Coupons i sea urchins… but you know that because of the intensive fishing are depopulation at risk of these organisms?
So what can you do in the kitchen? For example a plate of linguine with sea urchins without sea urchins!
The dish is called "The hedgehog is a whim" and it's an idea / provocation that comes from seafront, a Quartu Sant’Elena restaurant, just outside Cagliari: the recipe reproduces flavor, aroma and texture of the curls without however using them in the preparation.
The dish is included in the restaurant menu until the end of the hedgehog fishing season in April 2020 and part of the proceeds from the sale will support the #iRicciMiPiaccionoInMare awareness campaign association QuiEtica, which has already seen many restaurateurs join, determined not to serve the delicious ingredient anymore.
You can easily replicate the dish at home if you also want to help preserve the curls. Here is the recipe.
Il Riccio is a Capriccio: the recipe for "pasta with sea urchins" without the sea urchins
Ingredients for one serving
100 g of linguine
100 g of mussels with the shell
1 yolk
150 g of seed oil
10 g of white vinegar
10 g of parsley
Method
Clean the mussels and let them hatch in a pan with just a drizzle of water. Once opened, allow them to cool and then remove them from their shell while preserving the cooking water.
Insert the mussels, the yolk, the vinegar and the oil in the bowl of a mixer and blend at maximum power for 2 minutes, when the mixture is homogeneous, creamy and free of lumps it will be ready.
Cook the pasta al dente, pass it in a pan with a drizzle of oil, a clove of garlic and parsley. When the pasta is ready, add the mussel emulsion continuing to stir and helping with the cooking water if necessary.
How mussels and eggs replace hedgehogs
"We wanted to send out a strong signal," he explains Giuliano Matta, owner of Frontemare, «that went beyond the simple elimination of curls from the restaurant menu and turned into a concrete support for those who, like QuiEtica, help to turn the spotlight on a problem of enormous importance. On this occasion, thanks to our chef, we also showed that you can sacrifice the main ingredient without sacrificing its taste ". "In creating this new dish," added Lo chef Emmanuele Cossu, "We started from the characteristics of the hedgehog protein, the base of the emulsion that we used in the previous recipe, replacing it, after numerous attempts, with another ingredient with a strong sea flavor and resistant chain of amino acids, mussels, an autochthonous raw material and not at risk, while the consistency of the emulsion was fixed also thanks to the use of egg yolk .
The damage of intensive (and abusive) fishing
The sea urchin is in rapid rarefaction in the Sardinian seas, thanks to the increasingly intensive withdrawal for gastronomic purposes by professional fishermen, who can withdraw up to 2000 specimens a day for 6 days a week. Calculating that there are 189 fishermen authorized and that the fishing season lasts 5 and a half months, potentially 49 million sea urchins can be fished per year in Sardinian waters alone. "These are calculations that are difficult to perform accurately but no less alarming for this," he says Manuela Maninchedda, president of QuiEtica, "also because, as pointed out in the recent report of the regional agency Agris, 35% of professional fishermen do not return the annual booklet to write down the number of specimens caught. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to calculate those taken from illegal fishing. An investigation by the University of Cagliari recalls that restocking is also compromised by the fact that 50% of the curls caught have a display case smaller than the minimum commercial size, or 5 cm, making it necessary to use more than 1200 curls to obtain a kg of pulp for food use ".
