Species sheet · The Edible Ocean

Comb pen shell

The Pacific pen shell, planted in the mud and served over rice.

Raw as nigiri, sliced thick
Seared a few seconds over coals, just for the toasted smell
Salt and citrus rather than soy sauce, to keep the sweetness

Comb pen shell in its natural habitat, Umay image — *Atrina pectinata* · Umay image, generated from a reference photograph — Hectonichus, CC BY-SA 3.0

In French: Tairagi
Scientific name: Atrina pectinata
In the water: Sand and mud bottoms of Japan, Korea and China, planted point-down like its Mediterranean cousin, mostly between twenty and thirty metres. It also lives far shallower, up to the tidal flats of the Ariake Sea where it is gathered on foot.
Season & buying: Autumn to spring, at its best in midwinter.
Common length: ~30 cm
How to identify it: Upright triangular shell, narrower and sharper than a noble pen shell
Thirty centimetres tall, a third the height of a noble pen shell
Fine radiating ribs carrying small raised scales on the upper half

On the plate

Only the large adductor muscle is eaten: a thick nut of meat, crisp under the tooth, sweet with a faint bitter finish. This is the tairagi of sushi counters.

Avoid: Cooking it long: the muscle turns rubbery and loses all its crispness in one minute too many.

Japanese landings collapsed in the Ariake Sea, to the point that the country now raises seed to restock its own bottoms, and Korea supplies a good share of what reaches the market.