To get the obvious out of the way, yes, this guy is obviously doing a "Stepin Fetchitti" routine. I imagine that when the camera stops shooting, he unglues the moustache, removes the peddlar's hat, and puts on a stylish sport jacket, ducking into his tight little Fiat, smoking his tires as he accelerates into a toasty Italian sunset.
Anyway, I'm a huge fan of impossibly simple recipes like this, which are devilishly hard to recreate because all the magic is super-subtle and sort of ineffable. I explored this very topic in a video I once made about a guy who made the greatest cookies I ever ate using (not kidding) the recipe on the Quaker Oatmeal Box, and did so with no cheats (I watched him like a hawk). It's about subtleties, many (all?) of them unrecognized by the chef, who instinctually integrates them. The power of iteration, among other things.
There are two points in this video where the magic tricks happen, and you'll only notice them if you watch very closely and can recognize when parts don't add up to the whole.
When he takes the spaghetti out of the pot and sloppily slaps it into the plate, he doesn't really drain it. Neither does he not drain it, either, though! He finds a mid point so slippery that the mind breaks down trying to analyze it.
The plate, I'm quite sure, has a pool of water in it. But not too big a pool. Just the right amount.
Pasta water is everything. Not just an "emulsifying aid". Not just a backdoor method of adding more salt than a home chef ordinarily might feel comfortable with. No, it's everything. It creates the sheen.
What sheen? Have a look at this screen capture:
Whence sheen?
Neither the oil nor the spaghetti are magical, and the bottarga adds only its flavor and golden hue. Don't look there for the source of the heavenly sheen, which is from water artfully integrated. Several considerations here, all well-buried in the video:
1. As mentioned, you need an ample quantity of water. Surprisingly so. Enough so that if you just left it as a simple pool, you'd spoil your meal. Most chefs would deem a pools of water to be extremely unappealing (even, perhaps, anathema), but Italian chefs see it as ammo.
2. Pasta water doesn't only emulsify cheese and other fancy stuff. Here, it's certainly not emulsifying the bottarga, which stands alone as an essentially foreign substance. The water emulsifies the oil itself. Look again at that screen shot: no pool of water (though there's lots of water). And no pool of oil (though we saw him add lots of oil). Just sheen.
The wet, seemingly sloppy, seemingly imprecise retrieval of spaghetti from the water is at odds with the rest of the video—where everything seems careful—except for one other part: the seemingly haphazard mixing of ingredients. He does a homely, un-slick little move with his fork when all ingredients are present, obstinately pushing stuff around a little. No biggie, you'd imagine.
He doesn't want to produce evenness of any sort; that's Olive Garden. He want to coax oil and water together and onto the pasta without manhandling the bottarga, i.e. emulsification with minimal effort. No swift fluent movements of a whisk or wooden spoon. Just pushing stuff around a little on a plate.
The bottarga absorbs some of the water, but it's mostly going into the oil. Into the sheen. And you do not, cannot, and will not spot the move. But that's the whole thing. One must develop the skill for oneself. It requires a combination of 1. iteration and 2. penetrating care. "Emulsify" those two things!
Other notes:
1. He says to look for blonde mullet. Any decent Sardinian mullet bottarga should fit the bill. I just ordered this from Spanish Amazon. Expensive, but not per serving. This is still a cheap dish.
2. He suggests olive oil that smells like thistle and tomatoes. That means some green astringent tannins plus some fruitiness. I can't find that easily in Portugal, so I intend to cheat. I have lots of fruity Portuguese galega olive oil to satisfy half that flavor requirement, and will try adding a subtle touch of lemon zest to fill in the thistle/tannin/astringent note....once I've gotten a feel for the balances and the sheen.
3. Also, down the road, saffron. Mostly just from whimsy, because the golden color gets me thinking about saffron. But it's a Sardinian touch, through and through. I'll steep a few crushed threads in a small amount of hot water for 20 mins, then add it in, recognizing that this represents more water needing to be transmogrified into sheen, so I'll adjust accordingly.
4. He's got relatively little water in that pot. The biggest lie told about Italian cookery is to use lots of water at a hearty rolling boil. Every great Italian chef I know uses relatively little water, and leaves it (after pasta's added) at more of a high simmer than a full boil. In this recipe, less water means more starch, which translates into greater emulsification properties. It's another trick.
5. Don't miss his warning to only lightly salt the pasta water. Bottarga is super salty!
