Abalone Three Ways

Aba_hand

It’s good to have friends who dive. Sometimes they’ll just show up at your house on a Sunday evening with beer and abalone. I haven’t had abalone in years. It is a very special food and on a Sunday a couple weeks back, the abalone showed up and I got to decide how to cook it with the stuff I had in the house.

We had:

1.    Southeast Asian Abalone Ceviche
2.    Pan-fried Abalone
3.    Poached Abalone

All that and the alliterative salad you see below and a variation on the caramelized rice dish from my new favorite cookbook, My Bombay Kitchen by Niloufer King and it really was a memorable meal.

Abalone season is over so you’ll have to file this advice away until April or so. That should give you plenty of time to cultivate a few diving friends. Sorry no pictures of all the dishes. We were too busy stuffing ourselves.

Almost_salad

Salad: Persimmons, pomegranate seeds, and pumpkin seeds along with arugula and fennel.

Fall_salad

Ceviche: Cut the pounded abalone into strips and add a little dressing of fish sauce, lime, chilies, cilantro, shallots, and a little bit of sugar. It sat for about an hour and became incredibly tender.

Panfried: Slice the abalone first and then pound. Dip each piece in flour seasoned lightly with salt and pepper and pan fry for just a minute or two on each side in a mixture of butter and olive oil.

Poached: (Pictured) Pound the abalone whole and then put it in a casserole dish just large enough to contain it with 1/2 cup-3/4 cup white wine, a splash of olive oil, a dab of butter, a couple slices lemon (with rind), 2-3 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced, and 2-3 sprigs parsley, and Salt and pepper. Bring to a boil on the stove, remove from heat, cover tightly and place in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes or so. Check abalone for tenderness before serving.

Poached_ab

This one was transformative. I had no idea poached abalone could be so good. It was also by far the easiest of the three dishes to prepare.

Shell
I got to keep a shell! Isn't it pretty?

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Blogplay
This entry was posted in Asian, seafood. Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

  • Buy My Books



  • Shop Chronicle Books

    Cookbook

  • Archives


  • Categories


  • Connect with Vanessa

    Twitter Facebook RSS

    Enter your email address to
    receive my blog posts via email:
    Delivered by FeedBurner

  • Copyright Information

    The recipes and images on this site belong to Vanessa Barrington. Feel free to link here and if you’d like to use a recipe or image, please ask permission first. Thank you.