Edible sea weeds

[sighmoon]

I thought sea weed might be a good side order to go with the many mackerel we're going to catch this season.

Anyone have any favourites or cooking tips / recipes?

Perhaps more importantly, does anybody know how to tell a poisonous one from a non-poisonous one? Some digging on the internet turned up only Alcyonidium diaphanum (Sea Chervil) as poisonous in our benign waters - this is the one that killed a few dogs lately. I suspect there might be more though. Can anyone advise?

 

[VicS]

There are quite a number of edible seaweeds.

Carragheen or Irish moss Chondrus crispus, Gigartina stellata, and Kelp Laminaria digitata are sources of alginates which can be used for thickening soups etc. Kelp can also be used as a salad vegetable.

Laver Porphyra umbilicalis is common and popular in SW Wales. Traditional uses are laver sauce for mutton and as laverbread which is a purée. For breakfast roll in oatmeal and fry in bacon fat.

A number can be cooked and used as a vegetable:

Sea lettuce Ulva lactuca, Monostroma grevillei, Dulse Rhodymenia palmata, Laminaria saccharina, Alaria esculenta, Enteromorpha intestinalis, Bladder wrack Funcus vesiculosus, Pepper dulse Laurencia pinnatifida, Iridaea edulis

What you really need is a copy of "Food for Free" by Richard Mabey which covers edible shellfish, nuts, fungi, plants with edible roots, salad herbs, greens, stems seaweeds, herbs, spices, flowers and fruits that can be found in Britain. It also includes a list of poisonous plants

 

[Robin]

Not quite seaweed but there is a shore/rock plant called I think Samphire(?) which I have seen the good folk of Brittany collecting and it is quite pricy in the shops. Also back home we used to pick sea spinach wild off Studland Bay to have with the (gleaned) new potatoes and fresh caught bass or whatever, the spinach was very much like the cultivated stuff.

I bought a S/S lidded oven dish with a rack inside for £10 from Makro to use as a smoker for mackerel this year. In the past we have just grilled them or on occasion soused them in vinegar, done in the pressure cooker rolled up fillets with onions, bit like rollmops.

 

[bobfrost]

King Lear, Act IV, scene vi, I quote
"The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down Hangs one that gathers samphire - dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head: The fishermen that walk upon the beach ...

 

[retriever]

Fillets of fresh mackerel coated in medium or rough oatmeal and panfried - great - don't know about seaweed.

Wouldn't mind some tips on filleting fish.

 

[totopalm]

Totally incorrect, how could one person know all that

 

[VicS]

[ QUOTE ]
how could one person know all that

[/ QUOTE ] I don't know but there a lot of much fatter books about than that one.

 

[savageseadog]

You can come and get as much weed as you want from the bottom of my boat.

 

[Captain Haddock]

MMmmmm Sea Bass, New potatoes and a nice bit of Samphire.

It's usually available around here from the Mersea Island fish shed around early summer, early autumn it's not that expensive 50p to a pound for a big bunch. Not much around though when it's the peak of summer as it seems to dry out.

 

[sighmoon]

[ QUOTE ]
You can come and get as much weed as you want from the bottom of my boat.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well that's just it - we seem to be farming it anyway. No more scurvy for my family.

I'll get the food for free book.

 

[wells01]

Try the samphire that grows up the Milford Haven. Its superb.

 

[clouty]

A friend once told me that goose neck barnacles wern't too bad, stewed, if there was not much else to eat - their position once in the South Atlantic with two kids to feed - or it might have been a wind up. If it was not, then the antifoul must have been too old to be poison - hence the good crop.

 

[nyx2k]

try the river cottage website forum.. they are excellent at this sort of thing or try ebay for food for free by richard mabey..