Cured Mullet Roe as Italian Decicacy

choi

Mullet roe is very important in Taiwan. I do not know whether you will be interested in a long report about the same of Italy and Florida.


John T Edge, An Export Stays Home. New York Times, July 24, 2013.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/2 ... -stays-at-home.html

Note:
(a) "CORTEZ, Fla — For centuries, fishermen here have netted mullet, an oily fish that retails for about $1 to $3 a pound and takes well to deep-frying or smoking. But in Italy, where some of this village’s [Cortez's] harvest is shipped, sacs of roe are removed from the fish, cured and marketed as a delicacy, bottarga, that often sells back in the United States for more than $100 a pound."
(i) Cortez, Florida
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortez,_Florida
(ii) flathead mullet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flathead_mullet
(found in coastal tropical and subtropical waters worldwide; an important food fish [that] can be both fished and farmed; The roe of this mullet is salted, dried, and compressed to make a specialty food across the world, such as Taiwanese Wuyutsu, Korean myeongran jeot, Japanese karasumi, Italian bottarga, Turkish Haviar and Egyptian batarekh)
(iii) Botargo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botargao
(section 2 Etymology; section 4 USA)

* botargo
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/botargo

is an English noun, whose Italian counterpart is "bottarga."

(b) "In 2007, he [Seth Cripe] began salting, pressing and sun-drying the roe sacs in a style that many Americans associate with Liguria and Sardinia, two regions of Italy where cooks frequently finish pasta dishes with a quick grate of briny bottarga. * * * [His bottarga is] sold under the Anna Maria Fish Company label to a few retailers and a growing number of influential chefs. Christopher Kostow, chef of the Restaurant at Meadowood in St Helena, Calif, began using Mr Cripe’s bottarga last year. 'It tastes cleaner than the Italian stuff,' he [Kowtow] said of the grated Cortez bottarga he placed atop a recent dish of broccoli flowers, agnolotti and farmer cheese. 'And it’s not overly salty. Instead of cloaking flavors, it brightens and accents.'"
(i) Liguria (capital Genoa): "The name comes from the Italic tribe of Ligures which originally settled in that area in the Iron Period."
Liguria Region. Italy Guide, undated.
http://en.comuni-italiani.it/07/
(ii) Anna Maria Fish Company is named after
Anna Maria Island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Maria_Island
(section 2 Name origin)
(iii) Restaurant at Meadowood is the name of a restaurant on the premises of Meadowood Golf Club, at St Helena, Califonia--in Napa Valley.
(iii) St Helena, California
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Helena,_California

is in Napa County, whose capital is City of Napa, California
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napa,_California
(The name Napa was probably derived from the name given to a southern Nappan village whose people [Native Americans] shared the area with elk, deer, grizzlies and cougars for many centuries, according to Napa historian Kami Santiago)
(iv) agnolotti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnolotti
(v) cloak
  (n): "a loose outer garment"
  (vt): "to cover or hide with or as if with a cloak"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cloaking

(c) "At Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria in New York, the chef Justin Smillie tosses shaved brussels sprouts with red onions, red radishes and bread crumbs before splashing the salad with colatura, the pungent Italian fish sauce, and finishing with grated Cortez bottarga"

For colatura, see fish sauce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_sauce
(colatura d'alici, a fish sauce used in Neapolitan cuisine)

(d) "That kind of makeover has Southern precedents. Traditional Tennessee country ham is now marketed as American prosciutto. Grits, stone-ground from heirloom corn, now earn the same respect as polenta. The best bourbon commands prices that are comparable to the best Scotch."
(i) country ham
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_ham
(typically very salty; first mentioned in print in 1944; done in the rural parts [of America's south, including Tennessee)
(ii) grits
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grits
(of Native American origin; Grits are similar to other thick maize-based porridges from around the world such as polenta or the thinner farina; "The word 'grits' derives from the Old English word 'grytt,' meaning coarse meal. This word originally referred to wheat")
(iii) polenta
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polenta
(iv) Bourbon whiskey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbon_whiskey
(made primarily from corn; Bourbon County, Kentucky)

* Scotch whisky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_whisky
(All Scotch whisky was originally made from malt barley. Commercial distilleries began introducing whisky made from wheat and rye in the late eighteenth century; [the latter] requires using a mixture of grains, as [government regulations in Scotland dictates] some malted barley must be used in all Scotch whisky)

(e) umber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umber
(contains iron oxide and manganese oxide; The name comes from terra di ombra, or earth of Umbria, the Italian name of the pigment; Umber is not one precise color, but a range of different colors)

Actually it is "terra d'ombra" in Italian. The preposition "di" means "of" in English.

(f) "Mr Cripe is not the only Southerner curing roe. Last year, Bryan Caswell, the chef at Reef, in Houston, started curing his own mahi-mahi roe and red snapper roe. In 2011, when Ryan Smith was the chef at Empire State South in Atlanta, he began curing shad roe, which he folds into butter and serves with sliced radishes."
(i) mahi-mahi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahi-mahi
(The name mahi-mahi means very strong in Hawaiian)
(ii) shad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shad

(g)
(i) Lola (given name)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_(given_name)
(ii) buttonwood = sycamore
(iii) "mullet is often considered a down-market fish, best purchased shortly after harvest, fried hard and served on a foam plate with a fluted cup of tartar sauce."
down-market (adj; First Known Use 1970):
"relating or appealing to lower-income consumers"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/down-market
(iv) fluted (adj): "having or marked by grooves"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fluted
* A cup cake is baked and served in fluted paper container.
* flute (n)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flute

(v) mullet as "the much-ridiculed hairstyle (short in the front and sides, long in the back) immortalized in the 1980s by country musicians like Billy Ray Cyrus"
* Billy Ray Cyrus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Ray_Cyrus
(1961- ; an American country music singer; In late 2005, he began to co-star in the Disney Channel series Hannah Montana [debuted in 2006] with his daughter Miley Cyrus)
* Mullet (haircut)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullet_(haircut)
* images.google.com: There are many photos of Mr Cyrus wearing a mullet in his young days.
(vi) "Order a Caesar-style wedge at the Village Idiot Pizza in a Cortez strip mall, and the pizzaiolo, Joseph Yost, chars a romaine head in a wood-burning oven, then drapes it with slices of smoked roe that Mr. Lee buys from a man he calls Lurch."
* I can not find the meaning of "Caesar-style wedge." Online search with this term returns only this NYT report.
* Village Idiot Pizza
http://villageidiotpizzeria.com/
* pizzaiolo is not in any English dictionary. An Italian-English dictionary shows

pizzaiolo (noun masculine): "pizza maker/chef"

(viii) Yountville, Californiah
ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yountville,_California
(an incorporated town in Napa County; The town's name is derived from the name of early pioneer George Calvert Yount)
(ix) fingerling potato
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerling_potato
(x) "lean-to smoke huts"

lean-to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean-to
(xi) Mr Chiles is "experimenting with various preparations of white roe [milt, ie sperms], including a crudo made with rice wine vinegar and sliced jalapeños."

crudo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crudo
(In Italian, "crudo" means "raw")