Cooking with Sea and Shore Plants

[Rockfish]

Recently, I have been experimenting with cooking with fresh BC sea plants. So far I have tried Kelp, Sea Lettuce and Sea Asparagus. I started by looking for plants that could be added to variations of a Hawaiian raw fish dish called Poke, although I often leave out the rice. All three of these plants work well for that.

KELP I tried boiling it in salted water first and then cutting it up in small strips. What surprised me was that after the flat wide kelp was boiled the kelp turned bright green and the water turned yellow. I understand you can also wrap kelp around fish and steam or bake it. I have also seen it grated, seasoned and dried to use as salad toping.

SEA LETTUCE Smaller sea plant and bright green. Works well in seafood type salads and my variations on Poke.

SEA ASPARAGUS. This is a shore plant that looks very much like small asparagus. If you find a spot, there is usually lots of it. You can pick the upper tender parts and wash and sauté it in butter and garlic. Scissors make harvesting it easy.
Where I pick mine, there are often some geese around. For this reason I wash it well and then boil it to be sure it is clean of any geese related contamination. It also goes well in seasoned seaweed salad and Poke variation type recipes. Sometimes, especially if they are older parts of the plant, they can have a woody type white core that you can pull out after it is boiled. Sometimes this plant has been sold fresh in local stores and years ago a friend of mine purchased a licence from the govt. and was assigned a territory to pick it and then wholesale it.

Anyone else cooking with local sea plants or have any good recipes or suggestions?

 

[Kildonan]

I’ve eaten dried sea lettuce which was tasty. Other than that, my only experience is using kelp as a beer bong to chug-a-lug some refreshing lucky lager. lol

 

[Dogbreath]

I like Nori-wrapped fish in Japanese cuisine anything else is just too salty.

 

[adanac]

Recently, I have been experimenting with cooking with fresh BC sea plants. So far I have tried Kelp, Sea Lettuce and Sea Asparagus. I started by looking for plants that could be added to variations of a Hawaiian raw fish dish called Poke, although I often leave out the rice. All three of these plants work well for that.

KELP I tried boiling it in salted water first and then cutting it up in small strips. What surprised me was that after the flat wide kelp was boiled the kelp turned bright green and the water turned yellow. I understand you can also wrap kelp around fish and steam or bake it. I have also seen it grated, seasoned and dried to use as salad toping.

SEA LETTUCE Smaller sea plant and bright green. Works well in seafood type salads and my variations on Poke.

SEA ASPARAGUS. This is a shore plant that looks very much like small asparagus. If you find a spot, there is usually lots of it. You can pick the upper tender parts and wash and sauté it in butter and garlic. Scissors make harvesting it easy.
Where I pick mine, there are often some geese around. For this reason I wash it well and then boil it to be sure it is clean of any geese related contamination. It also goes well in seasoned seaweed salad and Poke variation type recipes. Sometimes, especially if they are older parts of the plant, they can have a woody type white core that you can pull out after it is boiled. Sometimes this plant has been sold fresh in local stores and years ago a friend of mine had a licence from the govt. and was assigned a territory to pick it and then wholesale it.

Anyone else cooking with local sea plants or have any good recipes or suggestions?

great idea using it in poke , traditional poke in hawaii is seasoned with a type of seaweed they call limu ogo, sea asparagus would be a great substitute .

have seen some videos of people pickling rings of kelp and it looks quite tasty

also know guys i guided with that have steamed chunks of halibut in the tubes , apparently right on the coals and it comes up perfectly seasoned and moist!

 

[Rockfish]

great idea using it in poke , traditional poke in hawaii is seasoned with a type of seaweed they call limu ogo, sea asparagus would be a great substitute .

have seen some videos of people pickling rings of kelp and it looks quite tasty

also know guys i guided with that have steamed chunks of halibut in the tubes , apparently right on the coals and it comes up perfectly seasoned and moist!

Interesting idea on the stuffed kelp tubes. I will have to give that a try. Perhaps on the barbecue and baked in the oven.

 

[Rockfish]

I like Nori-wrapped fish in Japanese cuisine anything else is just too salty.

I have not found fresh local sea plants too salty, to my taste anyway, at least in poke variations, and usually ended up adding salt in the form of Soy Sauce.

Poke receipes at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

My versions of Poke use raw fish, usually raw Ahi Tuna, Chinook or Coho salmon with east coast scallops and occasionally imported raw Abalone and sometimes cooked wild prawns, or any combination of these, especially raw Ahi or salmon with raw scallops. Other ingredients I like are finally chopped green onions, various types of sea plants, both fresh cooked and reconstituted dried Japanese ones. Additional ingredients include, a very small amount of hot red pepper powder, Japanese soy sauce, sesame seed oil, Japanese sesame dressing, roasted sesame seeds, a few drops of fish sauce (flavour enhancer), cucumber which is quartered longitudinally and very finely sliced and sometimes a very small amount of oyster sauce. Some use avocado, macadamia nuts, grated ginger and other ingredients which I have not yet tried. No citrus or citrus juice, as the acid cooks the seafood somewhat and ruins the texture of the raw fish, and we are not making Ceviche.