Chef’s Corner-Bits and Bites, by Chef Michael Hutchings
Abalone!
Above-onshore abalone farm at The Cultured Abalone, Goleta, CA
The mention of this mollusk conjures up memories of someone diving for, eating it somewhere, hearing about it, or seeing a button or ashtray made from the shell. Mostly we remember it as the abalone steak. Some diners claim that the texture reminds them of Wiener schnitzel or conch.
The abalone is really a huge, flattened snail, a sort of escargot of the sea. The abalone has its origins in the Upper Cretaceous period, some 80 million years ago. In California there are four types, red, black , green, white and pink. The white and red varieties are considered the best culinary types. The abalone has a long history as a food source. California Indians used them as food and the shells were used as tools, ornaments and barter items.
In the 1800s, commercial harvesting started on a large scale first by Chinese then Japanese immigrants. Hard hat divers began harvesting in the 1900s. In 1915 “Pop” Ernest Doelter, a restaurateur in Monterey, introduced abalone at the Panama Pacific International Exposition and abalone became a gourmet food item.
Inevitable, the abalone resource was overexploited and wild stocks dwindled to the point where harvesting was banned. The 80’s were the last hurrah for the wild stock. About that same time, marine scientists at the University of California at Santa Barbara discovered how to induce abalone to spawn and a new industry was born, abalone mariculture.
Enter John McMullen of Ab Lab. I met John one afternoon when he wandered in to the kitchen at the Olive Mill Bistro, a bygone Santa Barbara restaurant, with a bag of red abalone that were 1-1/2 inches in diameter, live in the shell. He was growing them for the State Fish and Game Department to reseed the depleted abalone beds. I had been cooking the large wild abalone for years and tried these out as an appetizer. They were a huge hit and I was soon preparing some 20 dozen a week.
Locally, The Cultured Abalone company has been raising abalone at an onshore mariculture farm located in Goleta. Abalone are bred and raised in onshore tanks until they reach a commercial size in about 3-1/2 years. Sea water is pumped in from a deep intake and passed through a UV light to kill off parasites. They start life as free swimming, microscopic animals eating an algae that grows on the tanks and then graduate to kelp, their natural food. The abalone farms sells live abalone that are about 3-1/2 inches in the shell. As a twist of history, the orientals are still big buyers of abalone and the farm ships thousands overseas each year.
Preparation involves scrapping them out of the shell, removing the “working parts” and giving them a little time under a tenderizing mallet. I like the classic egg batter method with a quick sauté in butter. A white wine and butter emulsion sauce with enoki daki mushrooms, snipped dill and diced tomatoes is a great foil for this unique local product.
They are available from The Cultured Abalone, (805) 685-1956.
Tastefully yours,
Chef Michael Hutchings
Michael’s Catering
