Kelpis at hand
Yet they rarely, if ever, come across seaweed in any form on mainstream Irish menus.
Granted, an occasional restaurant like the Ivory Tower or the Quay Co-op in Cork offers sushi and seaweed salads and traditional carrigeen moss pudding is regularly on the Ballymaloe House sweet trolley. But considering the abundance of sea we have access to, its extraordinary we don't make better use of this brilliantly healthy food.
I'm as guilty as the rest of overlooking this very important food group, but after an enlightening evening on seaweed at the Cork Free Choice consumer group meeting in May, I was fired by enthusiasm. The speakers were Olivier Beaujouan, Clair McSweeney and Jill Bell.
Olivier comes from France and now lives in Castlegregory, Co Kerry. He spoke eloquently and passionately about the benefits of sea weed, both from the culinary and medicinal point of view.
He now sells a range of Irish seaweed-based products, including his addictive tapenade of sea vegetables, pickled kombu and sea spaghetti at farmers' markets and specialist shops.
Clair McSweeney is originally from Limerick who has travelled widely. At one stage, she had linked up with the indomitable Seamus O'Connell at the Yumi Yuki Club in Cork, where she made a delicious array of dishes like haddock dengaku sushi, agar and sake jelly with a lychee heart, and a seaweed salad laced with cucumber, daikon and ginger.
Just this week, I spent a few days at a Soil Association meeting at Penrhos in Wales, where Daphne Lambert cooked truly delicious vegetarian food from her organic garden and from local farms. She explained that the benefits of eating sea vegetables are enormous.
Jill Bell, owner of Well & Good in Midleton and chairperson of the Irish Association of the Health Stores, also stressed that the benefits of seaweed for both animals and humans were well recognised.
Evidence shows that it was highly valued by our ancestors and has been recognised in China since 3000BC. St Columbus's monks and the Romans all valued sea vegetables too.
In bygone years, it was valued as a fertiliser and many a pitched battle was fought over seaweed on the strands around the coast the Aran Islanders built soil with sand and seaweed and I remember as a child, my Uncle Frank making carrageen for his precious greyhounds because he strongly believed in its value to give them strength and speed.
