Chef Richard Garcia Pairs Fair Trade Coffee with Sustainable Sea Urchins

The first time I really became aware of sea urchins it was because I was spending the summer in Greece, and not stepping on one in the Aegean Ocean became a high priority. A little Greek girl taught me to call them echinos, which means both "sea urchin" and "hedgehog" and refers to their pointy spines. But I'd never tasted the fleshy inside of an urchin, and so I was fascinated to watch Chef Richard Garcia (of Tastings Wine Bar & Bistro in Foxboro) prepare them recently at an event called Eat, Drink & Be Fair at the Artists for Humanity center in South Boston.



First he snipped into a locally harvested urchin with a pair of scissors to reveal the meat inside. Chef Garcia told me these sea creatures are abundant off the shores of Massachusetts.



Then he scooped out the prized orange flesh with a spoon.





And finally, Chef Garcia filled the leftover shells with a parsnip-sea urchin-cappucino soup he had created using the meat of the urchins.



All of the chefs at Eat, Drink & Be Fair had been tasked by Green Mountain Coffee (those are coffee filters hanging from the ceiling, below) with using Fair Trade certified ingredients to create a winning meal, but Chef Garcia's was by far the most inventive. And while I can't say the flavors of slightly bitter coffee and briny sea urchin were my favorite combination, I'd still rather eat an echinos than step on one in the ocean.