Dad and I got down to covering Tsukiji Market and Kappabashi Kitchen Town today, the 2 spots we had to go on the last full day we had left in Japan. While on our visit to Tsukiji, dad and I got to try a few interesting things like coffee flavoured giant red beans, some seaweed that look like a greenish bunch of prawn eggs, fish milt and sea urchin. The one that dad and I have been wanting to try was the sea urchin as we've watched Andrew Zimmern raving about it all the time on Bizarre Foods America.
Once we got our first taste, it was clear why he had a love for that orangey reproductive organs. They packed a huge punch of flavour. Imagine a concentrate of crab roe and liver, all in one teaspoon size blob, exploding in your mouth and going right to your sinuses and brain. That, put on warm vingared rice, is just a simple yet super delicious pairing.
We had it in 4 different ways. The first was with simmered fish milt. The fish milt was rather bland, but the creaminess of it went very well with the uni and made the uni shine. With scallop, there was a bit of an overdose of seafood flavours. Both flavours came out strong, and I needed a tea to taste anything else after that. The third and fourth were the buns pictured below, both made to look like sea urchins, whole and open. One was a bun stuffed with uni paste, probably mixed with fish paste as it was light and didn't have much flavour. The open bun was filled with pure uni, and that was absolutely delicious. The strong flavours of the uni is just balanced by the sweetness of the bun. If only they have frozen take home bags of that as well!
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