4. Abalone bottarga
In this dish, Murray cleverly plays with a classic bottarga (an Italian term traditionally describing salted, cured fish roe that is shaved over dishes). Murray adopts the same method with abalone, which she cures and dries to shave over dishes such as this one which incorporates fresh roe on a buttery turmeric pasta. The rich salt and tang of the ocean fits perfectly with the view from the Post Ranch Inn’s dining room.
Restaurant manager Sean Appel suggests pairing one of the inn’s signature cocktails, a 1737, with the dish. Made with Venus organic gin, green chartreuse, ginger, turmeric, and citrus, the drink matches perfectly with the turmeric from the dish. Its ginger adds a nice bite, and the herbaceous and floral gin has a minerality that plays to the roe, according to Appel.
“The lemon cuts through the richness while matching the acidity in the sauce,” he said.
Charron suggests an ideal wine pairing to be a dry, crisp white wine as a counterpoint to the saltiness of the fish roe. She suggests trying a Brut Nature Blanc de Blanc, Italian malvasia, or a top-shelf vodka martini.
Abalone bottarga
To make her secret Abalone bottarga, Murray shucks and cleans abalone, before curing with salt and brown sugar. She then lets it sit for 48 hours, rinses and places in her dehydrator for two to three days, or until the abalone is completely dried. The abalone is then stored in an airtight container at room temperature until ready to use.
Murray makes a coastal sage compound butter to go with the dish and many other of her exquisite creations.
“In Big Sur, we have amazing coastal sage that truly is the scent that fills the coastline. It has a wonderful, comforting, unique, rugged elegance,” Murray said.
For the final preparation, Chef cooks dried spaghetti in boiling water with fresh micro-planed turmeric, salt, and olive oil, until al dente. The pasta is tossed with coastal sage butter with fresh picked and cleaned Dungeness crab. The crowning glory is smoked trout roe, Ossetra caviar, and capelin caviar, which she adorns with pineapple sage blossoms. The abalone is the final blessing on the dish, micro-planed over the top as one might with ground pepper but adding a delectable, rich, salty bite.
