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Hey, Hey, Hey! Gregory Schaefer from the G Word's "Ultimate Eco Cook Off" here! Without a doubt, the coolest experience of my year was this shoot off the coast of Sonoma County diving for fresh SEA URCHIN!
When I was young my parents used to call me a little fish because I spent so much time swimming. I grew up in Florida and began snorkeling on coral reefs when I was four years old. It's been a while since I've been in the water so this was a real treat! I feel so invigorated and alive when I'm swimming and when you add to that the primal hunt for food...righteous!
Our urchin experts, Jonathon and Molly, are incredible folks! They spend their weekends camping and diving for abalone and sea urchins, they're into spear fishing too. Best of all they are total foodies with great cooking chops! Hardcore!
This was a real adventure! It started with a trek down the cliffs to the water. I couldn't believe how steep and dangerous that was. As we were setting out we heard about a guy who fell to his death over the edge! Gulp. Every time you took a step, a rock gave way and you'd slide a couple feet on the gravel. Almir lost his footing, kissed the dirt and cut his hand on a rock!
The journey continued when we got into the water. The kelp was so thick that you could barely swim through. It would grab hold of you ripping your mask, your snorkel, even your weight belt off. The secret to navigating it was to just go limp and sorta go with the flow on the surface...if you struggled you were done for! Once the water got a little deeper I had no problems swimming freely, save for the cold. 48 degrees! Thank God for the wetsuit. The only exposed part of my body was my forehead and cheeks and they ACHED and BURNED!
The water was incredible--so many beautiful starfish, anemones and fish. I was quite surprised to see more abalone than urchins! If only I had my abalone permits, they are a serious delicacy.
Once we hit 12 or 15 feet the urchins appeared. They tend to hide in little caves, nooks and crannies so they were kinda hard to see from the surface. You really needed to take a deep breath, dive down and open your eyes. Nothing hard about prying them from the rocks, they pretty much just popped right off and since these guys were bigger and older their spines weren't sharp. I wasn't worried though, my gloves were made of Kevlar!
Sea urchins are beautiful. Different hues of red, blue, purple and brown. And then there's the row with it's vibrant tangerine color. The brighter the sea urchin, the fresher it is. Same goes for the row, if it's almost glowing fluorescent orange you know it just came out of the ocean. The color begins to dull with time, not that it'd turned bad but you can definitely see the difference between fresh and day-old uni. The taste right out of the sea was quite intense too! Extremely pungent, an unusual cross of sweet and salty, floral notes of pollen and umami.
The kitchen battle was fierce. Almir was not playing around. I can't even remember everything he cooked, his dishes were so overwhelming. Absolutely beautiful presentation, concepts, tastes and smells. Ridiculous talent!
To tell the truth, I've never cooked Sea Urchin! I've eaten it raw and made sushi with it many times but never added heat to it. I love doing my firey, parsley pasta with sardines and figured it would be a beauty with sea urchin but DAMN that was amazing! As soon as the row hits the heat it transforms into a succulent cream (the row is 30% fat after all) that loses its "fish" notes. In fact it resembled an amazing carbonara. My little Chilean ceviche--a tasty no-brainer. And then I got all gimmicky for the finale: SEA URCHIN SUSHI! I couldn't resist. I really wanted to play with sea urchin three ways: cooked, half-cooked and raw. Thinking about the floral notes I get from sea urchin put me on a coarse to marry it with matcha (green tea powder) which got me thinking about one of my great addictions: green tea ice cream! PERFECTO! And it wasn't all for show or shock value, IT TASTES AMAZING! A killer palate cleanser, so eat that!
Great, great fun on this shoot! Fantastic to heat up the CIA's kitchen with Almir and feed our aqua hunters Molly and Jonathan. And what a treat to play with such fresh seafood! I know I sound cheesy here but when you combine dive and dine, you get divine and that's the SEA URCHIN!
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