Mussel served with seaweed pesto and a side of Arame seaweed, by pioneering Seaweed chef Donald Deschagt, Ostend, Belgium for Seagriculture 2019 dinner. The following article also appears on Forskning.no, Fra Fjord til bord.
Text & Photo © JW van Hal, JE Nilsson & CM Cordeiro 2019
An impromptu session of new product testing with a group of friends in northern Norway ensued after I returned from a seaweed trade fair with new product samples of chocolate infused with seaweed or chocolate seaweed. I grew up in Singapore, and one of my first encounters at age of about five with seaweed was at a cousin´s wedding dinner. Seaweed is often served in conjunction with jellyfish at Chinese wedding banquets as cold dish appetizers. As such, I had taken for granted that the chocolate seaweed samples would bring positive reviews with thereafter queries of where to purchase such chocolate bars or when do we see them at the local grocery stores in Tromsø. But the immediate reactions to the chocolate seaweed was tepid at best. Most concluded that chocolate infused with seaweed was not a palatable product, and that a perfectly good product like chocolate was ruined.