Sea Treasure

This nutritional powerhouse could surprise your tastebuds, while quietly helping save our planet from climate change.

- FIONA DONNELL

I’m expecting this small ragged-edged fragment of fresh seaweed to taste salty like the sea, but as I pop it in my mouth and start chewing, the flavour that most comes to mind is garlic. It’s quite a surprise, particularly when it instantly shapeshifts and takes on more of a rounded, creamy garlic butter note and then morphs again with the tang of cider vinegar coming to the fore. All the while as I chew there’s a thrumming baseline of delicious ocean brine.

It’s no wonder pepper dulse (osmundea pinnatifida) has become such a prized ingredient. Chefs call this pretty red seaweed the “truffle of the sea” and it’s included in Slow Food’s Ark of Taste. It’s one of the most complex wild foods I’ve ever tasted.

Pepper dulse is just one of a slew of fresh macroalgae I get to try at a workshop in the historic harbour village of Clovelly in England’s North Devon. Workshop facilitator Vix Hill-Ryder also shows us how tasty bladder wrack (fucus vesiculosus) can be when pickled, how spaghetti-like thong weed (Himanthalia elongata) turns a beautiful emerald green if boiled like pasta, and strips of dulse (Palmaria palmata) can transform into vegan “bacon” when fried.

It’s an eye-opener and I come home keen to explore. There’s good and bad news. With kilometres of pristine coastline, Australia boasts one of the world’s most diverse range of native seaweeds, with literally thousands of species. There’s history, too – perhaps dating back as far as 65,000 years. Indigenous Saltwater Australians used seaweed for everything from crafting water carriers to cultural activities and, of course, as food.