Seaweed is incredibly good for you, as well as being useful in the kitchen - seaweed sausage anyone? Marie-Claire Digbymeets seaweed farmer and chef Seamus Moran
Seaweed is one of the ocean's great free gifts. Although once regarded with suspicion, it is currently enjoying a revival as consumers become more aware of its nutritional benefits and chefs explore its culinary uses.
It can be used to thicken sauces, and set custards, and added to stuffings and marinades. It's increasingly found in commercial kitchens, too, and chef Troy Maguire of the revamped Lock's restaurant in Dublin is making carrageen cool with his recipe for carrageen blancmange with olive oil caramel and seasonal fruit.
But in order to use seaweed in your cooking you don't have to don your wellies and dredge up handfuls of the stuff next time you are at the beach. Seamus and Carmel Moran's family-run company, Lotide, based on the shores of Clew bay in Co Mayo, has been producing dried seaweed products for the past four years. Their sea vegetables, as they call them, are hand picked, air dried, chopped and packed within 24 hours of being harvested from the icy waters of the bay, and are sold throughout Ireland, and to the UK and US. "I have a licence to harvest four tonnes a year, but we might end up with a tenth of that weight after sorting and cleaning," Moran says.
The final products, attractively packaged boxes of dried, ready-to-use Dillisk, Carrageen Moss, Wakame, Sea Spaghetti and Atlantic Kombu have a myriad culinary uses - once you know what to do with them (product descriptions and recipes can be found on the Lotide website, www.lo-tide.com).
But it's a niche market, and what the Morans needed was a mainstream product. "Give me an appetising product with seaweed in it, and people will buy it," said their friend Peter Caviston of the Glasthule speciality shop and restaurant in south Co Dublin.
Moran, a qualified chef with more than 20 years' experience in the hotel and catering industry, rose to the challenge and has devised a nutty, delicious brown bread with seaweed in it, and a top-quality pork sausage made with seaweed that could be the product that takes Lotide mainstream.
"We knew it was well and good for people who were experienced cooks and chefs to incorporate sea vegetables into a dish, but to the ordinary person on the street this was more difficult," said Moran "I looked back through stacks of old recipes, going back to my first job as head chef, in Donnelly's of Barna, and came across a recipe for seaweed stuffing, which I used with fish dishes, and one for seaweed bread. I had made a soda bread with seaweed many times and knew that it would work well, but to get it to work with a yeast mix meant incorporating different sea vegetables to give a more distinctive flavour."
The recipes took some tweaking - "I reckon we have the only children in Ireland that can tell if it is carrageen, wakame, sweet kombu or dillisk that is in their bread" - but he has now developed a commercial bread mix that is already used by Cavistons, and will go nationwide in the near future. "The seaweed gives excellent flavour and acts as a natural flour improver so that the bread lasts longer," Moran explains.
The sausages - plump, non-shrinking, meaty specimens with attractive pale purple speckles of dillisk through them - are produced for Lotide by the Galway craft butchers, Loughnane's. Moran is excited by this product's potential, and having wowed the crowds at a Bord Bia presentation of Irish foods in Covent Garden, London on St Patrick's Day, the sausages have been selected for the Innovation Zone at Marketplace Ireland, an international trade show for the food and drink sector taking place at Croke Park next week (May 23rd to 24th), where they will be sampled by an expected 220 international buyers, all looking for the next big thing. Could it be the year of the seaweed sausage?
SEAMUS MORAN'S GUIDE TO DRIED SEA VEGETABLES
Natural dillisk has a rich, salty, nut-like taste and a unique texture. It can be added to dishes such as mussels, champ and home-made breads. It contains high levels of protein, vitamin A and iron.
Carrageen moss is traditionally used as a remedy for colds, flu, bronchitis and chesty coughs and can be used as an alternative to gelatine in the preparation of cold desserts and savoury dishes. It is rich in vitamin A, vitamin B12 and iodine.
Wakame is a brown algae that tastes very similar to rocket when eaten fresh. When dried it has a sweet flavour. It contains carbohydrate, protein, vitamin C, vitamin B2, B3, B6, B12, calcium, iodine, iron and other trace elements. It can be used in stock or shredded and added to soups and chowders.
Sea spaghetti is a brown algae which is very sweet when dried. It can be eaten as a dried snack. It is not very strong in sea flavours, tasting rather nutty instead. It gives an excellent natural sweetness to savoury dishes. It contains protein, carbohydrate, vitamin C, calcium, iron, iodine and other trace elements.
Kombu is a brown algae which is used as a stock vegetable. Kombu contains protein, carbohydrate, vitamin C, B1, B2, B3, B12, calcium, iodine, iron and other trace elements. Sweet kombu is a brown algae. It is generally used in soups and sauces. It contains carbohydrates, vitamin C, calcium, iron, iodine and other trace elements.
TROY MAGUIRE'S CARRAGEEN BLANCMANGE WITH OLIVE OIL CARAMEL AND SEASONAL FRUIT
30g carrageen moss, rinsed and soaked
500ml buttermilk
1 litre almond milk
500ml whipping cream
zest and juice of 1 lemon
75g granulated sugar
seasonal fruit (raspberries are ideal)
400g unrefined brown sugar
good extra-virgin olive oil
Make the almond milk by infusing a litre of milk with 300g fresh almonds on a low heat, then blitzing and passing through a sieve. Put the carrageen in a saucepan with the buttermilk, sugar and lemon zest. Add the almond milk and simmer for 15 minutes, until the mix thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Remove from pot, add lemon juice and allow to cool for five minutes. Remove seaweed and zest and refrigerate. Lightly whip the cream, until it reaches soft peaks, then fold into the butter- and almond-milk mix in two stages. Brush small pudding moulds or ramekin dishes with olive oil, pour in the mix and refrigerate for at least six hours. For the caramel, put the sugar in a heavy-bottomed pan with four tablespoons of water. Put on a medium heat until golden brown. Allow to cool slightly. Whisk in a good drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil. Don't worry if the olive oil and caramel split, as the sugar cools, it will emulsify more easily, so whisk again when it is cold. Turn the puddings out onto a place, drizzle caramel over them and garnish with raspberries. Serve with biscotti.
Stockists
Lotide dried seaweeds are available from speciality food shops nationwide, including Fallon & Byrne, Cavistons, Donnybrook Fair, Fresh, Harvey Nichols and Kilkenny Shop in Dublin; Kinsale Gourmet Store; Country Fresh, Westport; and The Kitchen & Foodhall, Portlaoise.
The seaweed sausages are currently on sale in Cavistons (which also sells the seaweed bread); Morton's, Ranelagh, Dublin 6; Donnybrook Fair, Dublin 4; branches of Fresh; Harvey Nichols, Dundrum, Dublin 14; Fallon & Byrne, Exchequer Street, Dublin 2; Nicky's Plaice and Lett Doran, both in Howth, Co Dublin.