Experiments in cooking

[anef]

Bought a glass jar of bottarga (dried grated tuna roe) in Sainsbury's a few weeks ago, and decided to have a go at using it.  Find recipe for spaghetti with same in River Cafe pasta book.  Looks easy enough, except that they seem to have hard stuff that you grate and I have pre-grated, so I am not sure about quantities.  Anyway, mash up in bowl with lemon juice and olive oil.  OK, looks like mashed brown stuff.  It smells...pungent.  Musky and fishy at the same time.  I mix it into hot, cooked spaghetti with crumbled dried chilli and now it smells like sex.  No, really like sex, in a slightly embarrassing way.  Fortunately Tabitha and I are alone in the house.  Tabitha is very interested in the smell.  I eat the spaghetti.  It tastes all right.  Just all right, hot, fishy.  Not particularly interesting. Tabitha decides that smelling it is enough and she doesn't want to lick the bowl out.  I wonder what it's supposed to taste like.  Oh well, next time I'm in a real Italian restaurant I'll know what to order.