Roasted seaweed and other sea goodies...

I was feeling adventurous this weekend so I gathered some seafoods to experiment with.

At the moment I am roasting dulse in a 170-200F oven. It is REALLY tasty when roasted! Very similar to potato chips with a slight sea aftertaste. I collected some with help from my buddy, rinsed it very well in fresh water, sprayed a cookie sheet with olive oil and layed the dulse on it in a single layer. I'm leaving it in the oven until it is dry and crispy. I'm going to use it in soups and on rice and salads. I think it is a good source of nutrients like iodine bit don't quote me there.

I also had some edible periwinkles last night. I was being lazy so I rinsed them thoroughly in cold freshwater and then dumped them in water I had brought to a rolling boil. I let them cook long enough to kill germs and then I fished them out, removed the opercula, removed them from the shells with a toothpick and dunked them in melted butter. That kept me busy for like an hour hee hee
My buddy suggested a couple of other ways to prepare them if you're feeling more energetic: cook as above, clean, and marinate in a vinegarette of some sort or cook as above, clean, insert in mushroom cap with melted butter.

I once hosted a Chinese kelp researcher at my lab at UCSB. When it was time for him to return to China, he treated all of us in the lab to a multi-course dinner. Each course was loaded with various seaweeds including kelp. It was quite tasty.

When I was teaching high school decades ago, I did an annual "survival hike" to a beach on the other side of the island. Although some of my students snuck in steaks to cook on the sly, several of us had a stew made with Tegula (a local intertidal snail), owl limpet, cactus pads, an occasional crab or even lobster, seaweed, etc. Now a days you'd probably get sued for mistreating your students if you tried that!