Abalone

So I've enjoyed a lot in Chinese restaurants.
But unlike any other shellfish, I have no real idea how to cook.
Hmart often has on sale (currently $3 each), any suggestions?
Something that can be carried to a picnic a bonus but not crucial

[Jenise]

Abalone is one of those foods where bigger is better. The more mature, the more flavor.

Pardon the brain dump, but I remember salad-plate sized wild abalone in my Southern California childhood. Not only was anyone with a wetsuit and a knife entitled to pry them off rocks along California's shoreline at that time, one could occasionally find them at fish mongers. A favorite thing of mine to order in one of the fancy 'Continental' restaurants my parents took us to with some regularity was called Abalone d'Oro--a single order was two abalone steaks stuffed with crab meat, folded over like tacos and pan fried in an egg batter. I don't recall a sauce--I was a child--but dear god!

I watched my grandma prepare them once, and know she pounded them a lot to tenderize them before breading and pan-frying them like schnitzels.

Then the laws changed and I haven't seen it since but for observing someone pass an illegal harvest to a winemaker I was visiting in Sonoma. I had small, delicately flavored farm-raised abalones once at the Cannery in Montery Bay, pan-fried like grandma's. And I've had them twice in Asian restaurants, once in Vancouver and once many years before in Australia, included in a stir-fry. They are nowhere close to the flavor of wild, but they're good. I presume some pounding is required even if not close to as much as their wild adult relatives. My dad used to buy canned abalone that he would dice and dip--cold--on toothpicks, in soy sauce.

IIRC, they grow about an inch a year, so those 3" ones you're seeing took some time to grow. It's not a highly profitable thing to do, but I can't blame anyone who remembers what I do wanting to try.

And that's about all I have to share. Never cooked them myself. The ones at H-Mart, are they an Asian import?

Here you go - an oldie but a simple tasty recipe I have used since the 1970s when I was a Scuba instructor and a friend ran an abalone boat up the coast (I had a large sack of abalone in my freezer). The chef who came up with the recipe was Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet, star of one of my favourite cooking shows and I still refer to his cook books from time to time. I made this for my first fancy wine dinner way back when.

Abalone Victoria

2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley

1 cup bread crumbs

1 egg yolk

2 teaspoons clarified butter

1 teaspoon lemon juice

Flour, to coat

8 sliced abalone steaks

Salt, to taste

White pepper, to taste

1/2 cup butter

1 tablespoon sherry

Mix together parsley and bread crumbs. In a separate bowl, combine egg yolk, clarified butter and lemon juice. Place flour on a dish for dredging.

Season 1 side of abalone steaks with salt and pepper. Lightly flour and paint with egg mixture. Coat with parsley/bread crumb mixture.

Melt butter in frying pan. When butter begins to foam, add steaks and cook 1 minute each side. Add sherry and flame. Transfer to a serving dish and nap with browned butter from pan.

More abalone recipes at https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/aba ... pe-1937596

Graham is still around and lives not too far from Jenise, and at 91 he remarried last year - maybe the abalone that keeps him going?

He still looks damned good at that age - see https://www.heraldnet.com/news/gallopin ... -newlywed/

[Jenise]

He got married???? Argh, I had not heard this. Nor would I have expected him to marry a little old lady. I realize he's 91, but she looks older than him and I know I'm being very prejudiced here. I'm glad he's happy.

He mentions Kirkland's 3-berry blend. It's a local product here, the people two houses over from me own that berry farm.

I recall that California's abalone population crashed in the late 1970s and the 1980s. I don't think it's recovered since. This was blamed on two factors. The first was the influx of immigrants from Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War. The immigrants were very fond of abalone and over-harvested it. The second factor was the resurgence of the sea otter population. Sea otters are the abalone's natural predator.

-Paul W.

Abalone are functionally a sessile organism. Although they can move about to rocks they live on, they don't make large changes in location and will usually be found within a fairly small area for their entire existence. That means that they are quite sensitive to reduction of population - harvest half the abalone in a particular area and that halves the likelihood of a given abalone getting lucky after finding another like minded ab to shiver each others timbers. The effects of what would seem to be a fairly modest reduction in density has a much more profound effect than it does on more mobile populations like fish.

And in regard to the Asian taste for abs, we saw that up here in our large Chinese community - hard to find foods have an exaggerated value for them, in an 'I've got this and you don't' sort of way. It was in high demand for special dinners like wedding feasts etc.

And yes, Jenise - he sure looks better than the other denizens of the retirement community he lives in, doesn't he?

My tastes are no doubt plebian, but my fondest memories are for the fried abalone strips of my childhood. That being said, my all-time favorite scallop experience was stopping for some deep-fried bay scallops on Cape Elizabeth, ME as I was biking up the East Coast on US 1, so maybe I'm just a sucker for fried shellfish.