At a summer lunch at Harbor House, an inn with a two-Michelin-starred restaurant in the seaside town of Elk, California, chef Matthew Kammerer treated diners to a feast of creamy, umami-rich purple urchin and a lot of words you’ve probably never heard of.
He draped golden lobes of uni, the culinary name for the sea urchin’s gonads, over yuzu chawanmushi and blended them into mayo for fried maitakes. He doused roasted cabbages with urchin sauce and even candied the seafood to serve atop seaweed ice cream.
