Sea Urchin / Uni Sashimi in Farmers Market, Dirt Cheap in Ilocos
I took my 5 year old girl with me to the office this morning. She was on orange juice and coconut juice. This is her raw paleo diet week. She then said she was hungry and wanted sashimi / raw fish and / or raw oysters. Sure.
We went down, bought some calamansi and some guavas. Then for some fish. The hawky vendor offered me uni aka sea urchin… oohhh… yummy… 500 pesos for that small plastic container. He said it was 1/2 kilo, fully packed and submerged in ice. Maybe it was 1/2 kilo or less. I hadn’t had uni in a long time, my little girl was recovering from a long cold, this is a good excuse to blow some money away. So I bought it.
Yummy. Lip smacking good. My daughter relished the raw sea urchin. I taught her to put it on top of the raw tuna sashimi slices… great combo. She really pigged out on it. I pigged out on it myself. In a few short minutes, this made my daughter so sleepy she took a mid morning nap with the nannie in my office. Parent mission accomplished.
I went home for lunch to make sure my 2 boys had their fill of the raw sea urchin. They liked it. More with my 8 year old. We were frustrated some 2 years ago when in Palawan we paid for a lot of sea urchin only to open them and find they were “malnourished”. It wasn’t worth opening the rest of them to find such tiny amounts of sea urchin meat.
I offered my sister in law some uni sashimi, I know she likes this stuff. She declined. She said in her visits to her job in Ilocos province she eats mounds of this stuff. Yes, she eats something like half a kilo in one sitting she said. And that sea urchin was so cheap in Ilocos she pays only 70 pesos to 100 pesos per kilo. She couldn’t believe I paid 500 pesos for my tiny tupperware.
Well thanks for telling us. Now we know where to order a lot of raw sea urchin. She’s going back to Ilocos on Monday. And be back in a few days. While we wait for our next batch of uni sashimi… maybe 2 kilos will do… ha ha ha… pig out!