Hello foodie lovers, I'm back with another amazing food to share to you. It's not a recipe today but surely a lot of you here like this! Have you tried eating sea urchins? Well, this is my first time. I was living in the mountains for 22 years and this year I decided to live by the sea and this is the first time I was able to discover different kinds of fishes and seafoods.
This is one of a kind of a sea urchin. Locally we called it "tuyom". It's color black with long spikes. I really thought it was easy to catch this but it was so difficult and you need a good timing of the sea water to low tide. This is just 10 meters away from the seashore. You have to be very careful in collecting this because you will be pricked anytime. These are baby sea urchins but they are now good to eat.
This is how it looks like when you remove it's spikes. I used the two spoons in removing it's spikes. It's very difficult. So I looked for videos on YouTube how to remove it. And it says I have to put it in a sack and squeeze it all along. But I don't have a sack so I continue smashing it carefully with a spoon. It is so fragile that you have to smash it not so hard. It has tint and it stains my fingers.
Then this is how it looks like if you can perfectly open it. It is so beautiful. It's so fatty and meaty. It's really exciting to taste it but I didn't taste it first because I'm going to finish all of it then eat it together. It is also very difficult to open it because if you open it in reverse it would be very difficult to eat and get the meat inside. The hint there is look for the eyes. The eyes of the sea urchin will be the best opener. When you pull out the eyes you can perfectly open the sea urchin.
Then this is all after almost am hour of collecting its meat. It was so tiring to stand on the sink and smashed everything and collecting it by spoon but because I like it and I'm very eager laziness didn't strike on me hahaha. Actually this volume of sea urchin is almost 50 pieces of sea urchins but it's not exactly because I didn't count it.
And! Let's eat. They said it's best when paired by coconut vinegar or calamansi so I combined both and add salt on the mixture. It can be eaten raw or the famous way of eating it is raw but sometimes some of it grilled then put egg. Or they are going to fry it and mix with vegetables. It was is meaty, so slimy and very fine that melts in the mouth. I want to eat it again but I'm going to buy next time because it's very difficult to harvest it and it takes time to swim and clean it.
And look! My husband has a very big catch! It was so blessed! We had fish for a week.
It has a very huge, long and delicious caviar. I steamed it. It has two caviars but I only cooked one.
Yesterday morning, here's another catch! The sea was so generous!
That's all for today foodie lovers, the sea has so many to give. I'm looking forward to what I can eat and discover Seafoods in the future. Thank you for reading my blog until here. I hope you enjoy my pictures.
Thank you so much!