My new adventures in seaweed

I've always been intrigued by seaweed. I've taken seaweed baths. I've eaten lots of sushi. I've even purchased books by Irish seaweed gurus, Prannie Rhatigan and Sally McKenna.

I live by the coast and sometimes see neighbours foraging for seaweed along the shoreline. But I've always been nervous about gathering seaweed myself. I felt as though I lacked the knowledge I needed to identify what was safe to eat. I was convinced that I'd end up poisoning myself.

That was until I went on a seaweed foraging with Darach Ó Murchú, an outdoors guide who runs foraging workshops here in West Kerry. He opened my eyes to a whole new edible world along the shoreline. 

I wrote about my adventures in seaweed in Monday's Irish Examiner. You can read all about it here.

My hair may be windswept but at last I know how to identify some of Ireland's best edible seaweeds!

Blackberries and apples: the stars of the season

I used to take blackberry picking very seriously when I was a child. As soon as the season started, my two sisters and I would go blackberry picking with the neighbour's children and it was a matter of family honour that we would pick more than they did. We would fight our way through thorny brambles to reach the juiciest specimens, clamber down steep riverbanks to reach out-of-the-way briars and arrive home, scratched and bloodied but victorious, clutching buckets overflowing with purple berries.

I went blackberry picking for the first time this year at the weekend and was a little disappointed with my haul. It seems as though the blackberries of West Kerry are slow to ripen this year. 

Perhaps it's because we haven't had enough sunshine but the brambles aren't very heavy with fruits and had I presented my pitiful bowl of blackberries to my sisters (not to mention my neighbours) all those years ago, it would most definitely have been scoffed at.

Nevertheless, it was still enough to make a delicious blackberry and apple crumble. Blackberries and apples are two of the stars of the season and they are certainly the stars of this recipe - one you should all make before blackberry season is over for yet another year.  

This recipe feeds six generously.

Ingredients:

250g blackberries

600g bramley apples or other cooking apple

The juice of half a lemon

80g to 120g of golden caster sugar (depending on how sweet you like your filling to be. I prefer mind slightly tart.)

125 cold, unsalted butter, cut into chunks

200g plain flour

100g golden caster sugar

A pinch of salt

75g porridge oats 

A baking dish (I used a rectangular one measuring 20cm by 28cm) 

• Preheat the oven to 180 Celsius/350 F/Gas Mark 4.
• Place your blackberries in a bowl of cold water for a few minutes to remove any dirt or insects. Drain in a sieve or colander.
• Core and peel the apples and cut them into chunks. Place them in a bowl and toss them in the lemon juice, which will prevent them from discolouring and also add an extra level of flavour.
• Add the blackberries and sugar and mix together.
• Place in a baking dish. 

• Place the butter, flour, sugar and salt for the crumble mixture in a large bowl and combine by rubbing the butter into the dry ingredients with your fingers. Rub, lift and drop the mixture until it has the texture of breadcrumbs. (If you're lucky enough to have a food processor, it can do this step for you.)
• Once you've achieved the correct texture, stir in the porridge oats.
• Sprinkle the crumble over the fruit. 

• Cook in the oven for 35 to 45 minutes until the crumble is golden on top. 

• Serve with cream or ice cream.  

My haul of blackberries may not have been enough to impress my competitive childhood self (or my siblings or indeed my neighbours) but what I did with it certainly was. 

Excuse the erratic lighting in these pictures. It was still light when I started making the crumble but dark by the time it had finished baking. That's autumn in Ireland for you!

Competing with caterpillars: my first time making nettle soup

You know that feeling you get when you put your hands in the pockets of a coat you haven't worn in ages and discover money - preferably of the larger denomination variety? Well, that's the feeling I get when I succeed in foraging for food. A feeling that I'm one up on the world and have somehow managed to get something for nothing.

I'm far from being an expert forager. To date, I've only picked wild garlic to make butters and pestos (see here for more). That's why I decided to expand my range further today by foraging for nettles.

There are many things I didn't know about nettles. I didn't know how nutritious they are. They contain vitamins A and C as well as iron, calcium and magnesium. There are people who swear by their medicinal benefits, including a friend of my mother's who used to have recurring kidney problems until she started to drink nettle tea every morning.

Nor did I realise that nettles would bring me into direct competition with my boyfriend's latest hobby - caterpillars.

Yup, you read that correctly. His latest hobby is caterpillars.
He spent his childhood chasing butterflies and moths and has retained a passion for them to this day. A few weeks ago, he decided to cultivate this passion by trying to reintroduce native species to our corner of southwest Ireland. He orders baby caterpillars online. They arrive in boxes and he feeds and looks after them until they emerge into the butterflies and moths they are destined to become. This requires feeding them the foods they would naturally eat in the wild and, in most cases, this means nettles. When he saw me heading for the nettle patch at the bottom of our garden, I was warned not to take too much. "Those nettles belong to the caterpillars," I was told.

Luckily, there were lots of nettles and I didn't need that many to make my very first nutritious, and surprisingly delicious, nettle soup.

Here's what you need to know about picking nettles:
You don't want to get stung so wear gloves and use scissors to protect yourself.
You should only pick the tops of young, small nettle plants as the older ones become bitter with age.
Be sure to wash them thoroughly before cooking to remove all dirt and insects. Otherwise, you may find yourself eating some of my boyfriend's beloved caterpillars! (Be careful while washing them too as the sting isn't entirely removed from the leaves until they are cooked.)

Here's how I made my soup:
Ingredients: 150g young nettles
50g butter
1 medium sized onion, diced
1 large carrot, diced
1 celery stick, chopped
1 large clove of garlic, crushed
2 medium potatoes, chopped
1 litre vegetable stock (I used Marigold vegetable bouillon in boiling water)
Salt and pepper
Freshly grated nutmeg

Go through the nettles, discarding any really tough stalks.

Melt the butter in a large pan over a medium heat and sweat the onion, carrot and celery until soft but not coloured.

Add the crushed garlic and potatoes and cook for another minute or so.

Add the stock and simmer for ten minutes to cook the potatoes.

Add the nettles, pushing them down into the liquid.

Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes until the nettles are really tender.

Season with salt and pepper.

Allow to cool and then pureé in a blender.

Pour back into the saucepan and add some freshly grated nutmeg. It's hard to say how much of this you will need as it really is a question of taste but I used slightly less than half a teaspoon.

You could serve this with a swirl of cream and some chopped chives. But I wanted my first experience of nettle soup to be simple and unadulterated.



It tasted just as I hoped it would: fresh, healthy and wholesome. I'm definitely going to make it again and I'm also planning to try nettle risotto. If I get to our nettle patch before my boyfriend and his caterpillars do, that is!