Chicken Wings with Celery and Bottarga is not a traditional Sardinian delicacy. Bottarga and celery, yes; chicken wings, ah no. This dish is, in fact, the love child of two different desires, Jody’s yearning for wings and my own wish to do another Sardinian recipe before I throw in the towel, tuck my shorts away in my Camp Grenada footlocker. Sardinian wings were the result, and just in time. A couple of days of freezing rain have stripped more than a few trees in our neighborhood of their autumn raiment; limbs are skeletal,not festive and the uncleared sidewalks resemble the killing floor in a chlorophyll slaughterhouse. And it got cold, provoking someone in our house to violated the First Law of Yankee-dom: No one shall touch the thermostat until November 1st. The one good thing about cold weather is that it means a new harvest of bottarga will be soon at hand. And with this wings recipe in hand, when this season’s bottarga becomes available in mid-to-late November or early December, you’ll be primed. While everyone else is still fumbling with their laces you’ll be burning down the track, chicken wings and celery bundled under your arm. Nyah-nyah-nuh-nyah-yah. And how did we make this recipe if bottarga won’t be available for another month? Easy, we whittled down our own two-year-old chunk of umami ambergris that has been cooling its eggs in our fridge. No lie – I ordered it online at the end of 2012. When was the last time you consumed something from your fridge that was two years old? Still as potently delicious as the day we bought it. With chicken wings and celery it was a ménage à trois made in heaven. After Jody left at the conclusion of our cooking and shooting session, I was the only one home, not counting the Lagunitas IPA’s in the fridge. The next morning there were no wings to be found. Draw your own conclusions.
Quick review: bottarga is the dried roe of gray mullet, tuna or, sometimes, swordfish. In Sardinia it’s made from gray mullet roe; in Sicily and a few other places in southern Italy, from tuna, and in Greece, from flathead mullet. To make bottarga, roe sacks are salted and then allowed to dry as the salt draws out the moisture. The dried roe sac may be coated in beeswax or not, depending on whether the processor left the original casing intact or not. When finished, bottarga resembles a hard caramel-colored plaque. It may be shaved, sliced, or grated. Processors will typically suggest that it keeps for months, if refrigerated; I’m here to say that ours, at slightly less than two years, is still good, with no sign of decay, mold or decline. In fact, the only visible changes between its appearance now and when we bought it is that 1) It’s much smaller (haha); and 2) It’s a bit darker. It’s flavor is as potently briny and marine as the day it arrived. In fact, that’s why you buy bottarga – it tastes of the sea. Not in a salt-flats-at-low-tide kind of way, but in the bracing, exhilarating stand-on-top-of-dune-and-smell-the-cold-sea kind of way. In Sardinia and elsewhere in southern Italy, it’s a featured ingredient in a simple pasta dish, highlighted on bruschetta or part of an antipasti. In Sardinia it is often accompanied with thinly sliced celery. But saying bottarga is for these few dishes is like saying preserved lemons are wonderful in chicken tagine – technically true, but akin to identifying an iceberg as that glacial thing projecting above the water, without disclosing that the greater part of its being lurks below the surface. So with icebergs, so with bottarga. Think of it as the number one choice on just about anything that requires a savory hit of marine umami. Think where you use fish sauce, or garum (had I known about bottarga earlier this blog might well have been titled The Bottarga Factory). Pasta, eggs, polenta; atop shrimp, baked fish; and even, yes, over a soft-boiled egg atop steel-cut oats.
And, unlike preserved lemons, you don’t have to make it – you just have to buy it.
Bottarga’s cost is what stops many people cold. Wait, you want me to pay $60 for how many ounces – five!!?? Six??!! Yes, I do. Because you’re not going to rip through your supply like the bi-monthly jug of maple syrup. Bottarga lasts. Roughly figure that bottarga will cost you $8-10/ounce. Two-and-a-half ounces will generously suffice for pasta for 4. And ounce and half will make killer bruschetta for the same number of people if you shave it over 10 – 12 slices of toasted baguette, especially if the bruschetta slices includes other ingredients, like say a couple of slices of hard-boiled egg. Bottom line: of our original purchase, about a third remains. Until this post, we had almost half of our original supply. See the bottarga in the photo. That’s about an ounce and a half. We had a second piece, not seen in the photo, that was about one-third the size of the piece shown – that was the half-ounce grated over the wings.
When I first wrote about bottarga 6 months ago, I found a single American manufacturer, in Florida. A recent Google search turned up 3 – a second one in Florida, and one in New York that uses mullet roe from Florida. Bottarga has now been prominently featured in the food section of the New York Times, in Saveur, on the blog Food52 and a raft of other publications, both online and off. I have a feeling that all of us are going to hear a lot more about bottarga in the future. It may not be the next kale, but it’s the next something. With this post we intended to say goodbye to Sardinia, but I think Sardinia has followed us home. We still have an ounce-and-half of our original bottarga left, and only a month to finish it off before it will be time to re-up. I’m thinking baked potatoes, a little smoked salmon, some crème fraîche and a Sardinia-level grating of bottarga. We can eat whatever’s left on scrambled eggs the following morning. Enjoy. Ken
Note: We lost power 4 times last night. I was lucky to get through the post. Unfortunately, one of those electrical interregnums must have caught my instructions to PUBLISH. Better late than never.
Chicken Wings with Celery and Bottarga
Ingredients:
- 3 pounds chicken wings, first and second joints only
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tablespoon garlic, grated on a microplane
- Zest and juice of 2 lemons
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 2 celery stalks, thinly sliced
- 3 large radishes, thinly sliced
- ½ ounce Bottarga
Directions:
- Season the chicken wings with salt and pepper.
- In a large bowl, mix the garlic, half the lemon juice and the vegetable oil. Add the wings and toss to coat. Let macerate 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 425 °. Lay the wings out on a rack on a sheet pan. Roast 20 minutes. Turn and roast an additional 10 minutes. Add a quarter inch of water to the bottom of the pan. It will make clean up easier and prevent any drippings from burning.
- While the wings are roasting, put the remaining lemon juice, the zest and honey in a clean large bowl and mix.
- When the wings are done, transfer to the bowl with the honey mixture and toss to coat.
- Put the wings back on the rack and roast 10 minutes.
- Turn the heat to broil and cook until the wings start to brown, about 2 minutes. Turn the wings and broil the second side another 2 minutes.
- Dump the wings back into the bowl with any remaining marinade and toss once more.
- Sprinkle half the celery and radishes onto a platter. Put the wings on top. Sprinkle the remaining vegetables over the wings and then grate the bottarga over everything.
Jody Notes
I had a craving for chicken wings on my drive home from work Wednesday night, but it was late. Whole Foods was closed and there’s not much else on the drive from Cambridge to Brookline though Allston and Brighton. I had to make do with a cheese sandwich. The next morning, I saw that one of the top stories in the New York Times Wednesday food section was chicken wings. It must have been in the air.
Anyway, I wanted to do something with chicken wings. It is foodball football season after all. (Oops! You see where my priorities are!) Ken wanted us to post about bottarga and celery, since we can’t seem to let let go of Sardinia. Then we got to riffing on variations. “Buffalo wings have celery, right?”
There are so many ways to make wings and I think most people prefer them grilled. You could surely grill these. But in the spirit of keeping things simple, I chose to roast them.
The Garum Factory 
The link does not work. Marlene
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I sent out a revised email with a functional link. Thanks, Marlene. Ken
What an awesome recipe! I had no idea what Bottarga was or ambergris. Now I’m informed. I always learn something from reading you guys. Lol how you described the wreckage of the storms. I’m very excited to try some of this. Great photos as always. I’m loving the radish ones.
Thanks, Amanda. Just to be clear, ambergris is not bottarga, except in a culinary sense. :-) But you knew that. Ken
Oh how I love wings, but not the little bombs you can order out! Just last night after our son’s varsity football game (they won, he scored 4 TD’s!) I found myself waiting for him out front of Buffalo Wild Wings and if it wasn’t 11:30 I would have marched right in there and ordered some for myself. Glad I didn’t because the last thing he said before heading off to bed was “I don’t think those wings are going to agree with me” :) But…your recipe looks so fresh, clean and very agreeable. I love the recipe and the presentation. I remember reading your post about Bottarga. Very luxurious.
To be honest, I’m not a fan of Buffalo chicken wings, which is not to critique those who do love them. Just not my style. I like things a little cleaner and leaner. Try bottarga – I think you’ll love it. Ken
I love bottarga! kisses from beautiful Italy!
Simi
Thank you, Simi. It really is a wonderful ingredient. Ken
Sorry to quibble but maybe the power outages took a toll. No radishes in the ingredient list? How many/size? And the photos seem to show adding maybe water to the baking pan before cooking the wings, maybe to prevent burnt drippings or flame ups during the broiling? Thanks for this wonderful sounding recipe. I can’t wait to try it, as I feel as you do about Buffalo wings. These look like the grownup evolution.
Hi, Sharon–You’re entitled to quibble. :-) The ingredients shot shows three large radishes. I did notice that they weren’t in the ingredients list, but I bailed on the post after the 4th power outage, resolving to get to them this morning, presumably when we had more reliable power. Then the post itself misfired the first time and i forgot all about them. Thanks for reminding me. Jody did add some water to the pan after the wings had been turned the first time because they seemed to be dripping a fair amount of fat. Sorry not to mention it. And yes, these are ADULT wings. Ken
Chicken wings are never a bad idea! And that looks particularly delicious, Sardinia memories or no. I am impressed by your no-heat-until-November rule. Even Steve, who is the most energy-averse person I know, has been upset this whole week while we were without a furnace (new one installed today).
You have to be careful about the context in which you mention the Yankee Rule – if older folks are present you could inadvertently trigger a torrent of In-my-day-we-didn’t-even-have-heat! Heat-was-for-sissies! commentary. I’m beginning to look more favorably on wings, even if I’m primarily a thigh guy. Ken
Oh, yeah. Same the world over. My grandmother used to love to tell me about when she rode in a horse-drawn carriage to school (she boarded in town during the week), she’d cry and the tears would freeze to her face. So nothing, nothing, nothing I could possibly experience would match that!
Ha! (And don’t forget the same genre: “Spit froze before it hit the ground.”)
I know those cravings for chicken wings. I made them twice last week! Just got them on the way from work, and straight in the oven! Yours look absolutely decadent and fabulous and I will give it a try- I add some red wine in order to marinade them. I hope no power issues over the weekend :-)
Thanks. We seem fine for the moment. I wish our internet service was as fast and reliable as it is for our European friends. Grrrrr…. Ken
Love the pictures as always! So beautiful and clear.
Thanks. (The wings are tasty too.) Ken
I finally had bottarga on a seafood pasta dish in Cornwall this summer. It was a restaurant opened by a man who sous chef’d under Jamie Oliver for years. Fabulous little establishment right on the beach. I can definitely understand now how long a 4 ounce chunk would last. Gorgeous photos. I still can’t ever get over your album’s worth of beautiful photos, and how generous Jody is with her time dedicated to your blog. It truly blows my mind.
That’s very sweet of you to say, Mimi. We’ve been wondering about the future of The Garum Factory. Change is in the wind and ‘ll be talking about it next week. Ken
well i hope you turn it into a book.
I, too, have been watching bottarga rise in popularity here and wonder if that’s going to translate to a rise in prices, like so many other “newly discovered” food items. Using it to garnish wings is a great idea, Ken.
Using it as final flip of flavor is a good way to get some experience with it, then you can decide whether you really want to jump in the pool. This past year we changed our olive oil habits, buying close to year’s supply direct from a single vineyard north of Rome. I have a feeling we’re going to do the same thing with bottarga when it becomes available. Ken
I’m glad you agreed to cook something, even if you two have to fight it out. The bottarga sounds like a wonderful ingredient. I must get my bottarga radar working.
This looks great. I’m in Singapore, where bottarga costs more than crude oil. I’m going to try it w/toasted belacan.
Let’s see, that would make bottarga roughly what – $80/barrel? Even at $100/barrel I’d buy one. :-) I get your point. Belacan sounds like a good idea. One of the things that I discovered while researching bottarga is that most fishing populations eventually try making some bottarga-like preparation. The ones in Asia, for some reason, tend to be softer than their European counterparts, but same idea. Thanks for the comment. Ken
Reblogged this on Encouraging Life and commented:
Delicious food for the day!
Thanks, Raymond. You might want to encourage readers to investigate mullet bottarga from Florida. Ken
Thanks I will go and have a look at that.