Exotic Foods (1)

In one episode of the cooking series Two Fat Ladies, the ladies go to the seashore, and Clarissa Dickson Wright, the younger of the TFL, harvests and cooks some ormers. I had never heard of ormers, and, owing to the ladies' British accents, I wasn't even sure I had heard the correct word, but when Jennifer Paterson (the older of the TFL) tasted the ormer and said, "Snaily, whelky," I figured it had to be a shellfish of some sort. Sure enough, a Google search revealed that there really is such a thing as an ormer, which turns out to be a shellfish (of the family Haliotidae) related to the abalone. Abalone can be found on the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California. What you eat is the tough muscular "foot," which must be tenderized before it can be eaten. A similar meat comes from the geoduck clam. Both ormers and abalone have become harder to find, partly due to over-harvesting and partly due to pollution. However, ormers are now being farmed in the UK. Apparently, there was a time when ormer-cooking was more common. Not being a fan of seafood (with the exception of lobster, shrimp, and scallops), I am not anxious to try ormer or any of its relatives.

However, the shells of both ormers and abalone have a pearly coating inside called nacre, which is also known as mother-of-pearl. Now, mother-of-pearl is fine with me. It is used to make jewelry, and much of it comes from Asia, including Australia. For those of us who can't afford real pearls, mother-of-pearl jewelry can be a lower-cost, yet still beautiful, substitute. And that's where I can stand on the matter: I'll wear ormer gladly; just don't make me eat one.