Sure enough, within a minute of stepping on to the rocks, I spotted my first sea urchin, stuck to the side of a rock. Anytime at low tide on the edges of a cove, urchin – an intertidal species – should become visible. But you don’t need a wetsuit or fancy gear to harvest sea urchin, he explained. A year-long fishing license in California costs $52.66, while my husband and I each paid a $10 fee for “taking anything from the ocean” at Timber Cove.īouzari came out of the water dressed like an underwater sea pirate, with weights around his waist like a gun holster and a knife strapped to his calf. They had spent the morning spearfishing, coming in with some scallops, blue rock fish and a giant ling cod – and of course, sea urchin. The day before my exploding mouth episode, I stood on the beach of Timber Cove in Jenner, California, waiting as Bouzari and his friend Justin Ang, a Pilot R&D product manager, paddled up to shore atop some surfboards.Īli Bouzari, culinary scientist, wears his underwater sea pirate gear while scooping fresh roe from a sea urchin. And anyone with access to the coast can have sea urchin dirty rice on a dirty rice budget.Īnd this was how I found myself in my kitchen, covered in kelp and purple spines. You can have it served on a half shell, topped with espresso-cream whipped potatoes and caviar – as they do at Michelin-star restaurant SingleThread in Healdsburg – or you can sauté it with some onion, sausage and day-old rice and make a dirty rice, one of Bouzari’s favorite recipes. And the retail costs, which range from $9 to $12 per urchin at your local fishmonger, isn’t something every home cook can justify.īut what Bouzari, co-founder of culinary research and development company Pilot R&D, has been pushing for the last few years is that sea urchin cuisine doesn’t have to be particularly precious, or expensive. During the pandemic, however, fine dining has been harder to come by.
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