Recipe for Sea Cucumber

[Sasha_V]

There was an Iron Chef episode witht he theme ingredient of Sea Cucumber...It was not a success for either chef or challenger.

It seems that they are a mostly used as a thickening agent like agar or gelatin. Thus a stew of seafood, beef boines and gelatinous rice is held together in an almost aspic like way with the addition of sea cucumbers.

If I remember correctly, the flesh is almost incidental, you boil them in broth or seaweed (kelp) infued water and then dispose of the "meat" as it has ranferred its best properties to the stock that you now cook the other ingredients in.

As a side note, sea cucumber are an endangered species in many parts of the world, overfishing by local traditional methods...that then feed the insatiable japanese cuisine and chinese medicinal market have seen stocks depleted everywhere. When they go, star fish prosper and populations explode (the cucumber ingests microscopic starfish larvae). The star fish then kill off the lobster, crab and oyster stocks....AND THAT JUST MAKES ONE TRULY PEEVED, THAT DOES!

So consider returning the live ones (hard to tell, sometimes) to the sea-floor to do their thing...as it gets you better seafood further up the food chain.

Sasha

[ianhlnd]

Well, to top this off, the cukes were delicious with a slight urchin/octapus taste which went very well sauteed with oyster mushrooms over rice, washed down with copious amounts of sake. As for the aphrodisiac effect, well, there may be something to that.

I think I've found the owner of these critters, but he's out for a while, probably getting more cukes. These are deep water creatures, below 100 ft. A lot of work getting these things, so I don't think it would be proper to set them free a-la free willy.