In the second of her columns giving two recipes for one back-of-the-cupboard ingredient, Rosie Lovell takes on the seaweed challenge
This week I thought I’d tackle seaweed, otherwise known as wakame. I have bought it for various Japanese recipes over the years in its dry form. It loiters in my draws, sometimes spilling out and littering the joint. More often than anything else, I add extra wakame to instant miso soup when I am feeling blue. So here are two new recipes for dried wakame, and they aren’t what you might expect. The first is with pasta (actually spaghetti restaurants are rife in Tokyo) and is restorative and utterly gorgeous for a quick weekday dinner. The additional seaweed just makes the vongole all the more maritime, almost like a quick holiday dip. And the second is as a seasoned seasalt, which will be on our new autumn evening menu at Rosie’s next month. So if you can’t be bothered to make it, you can always just come and try it in the market!
Wakame Vongole for 2
5g dried wakame, soaked
200g spaghetti
2 tbsp olive oil
1 shallot, finely sliced
3 garlic cloves, finely diced
1 small chilli, sliced
225g vine or plum tomatoes, de-seeded and diced
2 glasses of white wine
500g clean clams
a handful of chopped parsley
sea salt
freshly ground pepper
extra virgin olive oil.
To lively up the wakame, pour over boiling water and leave to rehydrate for about half an hour. Drain. Place a pan on a high heat for the spaghetti. Get this cooking before you start on the sauce as this won’t take long. Now to make the sauce, heat some olive oil in a large enough pan for everything, including the clams. Make sure you have a lid to fit the pan as you will need this later on. Add the shallot and then garlic and chilli, turning the flame to low so that your alliums become soft and clear but do not catch. In quick succession add the tomatoes and wine. Turn the flame to high and throw in the clams. Place the lid on the pan and let it boil for about 4 minutes, until the clamshells have popped wide open. Throw in your parsley and wakame and season. Serve over spaghetti with extra virgin olive oil.
Seaweed Salt for quails eggs
5g dried wakame
50g Maldon seasalt
12 quail’s eggs
Place 5g wakame in a small blender attachment. Most hand held blenders come with something like this. Blend until fine and powdery. Mix this into the salt. To soft boil your quail’s eggs lower them into a boiling pan for 3 minutes. Then plunge into ice water until you are ready to serve.
Rosie Lovell runs Rosie’s Deli Cafe, 14 Market Row. You can buy her book ‘Spoon With Rosie’ online here and find her on instagram.com/
