Sea urchin with preserved sea urchin flavored scrambled egg 雲丹と粒雲丹スクランブルドエッグ

This is a variation on Mark's book p148. I have not yet made the lobster sauce according to the original recipe but I am, again, modifying the original recipe. My mother sent us "preserved" sea urchin called "tsubu uni" 粒雲丹. I do not know the details but they are salted and alcohol is added (and other things I am sure). This type of uni can be preserved for rather a long time. It has quite a different taste (rather salty) and texture from fresh sea urchin but it has its own interesting flavor and texture. You could enjoy this by just "licking" it as you drink sake. Since we got fresh sea urchin, I came up with this dish which is a modification of the recipe in Mark's book p148. The idea is to flavor scrambled eggs with the "preserved" sea urchin and place fresh sea urchin on the top.

I put 1 tbs of cream and a half tsp of the "preserved" sea urchin in a small bowl food processor and mixed them well. Beat one large egg and add to this cream mixture. On low heat, put 1tsp of butter in a none-stick frying pan. Add the egg mixture and using a silicon spatula, scramble rapidly to make a creamy soft scrambled egg. Add cracked pepper (the preserved sea urchin is salty so I omitted salt). Place the scrambled egg in the bottom of a small serving bowl (in my case, the egg shaped bowls), top it with fresh sea urchin. I garnished the egg with chopped chives and the fresh sea urchin with "aonori" powder and drizzled soy sauce with wasabi dissolved in it.

The texture of the egg is very nice. The preserved sea urchin has a rather unique flavor. This is a very interesting and good dish.