the underbelly

I faced a common problem the other day. What do you do when you have all this left over sea urchin? I know. It’s like when you’re inundated with tins of caviar or don’t know what to do with all that champagne. So what did I do?  I made pasta. 

I’d never had sea urchin pasta before, but I’d read about it…..in places….anyway it’s not like there’s that many urchin recipes out there. No urchin preserves. No urchin dip. So pasta it was. I sauteed up some garlic and tomatoes and then tossed in about half of the urchins (chopped to the size of a small fingernail as the recipe told me – which btws is the grossest chopping instruction I’ve been given) at the end, just to warm them up. Then I transferred that concoction to a bowl and boiled up some spaghettini. A bit of olive oil, some pepper and then the urchin mixture was added to the now drained pasta. I mixed all of that together, tossed it into a bowl and topped it all off with a few more pieces of urchin and cheese. Yum. It was creamy and oceany and incredibly satisfying. Definitely going to happen again.