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so exposed is scooped out with a piece of bread; they are at their best eaten within sight and sound of the sea, preferably after a long swim, and washed down with plenty of some cold local white wine… Sea-urchins are wrested from their lairs in the rocks with wooden pincers, or can be picked up by hand provided you wear gloves.’

So speaks the voice of experience – Elizabeth David on sea-urchins in her Italian Food.

If, the first time, you eat sea-urchins which are not perfectly fresh, you may well wonder why anyone bothers with them. But fresh from the sea, as Mrs David urges, they are an experience.

A special delight of Irish eating is the sea-urchins. They are dived for in England and Scotland too, so bully your fishmonger in the summer. In fact, they are at Billingsgate very nearly all the year round since native stocks are supplemented by imports from the Mediterranean. You can boil them for a few minutes like an egg, then cut off the cap, remove the bright orange creamy inside and mix it with a little cream (for eating hot) or with mayonnaise (for eating cold). Or you can make a sauce, as Colin O’Daly used to do at the Park Hotel in Kenmare. From the hotel dining-room, you could look down to the sea creek and across very nearly to where the O’Connors live and tend their stocks of shellfish and sea-urchins off the rhododendron-fringed Beara Peninsula. They bring in other fish too from the neighbourhood and supply all the good hotels.

FILLETS OF SOLE WITH SALMON SOUFFLÉ STUFFING AND SEA-URCHIN SAUCE

Serves 2

750 g (1½ lb) sole, skinned (in Ireland, black sole)

a few extra white fish bones for stock

½ onion, diced

½ carrot, diced

1 small bay leaf

175 ml (6 fl oz) dry white wine

STUFFING

2 scallops

350 g (11–12 oz) salmon fillet

1 egg white

150 ml (5 fl oz) double cream

salt, pepper

SAUCE

300 ml (10 fl oz) fish stock (see recipe)

150 ml (5 fl oz) double cream

5 sea-urchins

60 g (2 oz) butter, diced

salt, pepper

Skin and fillet the sole, which will give you 4 fillets. Put bones and skin with extra bones into a pan with the diced vegetables, add the bay leaf and white wine and enough water to cover. Simmer gently for 30–40 minutes, then strain and reduce to the 300 ml (io fl oz) required by the sauce.

Next make the stuffing. Blend or process scallops and salmon together. Transfer to a bowl set over ice and work in the egg white gradually, then the cream, using a wooden spoon. Taste for seasoning.

Spread it over the skinned side of two of the fillets, placed on two pieces of cling film. Roll them up with the aid of the cling film and put them to chill for at least an hour so that you can get two wooden cocktail sticks through without squeezing out all the stuffing.

Take the two fillets left, cut each one into three lengthwise without cutting through at the top, so that the three pieces are held together. Then plait them.

Strain the fish stock into a pan, add the cream and bring back to the boil. Simmer down a little. Slice the tops from the sea-urchins, add their contents to the sauce and simmer down again.

Unwrap the rolled fillets, and steam them and the plaited fillets for 3–4 minutes. Whisk the butter into the sauce just before serving, then strain it and correct the seasoning.

Pour the sauce on to a hot serving dish. Arrange the sole on top. Decorate with empty urchin shells and lemon quarters.

SHAD – ALLIS SHAD, TWAITE SHAD AND AMERICAN SHAD Alosa alosa, A. fallax and A. sapidissima

The shad, of whatever kind, is a fine fat member of the herring family – it is sometimes known as the king of the herrings – which has the unherring-like habit of coming into rivers to spawn. And it is in rivers that it is caught. The allis and twaite shads used to honour the Wye and Severn, but now you have to go to the Loire or Garonne, or even further south, if you want to enjoy one. Going there to eat shad with sorrel sauce, or sorrel stuffing, and beurre blanc is one of the springtime rituals of the French who are lucky