Activities | Food & Wine

José and Jean-Claude Ortis

Martigues Market , Quartier de l’Île

Martigues , Provence , France

Lifting the egg sacs out of a mullet in one piece without tearing the fragile membrane requires the hands of a surgeon. Since all of José and Jean-Claude Ortis’s poutargue—just 110 pounds annually—is sold at the biweekly Martigues market or directly from their scary shanty under the Caronte viaduct, the brothers ignore European Union norms, gently pressing the mullet sacs between planks and then drying them in the open air. Each fish yields two amber lobes. By the time the roe have melded into a solid, compact mass, they have lost 35 percent of their weight.