Sea Urchin Quotes

“Indeed Christianity passes. Passes—it has gone! It has littered the beaches of life with churches, cathedrals, shrines and crucifixes, prejudices and intolerances, like the sea urchin and starfish and empty shells and lumps of stinging jelly upon the sands here after a tide. A tidal wave out of Egypt. And it has left a multitude of little wriggling theologians and confessors and apologists hopping and burrowing in the warm nutritious sand. But in the hearts of living men, what remains of it now? Doubtful scraps of Arianism. Phrases. Sentiments. Habits.”
― H.G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography

“The clearest signs of Hakodate's current greatness, though, can be found clustered around its central train station, in the morning market, where blocks and blocks of pristine seafood explode onto the sidewalks like an edible aquarium, showcasing the might of the Japanese fishing industry.
Hokkaido is ground zero for the world's high-end sushi culture. The cold waters off the island have long been home to Japan's A-list of seafood: hairy crab, salmon, scallops, squid, and, of course, uni. The word "Hokkaido" attached to any of these creatures commands a premium at market, one that the finest sushi chefs around the world are all too happy to pay.
Most of the Hokkaido haul is shipped off to the Tsukiji market in Tokyo, where it's auctioned and scattered piece by piece around Japan and the big cities of the world. But the island keeps a small portion of the good stuff for itself, most of which seems to be concentrated in a two-hundred-meter stretch in Hakodate.
Everything here glistens with that sparkly sea essence, and nearly everything is meant to be consumed in the moment. Live sea urchins, piled high in hillocks of purple spikes, are split with scissors and scraped out raw with chopsticks. Scallops are blowtorched in their shells until their edges char and their sweet liquor concentrates. Somewhere, surely, a young fishmonger will spoon salmon roe directly into your mouth for the right price.”
― Matt Goulding, Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture

“Uni no shiokara is roughly translated "salted sea urchin." It is a mixture of fresh uni shellfish, salt and sake.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“Seafood is also something we cannot do without as a country surrounded by sea. And the rich variety of seafood is often used in rice balls.
The first one is a classic rice ball, with salted salmon. It's slightly different since the grilled salted salmon is broken down into flakes...
... and mixed into the rice together with chopped green onion...
...then made into a rice ball and wrapped in roasted dried seaweed."
"Ah, the salmon has been mixed nicely into the rice, so it has a very rich taste."
"And the flavor of the green onion gets rid of the fishy scent of the salmon, making the rice ball taste even better."
"This will be great to have in a lunch box."
"The next rice ball is coated with shredded dried seaweed just like the last one, but the filling is different. It's sea urchin, but it's not raw sea urchin or the typical bottled sea urchin. It's sea urchin shiokara."
"Sea urchin shiokara?"
"Most of the typical bottled sea urchins have been steeped in alcohol. It's probably because they're easier to make and easier to eat.
But in the old days, sea urchin was often made into shiokara. If you salt the sea urchin and let it age and ferment, it becomes far richer tasting compared to a raw sea urchin or the alcohol-macerated sea urchin.
Nowadays, that sea urchin shiokara has become very rare, and many people don't even know what it tastes like. So I've decided to use it as a filling for the rice ball."
"Ooh, it has such a rich taste."
"By being fermented, the sea urchin has developed a completely different flavor along with the original flavor it had.”
― Tetsu Kariya, The Joy of Rice

“A sea urchin in its spiky shell. Saffron-orange flesh cupped in a shell of black spines, served on a bed of green conifer leaves.”
― Nigel Slater, A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts