Muggine in Crosta di Sale con Finocchietto
Sardinia — Cagliari e Laguna di Santa Gilla
Sardinia's salt-baked grey mullet — a whole muggine (grey mullet, the source of Sardinian bottarga) packed in a thick salt crust with wild fennel fronds and baked in a wood-fired or very hot domestic oven. The salt creates a sealed environment that steams the fish in its own juices, producing extraordinary moisture retention and a subtle briny seasoning that permeates without over-salting. The fennel fronds perfume the flesh from both inside (stuffed in the cavity) and outside (mixed into the salt crust).