Heyy guys !! It's here as promised, Step by step instructions on how to prepare Uni and a recipe afterwards so you can make something of your own.
Now the first this you want to do is rinse your Uni off.
After that let in sit to dry for a few minutes.
After you've let in sit to dry for a while take a pair of scissors and cut around the mouth of the Uni, roughly 1 cm away from the circular mouth, use the mouth as a guideline. The gross stuff you will see inside is only plant matter and some guts, it's the yellow roe attached to the sides that we're after.
Now that we've opened it all up get a container of cold water and a spoon ready. What you need to do now is scoop out everything around the roe into the water without damaging it. After you have everything scooped out you want to take the roe out and into the same water. To do this you take your spoon and start at the bottom of the shell and slowly scoop up and underneath it to remove from the wall of the urchin.
Now prepare another bowl of cold water. Remove the roe from the dirty water and place in the clean water then proceed to clean all the bits and pieces of seaweed off. Don't worry if white or yellow liquid starts to ooze out, that's just coming from the centre on the roe and is something that adds to the natural flavour.
I didn't get many other pictures after this one. But what you need to do now is pull all the Uni roe out of the water once fully cleaned and set aside on a towel or paper towel to dry.
And here we go !!!! Like I said I'll be giving you guys a recipe for this so I'm going with something simple and easy to do, tempura Uni with spicy frites.
For the tempura batter:
1/2 cup flour
1 TBSP corn starch
1 TSP baking powder
1 ounce sake
1 egg
2/3 cup water
Mix all your dry ingredients together, then take your egg and sake and mix. Now fold it into dry mixture.
With the water your going to want to be careful, you wont need all of the water but it's good to have a little measured out just in case you want a thinner consistency of the batter, slowly fold in the water until the batter looks almost like reduced heavy cream and it's smooth with no chunks floating around in it now that that's all done place in the fridge and pray it wont split and tempura batters made at home are known to do. if you've folded the batter properly as opposed to mixed it it really should be fine, the key to a good batter is mixing or moving it as little as possible.
At this point I'm hoping you all have a wok at home, if you don't it's easy enough to get one at your local Chinese super market. So if you do have a wok fill it just a little under 1/2 way with oil and turn onto a medium high heat so it's good for deep frying.
While your oil is heating up make your frites, for this you need 2 small-medium potatoes and a japanese mandelon ( about 45$ at your local kitchen store but will last you a life time) and take the medium teeth and screw them in then proceed to cut you potatoes into frites. place them in a bowl under running cold water to clean them of starches and dirt of any kinda, drain and set aside until needed.
Now it's time to cook your Uni. Take your batter out of the fridge and test the oil's temperature take a small dab of the tempura batter and drop it into the oil, it's should begin to fry within a matter of seconds, if not then wait a few more minutes until the oil is hot enough. Once the oil in hot enough give each piece of Uni a good coating of the tempura batter and fry. The Uni should be done once it's golden brown and floating at the top. once all your Uni is done set aside on a paper towel to drain of excess oil. Now all you need to do is your frites, this it fairly straight forward. All you need to do is drop the raw potato slices into the oil and let them cook till golden then quickly scoop them out with a slotted spoon and into a bowl, once in the bowl toss with paprika and salt to taste. Now plate your frites and Uni, serve with japanese mayo if you prefer.
This is the dish pictured above if you haven't taken a peek already, and I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did !! Time for me to say good night because it's getting a little late for me over here so I'll be wishing you all a great day and and amazing food, Chef is signing off.
