The first time I ate abalone, I was extremely skeptical. I mean, these things live their lives attached to rocks eating kelp, and they are essential giant snails. However, my dad, being the genius cook that he is, and with advice from other abalone hunters, developed a method to cooking it that makes it pretty delicious.

But, the first step to catching your own food is cleaning it, which can be a pretty long process.

Keeping your abalone in salt water ensures that the abalone die a slow death. Killing them quickly often makes their muscles tense up, making the meat hard. The more they die relaxed, the less tenderizing you have to do later.

Next, you have to take your abalone iron and pop the meat out of its shell, without breaking the meat.

The next step is to remove the guts from the shell. You can go through the guts later, and you might find a pearl.

After, you’re left with a beautiful, albeit a little foul smelling, shell. Some people turn the shell into jewelry. My dad keeps the shells in his garden as a sort of disturbing “abalone graveyard.”

The next step would be to thoroughly wash the crap (figuratively and literally) off the abalone. No doubt there might be some residual kelp, rocks, or whatever.

I’ve been told you should also remove the black portion of the abalone, because it is slightly toxic. This confuses me, because I was also told that it is the most delicious part. Nevertheless, I opt to cut or scrub it all off.

After it’s all nice and clean, slice them up into little thin pieces.

You can also tenderize each individual pieces. Abalone can be tough, so it’s important to tenderize the abalone at one point in time, whether you choose to do it right after you finish washes and cutting off the black portion, or if you want to do it at the individual piece level.

Now comes the delicious part: We prepare it like Tonkatsu or any breaded item. Cover it with flower, then egg, and then panko breadcrumbs. We prefer two combinations of breadcrumbs; one with regular panko, and the other a mix of coconut and panko.

Then, we lightly fry each piece in peanut oil for just a few minutes until golden brown. The result is golden melt-in-your-mouth deliciousness.

Finally, we dip each piece into some sweet chili sauce, or some grated daikon and soy sauce.

The result is a delicious, hard-earned meal. Food never tastes better than when you’re involved in the process from hunting, to cleaning, to cooking!

Abalone Hunting basically involves risking your life to pry 7″ snails off of a rock at 4:00am. Sounds fun, right? To be honest, it kind of is. Until I went abalone hunting for my first time, I don’t think I truly appreciated what it’s like to catch your own food, clean it (okay dad, so I didn’t clean it, but I watched), tenderize it, cook it, and then eat it.

This is my second year in a row traveling up along the Northern coast of California with my family in order to catch some delicious abalone. It’s a way to get away from the rush of Los Angeles, and just relax with nothing else to do but hunt some abalone, and read a good book. With all these rules, why do people do it? Because it’s actually delicious, and it’s fun to enjoy stuffing yourself with something for $60 per pound.

Surprised abalone costs so much? The 3 per person limit is one cause of the high price, but it’s also very difficult to get outside of an abalone farm. The following is the process for hunting for abalone.

You wake up about an hour before low tide. This could be anywhere from 4:00am-6:00am. You have to slip into a skin tight wetsuit to keep warm. And by skin-tight, I mean you look like a penguin waddling around while you try to keep from bursting the seams of your suit (okay so I’ve put on a couple pounds). Armed with an abalone iron (to pry from the rocks), a bag to put the abalone, flotation devices, weight system, and more, you climb down cliffs in order to find the best rocks with shelves underneath, where the abalone like to hide.

As you attempt to not crack your head open while walking on the seaweed covered rocks, you have to plug your noise to avoid the thick musty smell of festering plant life.

Inching into the freezing cold water, you can then find rocks where you have to blindly reach underneath to find the shelves in order to feel for the distinctive abalone shell. Meanwhile, it’s very common for you to reach under and grab something soft and squishy instead. On a good day, it’s just a sea cucumber.

If you’re really adventurous, you can dive down under water to find the deeper shelves, where the bigger abalone lie. While you continue to search for your limit of 3 abalone, seaweed wraps around your legs like living tentacles while your breath escapes your mouth billowing like clouds.

When you find an abalone that you think is bigger than 7″, you have to find the small crevice in the back of the shell, where you must shove your abalone iron in and try and pop that abalone off the rock. This is no easy task. Some of these suckers latch onto these rocks like Amy Winehouse to a bottle of jack.

If you succeed on popping them off the rocks, and it’s about 7″, you place it in your bag, and try and find 2 more.

After you’re done you have to lug your 3 abalone, plus all your tools, plus the water weight back up the hill, after you bag and tag each one in accordance to regulation.

Then begins the real fun…preparing it for eating. Stay-tuned for Part II.

About a week ago I had brunch with my friend Dan at Dusty’s Bistro in Silverlake. We ate a delicious breakfast that started with some fresh bread paired with butter, candied orange jam and strawberry jam. Our two lady friends enjoyed some strawberry orange juice, while I sipped on some black coffee (I’m trying to grow chest hair).

While enjoying my potato latke eggs benedict (which was delicious), I look over to see this celebrity.

Ed Helms at Dusty's

Being that I’m too embarrased to approach any celebrity, I pretend to look at my phone while I discreetly snap a picture. Be honest, you know you’ve done it.

Please note the awesomeness of his Mayor McCheese shirt.

Go to Dusty’s Bistro on Silverlake. Affordable and delicious French-American cuisine with a side of celebrity.

Tim Ferriss, author of the 4-hour week and leading the lifestyle design movement, is a pretty awesome guy. Alex and I both love his book, and if you haven’t checked it out, I highly suggest you get a copy of his book. His blog is pretty popular and occassionally he posts about food. I actually knew this trick already before Tim Ferriss blogged about it, but it’s a nice little tip for those egg lovers out there.

On a tangent, I just realized how many eggs I consume on a weekly basis. I’m already genetically inclined to have high cholestoral, but I still consume around 6-8 eggs a week. It’s deliciously unhealthy, but let’s be honest…eggs might be the best thing ever. I just realized that the only two videos I’ve posted on this site are egg related.

My girlfriend tells me I have an egg shaped head too.

One of the most fascinating aspects of food is how it creates such a low barrier of entry into learning about a culture. You can learn a lot about a country and its history by looking at its food.

Probably the best example that I’ve seen of this is Filipino food. Filipino food is an eclectic mix of cultural influences from all over. The current flavors that you can find in a lot of Filipino dishes have Chinese, Spanish, and American influences. The Philippines has been colonized by both the Spanish (f0r almost 400 years) as well as the United States after World War II.  Furthermore, the Chinese represent the largest immigrant group in the Philippines. All three cultures play a role in the Philippines’ history, and it can be seen through the Philippine’s cuisine.

Noodles such as pancit or mami originate in Chinese culture. Lumpia is the Filipino eggroll. Spanish influence and flavor profiles can be found in several Spanish dishes, like tocino, or caldereta. Most recently, America has introduced a slew of fast food places to the Philippines.

This eclectic combination of cultures in food create an interesting clash of flavors on one’s tongue, and many don’t like Filipino food because it doesn’t quite suit most people’s palates - the mix of flavors from different flavor profiles all over the world create a unique expereicne and a complexity of depth that you may not find in a lot of other countries.

Japanese food, as well, has several cultural influences that can be seen through its food. Ramen, chopsticks, and several different types of tea were introduced by the Chinese very early on in Japan’s history. None of those would exist today if not for the interactions between the Chinese and the Japanese during the 5th century in Japanese history.

I’m lucky to be living in a city where so many cultures are so accessible within a 15 mile radius (or 2 hours, LA driving time). If you’re also a lucky one to be living in LA, EXPLORE. Learn about dozens of different cultures by just walking around your neighborhood and going to a place you’ve never been to before! We have amazing opportunities at our fingertips (or at our tongues), and it would be a shame for you to just continue to go to the drive through McDonalds after work.

Tim Ferriss, author of the 4-hour week and leading the lifestyle design movement, is a pretty awesome guy. Alex and I both love...