Ask me what my favourite foods are, and the list would look something like this, depending on the season, the time of the month, the day of the week:
1. Sea urchin
2. Mangosteen
3. Sea urchin
4. Good bread with French butter
5. Sea urchin
I can’t remember my first taste of this delicacy; it could have been at St Kilda’s Cafe Di Stasio where it would have been served with a fine, thin pasta, or maybe it was at the Japanese restaurant Koko. Either way, it was a revelation: creamy, unctuous, slippery, sensual, rich with the taste of the sea. (Rubber Slippers in Italy offers a lovely sea urchin pasta recipe and photographs that are far superior to my poor illustration.)
In Hong Kong, I had a favourite Japanese restaurant in the Taikoo Shing district, the excellent Sushi Toki (Shop G1015, G/F, Yiu Sing Mansion, Phase 10, 14 Taikoo Shing Rd, Tai Koo Shing. Phone: 2186 6969). There were many wonderful sessions propped up at Sushi Toki’s sushi bar with a dear old Japanese-speaking friend, downing chilled sake, nigiri uni (is that the correct way to describe sea urchin on sushi rice wrapped in crisp, toasted nori?), horse mackerel sushi with ginger and, I have to be honest, the sinful toro and o-toro and chu-toro (bluefin tuna belly).
I ask for uni anytime I’m ever at a Japanese restaurant in Melbourne, but it’s rarely available. Not sure what its sustainability status is here, but it certainly has been over-harvested in Japan, which consumes 85% of the world’s yield. I found that fact in an interesting recent article in Macquarie University News. It reveals that two Macquarie marine scientists have received close to a million dollars to develop the “world's first commercial closed-system aquaculture system for the production of sea urchin roe from Tripneustes gratilla – the Lamington Urchin.
So what set me off on this meandering posting path? The discovery yesterday, while searching for something else, of this evocative passage in the fish chapter of Claudia Roden’s A Book of Middle Eastern Food (Penguin, 1970) that left me trembling and giddy with excitement. I can feel the salt on my skin and the warmth of the Egyptian sun. I had to share the sensation.
"Hunting for ritza (sea urchins) is a favourite pastime in Alexandria. It is a pleasure to swim out to the rocks, dive into the sea and discover hosts of dark purple and black, spiky jewel-like balls clinging fast to the rocks, a triumph to wrench them away, and a delight to cut a piece off the top, squeeze a little lemon over the soft, salmon-coloured flesh, scoop it out with some bread, and savour the subtle iodized taste, lulled by the rhythm of the sea."
