Sea-lettuce in the kitchen

I am reading the first of the menus in Stephanie’s Menus for food lovers.

Steamed Oysters with sea-lettuce.

It’s not the word steamed oysters that stops me when turning the page; it’s the word sea-lettuce. Until I read this page I had no idea sea-lettuce existed, let alone the idea of cooking and serving it at the table.

I read on and I arrive at the key paragraph:

The next ingredient you must locate is sea-lettuce. This is a clear green seaweed, which grows in small clustered clumps. It is found in clean water by divers who collect sea-urchin, periwinkles and other shellfish. You can sometimes collect it yourself from rock pools. The name, sea-lettuce, describes it perfectly. It is lettuce-green and delicate in texture, quite unlike kelp or many other seaweeds. It is perfectly edible and has more of a texture than a pronounced flavour. It is crisp, with the fresh bracing aroma that will make you remember the smell of your favourite ocean beach in the winter. This entree was once described by an ecstatic customer as being like eating oysters at the bottom of the sea.

Now, while collecting this seaweed may not exactly be supporting Australian farmers, you cannot dispute the fact it is an Australian product; perhaps in the same category as salt, another product of the sea.There are alternatives; you can use dried seaweed (not likely to be Australian) or you can use normal lettuce leaves. Frankly, neither of these hold the same appeal for me as sea-lettuce.

I read on and find sea-lettuce is prepared and served by washing it carefully to remove all traces of sand. In this recipe the it will become the base on which the oysters rest while being steamed in a basket.

I consider the idea of oysters and the problems of opening them as instructed in the recipe and wonder whether it might be possible to use something else in the shellfish category.

However, to paraphrase Mrs Beeton, first collect your sea-lettuce.

Sea-lettuce on the seashore

I search on the Internet for any information I can find about sea-lettuce.

I need something to guide me as I wander along the shoreline by the rock pools looking for this ingredient for tonight's meal. I should make it quite clear at this point all this wandering is happening in my mind.

I am not impressed by the first few images I find, which are large amorphous green blobs; nothing helpful there.  At this site I learn some important facts; I need to be there at low tide and in the winter time when it grows more prolifically.  Winter time - not exactly the time I have in mind to be wandering along the shoreline.

I persevere with my my search and eventually find an image which is way better than all others to this point.

Now I have a better idea of what I might find as I walk along the winter shoreline rugged up against a southerly blast and trying to keep my footing on wet rocks.  It all sounds so much fun, I can hardly wait for winter.....

All those negative thoughts aside, I found this website informative and the post added considerably to my knowledge of ulva lactuca, which until today was less than zero.

Who knows, I may well be putting this on the menu next year? 

Breaking the book buying rules - again!!

I have a new addition to my cookbook stash – so much for all those lectures I have delivered to myself about not buying any more books!!.

Nordliving, a local shop full of wonderful Scandinavian goods, has changed hands and at the weekend, the previous owner had a ‘garage sale’ in the shop. There were many boxes of books and there was one that took my fancy; a recipe book.

An Australian recipe book, written by an Australian for Australians and therefore eminently suited to Ausfood blog purposes. It is Stephanie’s Menus for Food Lover’s, written by none other than the redoubtable Stephanie Alexander. A birthday gift, it is a copy of the 1986 edition, in pristine condition and with the birthday card still affixed to the inside cover. Sofia didn’t want to remove the card as it might have damaged the book, so now I share, by default, a micro-moment in the lives of two other people. I like this idea; it adds another dimension to the book.

You might be thinking a cookery book, with recipes for dinner menus for six, is a little ambitious for a food blog in the hands of a basic cook using basic ingredients. You might be right in your thinking. It’s fanciful on my part to think I would ever turn out any of the menus that appear in this book.

However it is not just about fine food; it is also about organisation in your kitchen– a page that seems to fall open every time I open the book – plus lots of good advice about making use of every part every single ingredient that might come through the kitchen door.

And then I read the very first menu; it fired up and fed my imagination, setting up a train of thought for another post.