Inspired & Seduced by Sea Weed

I've been in need of a little kitchen inspiration. The shortest day of the year and the standard issue June cold and rain always make me feel a bit dull, a little bored, and a little boring. It usually takes something magical like the daphne bursting into flower (scheduled for next week) to snap me out of it, but this week the cure came in a curious form: sea weed, specifically sea spaghetti,smoked kelp, and chilli furikake.

Seared salmon with furikake crust, carrot and sea spaghetti salad, and broccoli seasoned with smoked kelp. Believe me, this dinner was amazing. Not just because it tasted and smelled deeply, delicately of the sea. How that sea weed ended up on my radar and in my kitchen is a lovely story of blog land, and all the good things about like-minded people sharing what they know and do. This sea weed inspiration started a couple of years back when I wrote a post about a bumper tomatillo crop.

Scene: my garden in March 2010, totally overrun by tomatillos.
Act 1: I light the fire outside, make a grilled salsa, and write a blog post about it.
Act 2: Mika at Milliemirepoix reads the post and leaves a comment about her deep longing for tomatillos. I email her and say "come take away the crop, I'm sick to death of them." She does, and makes an amazing salsa verde, and writes a blog post about it.
Act 3: Fast forward a year. I offer Mika a load of tomatoes, which she makes into an amazing tomato party and writes a blog post about it.
Act 4: Louise Fawcett from Pacific Harvest reads Mika's post, and moved by the tomato beauty, emails me "I'm coming to Wellington, can I visit you and your garden? I so want to grow beautiful tomatoes!"

And so on Tuesday, Louise came to visit. I shared my winter garden greens with her (miso soup and salad for lunch), and she gave me some of her amazing sea weeds...

Louise is passionate about food, and sea weed in particular. The conversation over lunch was just what I needed to get excited again about cooking. I guess I was inspired with the sea weed the same way Mika was inspired with the tomatillos. All this food goodness is infectious!

Anyway, that's the background. Here's the dinner I cooked that night, full of the joy of sea weed.

Seared salmon with furikake crust

The furikake crust is a mix of five sea weeds, sea salt, sesame seeds and chilli.

How to:

• Press the furikake into the raw salmon fillets, just on the top. You don't want the sesame seeds on the skin side, as I suspect they would burn. (Furikake comes pre-mixed so no measuring or chopping required, just sprinkle it out of the jar.)
• Heat a cast iron pan until smoking hot. No oil needed -- the salmon will bring its own.
• Slide the salmon into the pan, skin side down. 
• Add in a couple of lemon wedges if you like.
• Pop the whole pan into a hot oven (220C) for 12-ish minutes.

Wrap loosely in foil until you're ready to eat. Burnt lemon is delicious, by the way.

Sea spaghetti and carrot salad with ginger dressing

Sea spaghetti, dry and dusty with the sea salt it was harvested in... it's not rinsed, just dried.

After soaking it's soft and the colour of the best olives.

How to:

• Soak about 20gm dried sea spaghetti in warm water for about an hour. You can probably get away with half an hour, just test to see how the texture is. Drain and cut into bite-sized lengths.
• Grate two carrots,and mix with the sea spaghetti.
• Add a thinly sliced green onion.
• Dress with a splosh of olive oil, the juice of a small lemon, a sprinkle of sherry vinegar, and a light grating of fresh ginger. 

And for the broccoli

• Steam broccoli or broccolini.
• Dress with olive oil (2 - 3 tbs), tamari (1.5 tbs) and a big sprinkle of smoked kelp. No need for salt.
• Whisk and drizzle over the hot broccoli.

Serve and eat and be seduced.

[Louise has lots of sea weed inspiration on her blog. Wellingtonians can get the sea weeds at Moore Wilson or Commonsense Organics.]