Eating Seaweed and Pasta
Cooking Dulse in a Recipe to Add Marine Flavor to Italian Spaghetti
Dulse remains popular as North Atlantic seaweed. With an extremely salty and marine flavour, dulse leaves can be bought dried or fresh in punnets. Cooking with dulse can bring sea scent and taste to staples including breads and scones, hot potato salads and pasta.
The Spaghetti with Scratch Dulse Pesto recipe brings an oceanic turn to a basil pesto to accompany pasta.
About Dulse
Historians suggest that dulse has been harvested and eaten in North America, Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, Greenland, Norway, France and Siberia.
Food historian, Regina Sexton writes about dulse: “Its tough, dark crimson fronds are rich in potassium and magnesium … Much of the charm of dulse rests with its versatility as a cooking ingredient. Freshly picked bunches can be fried or stewed with deliciously intense results. For the brave and those with a high salt tolerance..” in A Little History of Irish Food (Gill and Macmillan Ltd, 1998)
Buying and Cooking Dulse
Dulse is available to buy in some supermarkets, delis and online suppliers during the harvesting season from Spring to Autumn. In Ireland and Scotland, dulse with fish dishes, oatcakes and potatoes remains popular. Recipes that transgress traditional ways of eating dulse sustain a cook’s interest in eating seaweed.
Dulse should be well rinsed for 2-3 minutes in cold water before cooking. With its natural tendency to be extremely salty, avoid adding salt to boiling water when cooking dulse.
Spaghetti with Scratch Dulse Pesto
Lesley Ellis, in her Simply Seaweed: Tempting recipes for Samphire, Seaweed and Sea Vegetables (Grub Street Books, 1998) first suggested in ‘Spaghetti with Dulse Pesto’ adding dulse to a basil, pine kernel and green pesto sauce as an accompaniment to spaghetti pasta.
The following recipe is an adaptation to allow cooks, interested in cooking with seaweed, to make the pesto sauce with dried American dulse from scratch.
American Dulse Pesto Sauce
Ingredients:
- 40g dried American dulse
- 175ml of olive oil
- 50 g pine kernels
- 3 garlic cloves
- 50g fresh basil leaves
- 50g fresh flat leaf parsley
- 50g fresh Parmesan cheese
Directions:
- Make the pesto first from scratch. Using a food processor takes 30 seconds to combine all the pesto ingredients, stop and turn over by spatula and a final 30 seconds to blend. By hand, a cook can chop finely the seaweed, herbs, garlic and pine kernels and add finely grated fresh Parmesan cheese.
- Cook the spaghetti in a large pan of boiling water, drain and refresh briefly under cold water.
- Return the cooler spaghetti to the pan with olive oil and turn over well in the pan.
- Add the pesto, four tablespoons at a time until the cook’s and companion/s desired level of spaghetti sauce.
Once the ingredients are in on a cook’s shopping list, dulse pesto made from scratch brings marine scents and flavors to Italian spaghetti for a lunch or dinner. Spaghetti with scratch dulse pesto makes a perfect summer dish to eat al fresco.
Cooks around the world continue to be inspired by dulse, the popular North Atlantic seaweed, sea vegetables and samphire.
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