Penne with Pistachios and Bottarga

I recently purchased a new cookbook – Sicily, by Enzo Genovese, published in July of 2025. The book is all about Sicilian recipes, obviously. I almost wish it was a coffee-table-sized book because the photos are extraordinary. Perhaps there’s too much focus on the photos?

But the recipes are good, and just what you’d expect if you know anything about Sicilian cuisine – seafood, pasta, fresh gorgeous produce, sweets, and lots of pistachios.

I finally got to Sicily in the fall of 2024, and it was everything I thought it would be. We stayed in Taormina on the east side of the island and boated on the Ionian Sea, with a great view of our hotel, the beautiful San Domenico Palace. We also visited Mt. Aetna and some of its local wineries; Sicilian white wine is impressively good.

This pasta with tomatoes and pistachios is fairly tame, but it’s topped with bottarga. I am so intrigued by bottarga, which is pressed fish eggs that are first salted and dried. I’ve only had it once on a seafood pasta, pictured below, at a restaurant in Newquay, Cornwall; the owner-chef had been a protégé of Rick stein.

According to the author: “Sicilian cooks use tuna bottarga, which is traditional in the Trapani region, but it has a different texture, is saltier, and more expensive than the mullet version.” If you saw Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy, episode Sicily, you watched a chef grate tuna bottarga.

For this recipe I purchased grey mullet bottarga, from Amazon, no less. I always have pistachios in my fridge, another feature of this pasta dish, and I highly recommend this brand, also from Amazon. I saw pistachios in just about every form in Sicily, from fish dishes to desserts and snacks.

Penne with Pistachios and Bottarga
printable recipe below

1 red onion, finely chopped
Juice of 1 lemon
5 ounces olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 3/4 ounces pistachios, shelled roughly crushed
2 beefsteak tomatoes, cut into small dice
1 3/4 ounce grey mullet bottarga
1 pound mini penne (I used whole-wheat penne)
Salt
Freshly ground pepper

Season the onion and squeeze over half of the lemon juice. (No sure what this meant!)

Heat 6 tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat and fry the garlic and onion for 2 minutes until golden.

Add the pistachios, fry for 1 minute, then add the diced tomatoes. Stir together over a high heat for 1 minute, but no longer, then remove from the heat.

Thinly slice half of the bottarga and marinate in the remaining olive oil for 5 – 10 minutes. (First remove the thin skin on the bottarga.)

Meanwhile, cook the penne in a pan of boiling, salted water until al dente. Drain, tip the pasta into the frying pan and place it over a gentle heat.

Mix everything together and grate over the remaining bottarga. When ready to serve, squeeze over the remaining lemon juice and top the pasta with the marinated bottarga slices.

I honestly couldn’t stop eating this pasta. Incredible!