This
month seaweed hit the high streets via Marks and Spencer, in an artisan range
branded from the British Isles. The seaweed products are from a bakery in
the Outer Hebrides, an Edinburgh based Seaweed Company and the Pembrokeshire
Beach Food Company from Wales. This means that seaweed is now available UK wide
and will hopefully encourage its move beyond gourmet chefs, into the home
kitchen.
Seaweed
as many other wild ingredients, which are currently enjoying a revival, was a
peasant, subsistence food eaten by the poor when times were hard. During the
early nineteenth century Kelp (kombu) was important in the manufacture of soap
and glass but canny crofters used the leftover ashes to flavour cheese as an
alternative to more expensive salt. Seaweed was a useful ingredient to those
forced to live from hand to mouth.
Many
Scottish and Irish recipes use carrageen, which was historically given as a
tonic to consumptives.Traditional seaweed recipes however, also include dulse
and laver but the seaweed recipe library is sparse and instruction is
rarely didactic.
 |
| Sugar Kelp Saccharina latissima (centre) |
This
weekend we encouraged our visitors to forage seaweed at low tide and then eat
it. Beth, aged fifteen months enjoyed simple fare that had been cooked with
seaweed. Her nursery suppers included dulse bread, mince flavoured with pepper
dulse and potatoes mashed with the sea vegetable, sugar kelp. A menu of every
day food flavoured with Outer Hebridean seaweed rather than salt, herbs or
spices.
I
spin a little more interest into the traditional albeit rather bland,
blancmange -like pudding set with carrageen, by adding wild blossom syrups from
my larder. (Details of how to make wild blossom syrups are in The Forager’s
Kitchen). Carrageen is suitable for vegetarians and a spoonful of carrageen
gel, softens homemade ice cream. This dessert recipe is an adaptation of a
recipe from Seaweed in the Kitchen (June 2015).
Wild Damson Cream Pots
Makes
6 small pots (French chocolate pots) Serves 4
Foraged
ingredients
12g
dried carrageen
Tablespoon
wild blossom syrup or golden syrup*
Additional
Ingredients:
600ml
creamy milk
½
Vanilla pod (if using golden
syrup*)
Large
egg yolk
Put the carrageen in a bowl, cover with
cold water and leave to
soak
for 10 mins. Pop the carrageen into a sieve and rinse under
running
cold water. Drain well. Put the carrageen, milk and vanilla
pod*
in a pan, bring slowly to just below the boil and simmer for 15
minutes,
stirring occasionally. Do not allow the milk to boil. Remove the vanilla pod.
In
a bowl whisk the egg yolk with the syrup until it is
the
carrageen fronds to extract as much gel as possible. Whisk the
milk
and syrup and egg mixture together until blended. Fill
the pots and refrigerate until set.
Remove the pots from the fridge to return to room temperature,
Remove the pots from the fridge to return to room temperature,
before
serving
