ABALONE

Back in the day, or so I'm told, abalone were plentiful as all get out. At various times during their respective childhoods, both Mom and Dad made their way down the cliffs behind White's Point to the rocky shoreline where they collected abs and octopus. Over the years abalone became scarcer, and by the time I appeared on the scene the only evidence that these oversize sea snails had been on our home table was the shells that Dad had under the kumquat tree. My sisters remember eating them, though.

It's possible to get abs again now. They grow them to market size (10-12 cm) in big aquaculture tanks. Even in captivity, abalone mature slowly and so they're still very expensive. I hear from those who know that these little buttons of mollusk actually do taste like abalone, and hopefully they make a better facsimile of the real (wild) article than do most fish-farm products.

Acquiring a wild abalone is a truly rare event, and when a friend brought me an exceptional specimen, 27 cm and frozen in a block of seawater, I knew that I wouldn't be at my usual level of seafood-confidence… but there was someone who would know exactly what to do with the thing—Mom!

I've never really asked Mom for kitchen guidance, despite her reputation as an excellent cook. I guess I like working things out for myself. But an abalone of this size and quality demands to be shared with good company who understand the uniqueness of the acquisition, and for this I couldn't do better than Mom and Dad. And as a huge plus, I could lean on Mom for help in prepping the beast.

I had already thawed the ab, freeing it from the remnants of its block of ice after it sat out overnight and part of the next morning. The shell, gill, head and most of the remaining organs had been removed from the mantle cavity before it was frozen.

The first step was sprinkling the black parts with kosher salt and rubbing (with my fingers) to remove the pigmented skin, which came off rather easily. The dorsal side of the animal—the part that anchors body to shell—consists of a thick, muscular "post" which extends upwards from the "foot" of the gastropod which is also pure muscle. Top side:

Bottom side (this is the part that creeps over and holds tightly to the rocks):


While every part of the animal is basically edible, the mantle and the outermost layer of skin and muscle (particularly on the bottom of the foot) are too tough for any kind of "delicate" presentation. They need to be removed with a very sharp knife. After "shaving" a thin layer off of the top of the post, the next cut removed a strip from around the perimeter that included the fringe of mantle as well as the widest portion of the tough foot bottom.

Notice I'm saving all of the extra bits. We turned them into a tasty snack that I'll get to later. Next I sliced off the toughest layers of skin and muscle from the bottom of the foot:

The mass remaining is pure, tender, mollusk-y wonderfulness. I cut the gastropod right down the center, and it's clear that this foot muscle is nearly completely devoid of viscera (most of the "internal organs" in mollusks have been evolutionarily relocated into the mantle cavity). There is just a smidgen of "uglier parts," like the brownish stuff in the indentation seen in the pic below, which should be cut away (and saved!).


So apart from the tough and/or unsightly bits, Mom and I decided that we should prepare as much of the animal for sashimi as possible—a very good plan because with leftover sashimi, you can do anything, but the reverse is not true—you can't do anything else to abalone and then turn it into sashimi later.

Turning each half of the beast cut-side-down I started making thin slices which I arranged neatly in a dish.

The pile of raw abalone slices grew. These slices are about 2.0 mm thick, and given the size of this abalone, I should have made another longitudinal cut before starting with the salami slicing. The width of the slices made for more-than-bite-sized morsels for most eaters. They were just right for me, though.


In my family the proper awabi-sashimi condiment is grated ginger, lemon, and soy sauce. Mom didn't even bring out the wasabi. The texture was silken and tender yet definitely toothsome. The flavor is uniquely abalone, though I did think for a moment that it was reminiscent of sashimi made from very large calico bass.

So did the three of us eat that entire plate of raw abalone? No but we managed to put a significant dent in it. The remains were split (I took half home to share with Adri).

What about the ugly bits and tougher trimmings? Well what do you say about breaded and fried? Flour, egg, panko crumbs (in that order), then into some hot oil.


All of these nuggets were darned tasty, but some (particularly the perimeter strip) were very tough—like chewing on abalone-flavored inner tubes.

Many thanks to Kirby for providing me with the raw materials and opportunity for this experience, and of course to Mom for showing me the "way of the abalone."

SASHIMI

After procuring a large, premium fish of a species worthy of raw consumption (tuna, yellowtail, seabass are the obvious ones, but there are others, such as wild salmon, kelp bass, and striped bass that are also excellent), I usually follow a sequence of dishes that begins with raw, progresses to seared (tataki) and marinated dishes, and by the third day (if there is any fish left), I'll be cooking the fish.

Some fish are just better raw. For example, it should be a felony to apply any kind of heat to bluefin tuna, which is transcendent in flavor in its uncooked state but becomes just ordinary as cooked fish. White seabass (what I'm working with today) is already very firm when raw and has a tendency to become unappealingly tough or even rubbery if it's not cooked with extreme care. Yellowfin tuna, or "ahi," is excellent raw (though not even half as good as bluefin) but is improved with a bit of searing or marinating. Others, like yellowtail, salmon (wild—never the farm-raised, artificially-colored stuff), and striped bass, are wonderful at all levels of heat-treatment, with the caveat that overcooked fish (to the point of flaking) is never any good.

The key to success in home preparation of raw fish dishes is proper care of the ingredient. This means keeping the fish cold with minimal exposure to air, water, and bacteria, and to this end I bring my fish home from the ocean whole and packed in ice, rather than enjoying the convenience of having them cleaned and filleted on the boat (or if you don't fish, by the fishmonger, but be damned sure that the fish is less than a day post-capture and packed in ice). Rinsing with water is a sure initiator of bacterial degradation, and it also causes osmotic stress to those cells that are exposed to the water. Fish can be gutted without water, but care should be taken to remove the innards without rupturing the intestine or the gall bladder. Done correctly, there will be minimal blood, which can be wiped clean with a paper towel. Finally, the skin should be left on the fillets, as it protects the flesh from exposure and can be removed at the time of preparation for the table.

This may be totally gross, but one should always keep an eye open for dark spots in the muscle. Sometimes they are just spots of blood, but they might also be coiled-up Anasakis roundworms, which are not good to eat. The only way to kill them is to either freeze the fish (which ruins the texture) or to cook it (and this would mean no raw fish at all). Fortunately they are large enough to be easily visible—especially in thin slices of the light, transparent-fleshed species like seabass—while the other species like tuna with darker, more opaque flesh are far less likely to have them.

The easiest and most typical approach to sashimi is to take a slab from the fillet of a large fish (I think the frogs call this a pavé) and cut a "log" from it—meaning that the cut should be parallel with the direction that the fish swims. If you're good, the skin and most of the dark muscle can be left behind when you make this cut. If desired, the remaining dark muscle can be removed with your very sharp knife. Cut the log into salami slices, plate, and repeat. Simple. The only required accompanying condiment is soy sauce, but standard additions are wasabi and grated fresh ginger (ginger is not common in restaurants, but for inshore fish this is traditionally preferable to wasabi). Less standard but also very good are lemon and sambal oelek (Indonesian chili sauce).



Breakfast of champions!