Bottarga from John Dory

(This is a duplicate of a post I made a couple of months ago on r/fermentation, but this seems to be a more appropriate subreddit.)

I live on the Croatian side of the Adriatic coast, and regularly visit my local fishmongress. She had a beautiful large Kovač (John Dory or San Piere) one morning that I bought for grilling on a wood fire. Cleaning the fish, I realized she had some pretty large roe sacks, so I decided to make bottarga (salt cure dried fish roe). I was careful not to cut the roe membrane, packed them in salt for three days, then rinsed them, wrapped them in paper towel and pressed them between two small clay plates in the fridge for four days. Unwrapped them, tied in twine and hung to dry in my frost-free fridge for a month.

The end result grated with olive oil over fresh cooked pasta was awesome. I didn’t bother to try to peal the membrane before grating and it worked fine. Only problem is now I have to wait almost a year until the breeding cycle comes back around – LOL 😂. I was a bit worried at first if John Dory was an appropriate fish roe to use, and found out later that it is in fact well-reputed.