of course, me having a big Bourdain tribute tattoo on my forearm, I might be a little biased.

What I will say is that they are both easy and simple recipes, the Malloreddus with Wild Boar Sugo being a several hours braise, and the Spaghetti alla Bottarga whipping together in literally just the time it takes to cook pasta.  Of the two, I definitely preferred the Malloreddus with Wild Boar Sugo, both because of the fresh, homemade pasta and the amazing flavor of the meat.  But I certainly didn't mind the Spaghetti alla Bottarga.  While I do eat plenty of different types of seafood, I'm just not a person who likes "fishy" things, and well, bottarga falls slightly on the fishy side for me.  Still, it is quite good, and I would eat it again.  I was pleasantly surprised by how much the red pepper flake came through in the flavors, as well as the pepperiness of the olive oil.

This post is part of my project: "Around the World in Foodventures" (I decided I want to expand my culinary horizons even further by making the national dish or a popular recipe, or some signature food or traditional meal from every country in the world. Maybe it'll happen alphabetically, or by region, in random order, or something else. I figure if we can't (yet?) travel everywhere, we at least have the luxury of being able to taste it. It’ll be fun and interesting, but obviously, will take a long time to get through -- as I'll only be doing it once a week or so at most. I am chronicling the journey here.)

“If I’m an advocate of anything, it’s to move…Walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food.” --Tony Bourdain