I am preparing an abalone tasting this week for a local organization. My usual default sauce is a beurre blanc with enoki mushrooms, dill, and fresh tomato. I am going to shake it up a bit and do a red wine butter sauce and set the abalone on a nest of forbidden rice. The abalone are raised on a farm by The Cultured Abalone. Dough Bush is the marine biologist in charge of the farm. They raise the red abalone as it has proven to be the best of the local species. Here is a link for abalone preparation that I made for The Cultured Abalone Farm a few years back.
Notes from Wikipedia: Haliotis rufescens (red abalone) is a species of very large edible sea snail in the family Haliotidae, the abalones, ormer shells or paua. It is distributed from British Columbia, Canada, to Baja California, Mexico. It is most common in the southern half of its range.
Red abalone is the largest and most common abalone found in the northern part of the state of California, and it is the only species of abalone still legally harvested there, though on a restricted basis.Habitat
Red abalone live in rocky areas with kelp. They feed on the kelp species that grow in their home range, including giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera), feather boa kelp (Egregia menziesii), and bull kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana). Juveniles eat coralline algae, bacteria, and diatoms. They are found from the intertidal zone to water more than 180 m (590 ft) deep but are most common between 6 and 40 m (20 and 131 ft).
