A Bolt of Blue From the waters off the Western Australian coast onto white-cloth tabletops across the globe, blue caviar may be the most intriguing – and eye-catching – seafood discovery in a decade. By Jeffrey T Iverson. Illustration by Hannah George O ver the past five years, a stunning new colour has been popping up on menus throughout Australia – the sapphire shimmer of wild scampi roe or, as it’s increasingly known, blue caviar. Once dismissed as excess baggage on an otherwise prized crustacean, today it’s clear from the Instagram feeds of chic seafood restaurants from Saint Peter in Sydney to Melbourne’s sushi temple Kisumé that blue has become a cherished hue on the palettes of top Australian chefs. With its rich briny taste and refreshing pop on the tongue, blue caviar has already conquered many a thrill-seeking gourmet in Oz. Newly arriving in Europe, it promises to create a sensation among Old World epicures as well. For in an era in which seafood lovers have never been more adventurous, nor more concerned about sustainability and seasonality in fine dining, blue wild scampi caviar is a timely delicacy indeed. “They’re the sapphires of the ocean,” says Alexander Kuenzi, a Swiss-based purveyor of exceptional raw foods to chefs and luxury delicatessens. “It’s the kind of product that reminds us of the true value of wild foods.” As the executive chairman of Wealthyard Group, a unique luxurygoods company that places as much value on fair-trade diamonds as it does on Madagascan vanilla beans, Kuenzi is a man on the lookout for rare jewels wherever he travels. So it was in 2005, when he voyaged to northwest Australia to visit the Paspaley family, owners of the country’s oldest pearling operation. Yet the gems he discovered the day he cruised out to observe the pearlers at work off the wild Kimberley coast were not those he’d expected. That’s because the same deep waters where they handpick wild oysters for pearl seeding also happen to be the preferred habitat of Australian scampi. So, naturally, at lunchtime the divers would return to the boats with a freshly caught meal to share. Kuenzi was helping clean the day’s catch when he noticed a thin sac underneath the tail of a scampi. “When I took it off, a plethora of roe spilled out, and suddenly it was like I was holding a handful of gemstones.” Born in Sicily, Kuenzi ate plenty of scampi growing up, but had never seen anything like this. “The colours! There was every shade of blue you can find in the ocean,” he says. The others had been discarding it, but, curious, Kuenzi tasted some. “When the eggs popped in my mouth, I was surprised by a burst of rich, salty freshness across my palate,” he recalls. “It was like I’d just sipped drops of pure seawater.” Soon, he and his hosts were marvelling at the taste of the ultramarine roe over scampi carpaccio and pearl-white toothfish fillets with lemon and olive oil. At the time, not a single restaurant in Australia served such dishes. “The first time I saw wild scampi roe, I was a 16-year-old, first-year apprentice working in a professional kitchen – and they were removing it,” recalls Josh Niland, chef of Saint Peter, Australia’s preeminent pescatarian eatery. “It is an incredible part of the scampi, so I was always perplexed by this.” Today, as one of Australia’s leading voices for sustainability in seafood and author of the fin-to-scale cooking manifesto, The Whole Fish Cookbook (Hardie Grant, 2019), Niland has helped to ensure no chef ever discards it again. Whether used to adorn a complex dish like smoked-eel hash brown filled with rock flathead taramasalata, or simply paired with an Australian Clair de Lune oyster, Niland has brought blue caviar to the centre of the plate. “The flavour and the texture of the roe are delicious,” he says. “When I place it atop an oyster, especially those with more of a creamy flavour, it brings an additional burst of salinity and pop of texture, delivering an exceptional mouthful of oceanic flavour.” Today, it seems every Australian chef passionate about native wild-harvested produce has embraced scampi caviar, from Seth James at Wills Domain in the Margaret River wine region, who serves it on a hot pommes dauphine sphere, to the sushiya of Kisumé in Melbourne, where it is served alongside finger lime pearls, ikura and tobiko to create kaleidoscopic sushi. Since around 2015, most of the wild scampi roe on the market is harvested around Port Hedland, at depths of 420 to 500 metres, between November and March, then rinsed, sorted and tinned by one of a number of local seafood companies with nothing but a pinch of sea salt. When Alexander Kuenzi learned that wild scampi roe was finally being taken seriously in Australia, he was initially thrilled. But the early samples he tasted convinced him that if chefs were getting the cream of the crop, not everything being tinned for the public reflected the same level of quality. “The different producers had no common standards; some were even using frozen roe.” And so blue caviar became Kuenzi’s new passion project. Over the past year, Wealthyard Group’s food division, which cultivates products in several countries under the Mediterre label, has invested in training a group of local fishermen to harvest scampi by hand with gentle techniques inspired by pearl cultivators, and to process the fragile roe using meticulous methods taught by Iranian caviar-production experts. “Whether it is hazelnuts in Piedmont, green tea from Korea or vanilla in Madagascar,” says Kuenzi, “we’re in the business of cultivating raw foods of the highest quality and authenticity, while preserving the biodiversity and landscapes around them.” This winter, Mediterre will introduce blue caviar to its European clientele – including the delicatessens of the Globus luxury department-store chain and multiple Michelin-starred chefs in Switzerland, France, Italy and Japan – on a strictly seasonal basis, and primarily in petite 25g tins. “For me, a product like blue caviar is a reminder to the gastronomic community of all the natural treasures that remain to be discovered in the world,” says Kuenzi. “It’s an invitation to choose quality over quantity – and to consume wisely so that we can enjoy them for generations to come.” • CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 77
