Wednesday 21 July 2010

Food on Tenerife - Sea Urchins...Eat Them

Forgive the groan inducing title, but this is should be of interest to those adventurous foodies out there.

From the 23rd to the 25th July the Hotel Escuela Santa Cruz is offering a very imaginative menu based on the erizo del mar...that's sea urchin to you and me.

For €28 you get to try sea urchin croquettes, sea urchin salad, sea urchin with guacamole, sea urchin and rice, fish with sea urchin sauce. Wisely I feel, they've opted to leave the sea urchins out of the dessert choices.

It's an interesting menu for sure and sounds so much more enticing in Spanish...croquetitas de diadema de mar anyone?

4 comments:

islandmomma said...

I only tried urchin once. When the kids were young we were spending the day on a quieter beach, and next to us (have got the plum spot,right next to the rock face and erected their "tents" of old sheets and such) was a local family. They were snorkelling, as we were, and showed us how to open them and shared their "catch". They were absolutely yummy, prefered them to oysters, for instance. It was a magical day, but never tried them since. Would definitely reccomend to anyone looking for something different to perk up their taste buds.

Real Tenerife said...

I'm a lover of seafood, but I've never tried urchins - probably because I've never noticed them on a menu (until now I didn't know what they were called in Spanish).

So how do you open them without serious injury?

Their skeletal shells washed up on the beaches where I grew up - beautiful objects.

The Ortega's said...

Hmm...good plan to get rid of all the invasive urchins here in Tenerife, but I think I'll pass. Any idea when one could learn to make paella while on the island???

Real Tenerife said...

Je Je - better to eat them than to stand on them.

I know of places that have courses in cooking, but not sure if they include paella.

Quite a lot of the fiestas patronales in towns include cooking demonstrations and workshops, but most of the ones I've seen are more about trad Canarian cooking and as I'm sure you know paella is more a Valencian dish even though they serve it up here all the time.

But here's a Canarian version from Tacoronte:

http://local.parasaber.com/Paella_Tacoronte_Canarias-r1396853-Tacoronte_CN.html