Christiansen Zoe - Seaweed

There are many good reasons for cooking with seaweed. Sea vegetables are not only rich in nutrients, but used correctly seaweed can lift the taste experience to another level in quite ordinary daily dishes. Seaweed is also both a sustainable and an environmentally friendly resource. On the next pages you will learn why you should cook with sea vegetables and how to go about it.

We have collected 68 delicious and simple recipes using seaweed and kelp, where the ingredients have been combined with knowledge, joy and imagination. The recipes are all different but what they have in common is that they are all simple to prepare and adapt. Thus you can quickly create a tasty meal, whether you have lunch by yourself or invite friends and family for dinner. Among the recipes you will find both main courses and snacks, soups, salads and desserts, vegetarian dishes and dishes with fish and other seafood, as well as the more experimental dishes, such as exciting tapas, quinoa risotto and gin seaweed tonic. Enjoy! Zoe Christiansen, Claudia Seifert, Lisa Westgaard and Hanne Martinsen

All the recipes in this book are based on the most commonly available seaweed and kelp. Most of the recipes are made with dried seaweed which is available from specialist shops or the internet.

But we hope that the book will inspire you also to collect the sea vegetables you want to try out. We have illustrated the different types of seaweed to make it easier for you to find the right sort of seaweed. You might also like to know, as a safety measure, that none of the sorts of seaweed that grow in Britain and Ireland are poisonous, apart from the Desmarestia species (there are four of them and they mostly grow in deep water) which produce sulphuric acid. Otherwise the same rules apply for harvesting seaweed and kelp as for harvesting mussels. Ideally you should pick the seaweed where the sea is in constant movement and preferably as far away as possible from housing, harbours and bathing places. The season lasts from the late winter until the early summer.

Seaweed and kelp can be eaten fresh or cooked, or after having been preserved by drying, salting or maturing. If you are unable to harvest sea vegetables you can buy them quite easily.

Transport of vegetables and protein across borders has a significant impact on the environment. In the future we will undoubtedly have to procure food using more sustainable methods. Luckily as consumers we are becoming more conscious of the environment. And this is where sea vegetables fit in perfectly: They grow locally and demand neither water, fertilisers nor additives.

Seaweed and kelp are also enormously rich in nutrients. They contain a number of minerals, vitamins, trace elements and amino acids. Another point is that sea vegetables can be harvested when land vegetables have poor conditions for growth. Vegetables from the sea are a clever and sustainable supplement to ordinary vegetables grown on land.

Sea vegetables can be used in most dishes, both as a vegetable or as a flavour enhancer. But although there are plenty of seaweed resources along coastlines, there is no tradition for using seaweed and kelp in many cuisines.