Erendira Revisited: Abulones

Erendira, on the coast a couple hours south of Ensenada, is the home of my most cherished shellfish-related memory. (I’m not food-obsessed, am I?)

In August of 1989 I camped on the rocks above the Pacific there, with my friend Steve and his Aussie friend called, if I recall correctly, Fish. Anyway, right before sunset, after we had roamed the point for hours drinking beer and playing free-form beach bocce, Fish disappeared into the rocks and came back with a bucket of mussels. (I learned yesterday these were what the locals call “choros” as opposed to the Mediterranean mussels usually farmed and/or eaten at restaurants).

I had never eaten mussels before, and was kind of scared by their appearance, but Steve and Fish had, and they knew there was some rule about when it was OK to eat them in terms of red tide and so forth. After contemplating several possibilities, we decided on a variation in which August 1989 was definitely safe, brought a pot of Pacifico and seawater to a boil, and feasted away.

It was transcendent, of course. Mussels fresh off the rocks, cooked in beer at the end of a grueling day (of sorts)…it would have been worth it even if our intentional dirsregarding of the “r” month rule had left us quivering in shock, which it didn’t.

Nearly 20 years have passed, and yesterday I had the pleasure to return to Erendira in the name of shellfish — this time to visit Abulones Cultivados, the farm which produces our abalone.

Abalones born in 2006

Abalone, a prehistoric and delicious kinda creature, was once abundant in this region, prized for its deliciousness and the beauty of its shell. Surfers and divers pulled them from the coast, pounded their flesh and grilled them with salt and oil for a signature delicacy of coastal California. But abalone in the wild grow about one inch per year, so it didn’t take long before the population was in dire danger.

Abalone farming, however, offers the possibility to restore the population of abalone and for us to enjoy their flavor. Which is cool.

Benito

We visited the farm with its manager, Benito Altamira. I had enjoyed Benito’s abalone at Laja last fall, and we had then used them for a dish of our own in December. And we wanted to learn more about an abalone farm, of course.

The Pump House (No Gang)

These abalones are farmed, in land-based tanks, a few hundred yards from the ocean. Sea water is pumped in from the ocean. There is very little residential or commercial development within a great distance of this location, and Benito believes that the lack of contamination of the ocean water at this location is a big reason for the success they have in cultivating large and tasty animals.

The abalone tanks are segregated so that all the abalone in each tank are roughly the same size. (That way the bigger abalone don’t eat all the food at the expense of the smaller abalone). They eat kelp harvested from the immediate area.

1 Year Olds

3 Year Olds

Note the stripes of red interleaving the greenishness of the abalone’s shell. The abalone are fed different kelp depending on the season — during a certain time of year they get red kelp, other times they get a brown-green kelp. This reflects the kelp season in the ocean in these parts. The red stripes denote a time during which the abalone was eating red kelp.

Noe (Marine Biologist) Shows Off The Goods

Up Close and Personal

Benito gave us some tips on how to best handle the abalone to increase its tenderness and flavor. Like all animals, the less stress the animal incurs immediately prior to its death, the better the animal will taste and the more tender it will be. However, unlike say pigs or cows, when we buy abalone and bring it to the restaurant, it’s still alive.

Benito told us there are two preferred ways to kill the abalone subtly to make sure it tastes as good as possible when cooked: 1) to freeze it by putting it in a pot with seawater and ice for a couple hours; or 2) to put it in a pot of boiling sea water for a minute or two. The latter method, while rendering the abalone immediately edible, fixes the black color on the abalone’s edges, and so isn’t for everybody!

We didn’t know about this procedure last time we served abalone, but this time we will follow it (the cold one, that is). It will be interesting to see how much more tender it makes it.

After the water has been run through the farm, it is run through a filter to trap any debris or stray abalones, and returned to the ocean. It’s important for the farm to catch any abalones which are trying to return to the sea, because farmed animals don’t have a lot of diversity of genetics, and to reintroduce a bunch of animals with similar genetics into the wild would potentially endanger the whole population.

I didn’t take pictures of the hatchery that’s on site, though we toured that too and it was really interesting. It reminded me a little bit of a brewery, which isn’t that surprising I suppose because they’re manipulating organisms which are more or less microscopic. They had lots of 5-gallon buckets!

Oh, and speaking of sustainability…the facility itself is a re-purposing of a marine biology complex built by the government in the 1970′s and abandoned in the 1980′s. The abalone farm continues to slowly adapt the existing buildings and structures to employ them as effectively as possible.

All in all it was a great trip on a beautiful day, and we are grateful to Benito and Noe for giving us a tour. I’m also looking forward to trying a bottle of Benito’s wine — he was one of the first graduates of the wine school in the Guadalupe Valley and one of the first to study enology at UABC in Ensenada. He gave us a couple bottles of Sauvignon Blanc as lovely parting gifts. Thanks!

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