So there's this bloke at work. I could tell he was special from the start. Tall and dark, yes, but it was the ginger and fig jam that first made me sit up straighter in my swivel-chair. He’d made it himself from a Sean Moran recipe we’d published. Brought it into the office for me — a little Vegemite jar of jam stashed in his bike-courier bag.
When he brought in his homemade lime pickles in a red-lidded honey jar I didn’t know what to say, where to look, so I straightened my Post-it note pile instead and sharpened some pencils.
I knew then that there would be pain ahead.
It arrived yesterday.
This time, there were two old Tupperware boxes in a supermarket plastic bag. Six sea urchins. Glistening black spiky creatures that set my heart racing. Gathered the day before from rockpools at a south-eastern beach. How did he know that I’d sell my soul and more for a sea urchin.
Mr Rockpool himself offered advice via Twitter. “take sharp scissors & cut about 2 inch circle around the opening. tip the water out and remove tongues and devour. Yum!” he wrote. “it is the bottom with what I call the mouth. it is the only place were the spines aren't covering. The bum i guess..ha ha”.
Two tweets, and I had a plan. Seemed straightforward enough.
The credits were rolling on Four Corners and my kitchen was strewn with broken black sea urchin spikes by the time I had worked out how best to thank Mr Perry for his advice.
Can I tell you a few home truths, Mr Perry: pink rubber washing-up gloves don’t ease the pain. Regular kitchen scissors won’t do the job. How-to-open-sea-urchin videos on YouTube, even playing on a laptop perched on the dish drainer as you tackle your urchin, won’t illuminate the process. You are courting disaster if you try to use your biggest and best chef's knife. Small sea urchins, less-than-palm-sized urchins, don’t have any roe. Even if you manage to crack the hard urchin shell to which the spikes are attached you will have made a god-awful mess — and those intoxicating little slivers of ochreish, tongue-shaped roe are still impossible to get at.
I persisted (by now, Q&A had started; I was briefly distracted by the glory of Malcolm Turnbull’s black leather jacket) and, slowly, with much prising and swearing, the two largest yielded up their treasures. Covered in gunk. Then, a painstaking process to wipe away sand and grit and other unpleasantness.
It wasn’t much but certainly enough to make a little pasta dish. Tomato, lemon zest, chilli, garlic, roughly following a New York Times recipe. Divine.
And the bloke at work? He’s let me in on this urchin-hunting-ground location. I don’t need him anymore.
When he brought in his homemade lime pickles in a red-lidded honey jar I didn’t know what to say, where to look, so I straightened my Post-it note pile instead and sharpened some pencils.
I knew then that there would be pain ahead.
It arrived yesterday.
This time, there were two old Tupperware boxes in a supermarket plastic bag. Six sea urchins. Glistening black spiky creatures that set my heart racing. Gathered the day before from rockpools at a south-eastern beach. How did he know that I’d sell my soul and more for a sea urchin.
Mr Rockpool himself offered advice via Twitter. “take sharp scissors & cut about 2 inch circle around the opening. tip the water out and remove tongues and devour. Yum!” he wrote. “it is the bottom with what I call the mouth. it is the only place were the spines aren't covering. The bum i guess..ha ha”.
Two tweets, and I had a plan. Seemed straightforward enough.
The credits were rolling on Four Corners and my kitchen was strewn with broken black sea urchin spikes by the time I had worked out how best to thank Mr Perry for his advice.
Can I tell you a few home truths, Mr Perry: pink rubber washing-up gloves don’t ease the pain. Regular kitchen scissors won’t do the job. How-to-open-sea-urchin videos on YouTube, even playing on a laptop perched on the dish drainer as you tackle your urchin, won’t illuminate the process. You are courting disaster if you try to use your biggest and best chef's knife. Small sea urchins, less-than-palm-sized urchins, don’t have any roe. Even if you manage to crack the hard urchin shell to which the spikes are attached you will have made a god-awful mess — and those intoxicating little slivers of ochreish, tongue-shaped roe are still impossible to get at.
I persisted (by now, Q&A had started; I was briefly distracted by the glory of Malcolm Turnbull’s black leather jacket) and, slowly, with much prising and swearing, the two largest yielded up their treasures. Covered in gunk. Then, a painstaking process to wipe away sand and grit and other unpleasantness.
It wasn’t much but certainly enough to make a little pasta dish. Tomato, lemon zest, chilli, garlic, roughly following a New York Times recipe. Divine.
And the bloke at work? He’s let me in on this urchin-hunting-ground location. I don’t need him anymore.
