Sea urchin and truffles - Arles sur Tech

Post by **Kate** » Tue 27 Jan 2015 15:34

Sea urchin and truffles on the menu. Unusual and well worth the drive to this extremely good restaurant between Amelie and Arles sur Tech.
http://www.anglophone-direct.com/Restau ... s-sur-Tech

martyn94 · Post by **martyn94** » Tue 27 Jan 2015 17:20

Kate wrote:Sea urchin and truffles on the menu. Unusual and well worth the drive to this extremely good restaurant between Amelie and Arles sur Tech.
http://www.anglophone-direct.com/Restau ... s-sur-Tech

Together or separately? Oursin à la truffe/truffe aux oursins seemed sufficiently unlikely that I googled it. Needless to say, it's been done: various hits, including this one - http://petitbistro.cuisineblog.fr/50682 ... D-OURSINS/

Post by **Kate** » Tue 27 Jan 2015 17:42

Well, here's the menu so looks like it's together. I've never eaten oursin before. Anybody know what it's like?

☛ Assiette de fruits de mer de nos côtes
☛ Crémeux d’ œuf à la truffe, île flottante oursin et truffe, crème de topinambours
☛ Coulant au chocolat, tuile aux amandes et sorbet au basilic

martyn94 · Post by **martyn94** » Tue 27 Jan 2015 19:03

Kate wrote:Well, here's the menu so looks like it's together. I've never eaten oursin before. Anybody know what it's like?

Yes, but I wouldn't care to describe it precisely. It's a sort of seafood: you eat their gonads. They are said to have a "goût iodé", which sounds right. As with other seafood, a lot of the fun (if you eat them as is) is the weird appearance, and the need to wrestle the smallish part that you do eat from the biggish part that you don't. But in this case that work has evidently been done.

martyn94 · Post by **martyn94** » Tue 27 Jan 2015 21:15

martyn94 wrote:
Kate wrote:Well, here's the menu so looks like it's together. I've never eaten oursin before. Anybody know what it's like?
Yes, but I wouldn't care to describe it precisely. It's a sort of seafood: you eat their gonads. They are said to have a "goût iodé", which sounds right. As with other seafood, a lot of the fun (if you eat them as is) is the weird appearance, and the need to wrestle the smallish part that you do eat from the biggish part that you don't. But in this case that work has evidently been done.

On reflection, I didn't quite capture their full oddness. The variety that you eat round here are roughly egg-shaped and covered in spines (hence "sea hedgehog"). You open the top a bit like a boiled egg, and eat their reproductive parts (coral, roe) which are an orangey/red colour and laid out like a five-pointed star (they are the same family as star-fish - everything about them is symmetrical 5 ways). Like I said, quite weird. If you want them fresh, there is a guy who dives for them and and sells them from a hole in the wall at Quai Fanal in Port Vendres. And not expensive, as these things go. But I guess most of them go to restaurants or our neighbours who cherish these things more. I last had them on New Year's Eve circa 1980: my hostess was a fishmonger and got them wholesale.

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