We had Monk’s Beard with our Balblair lamb at the Cellar in Anstruther the other day. Monk’s Beard I hear you say? What the bloody hell is that? That’s pretty much what we said. But hang on. You may know it by its other names. Johnny Go To Bed At Noon? No? It’s hard not to wonder what’s in it that made Johnny crash out so early.
Or Agretti? Nah? How about its appetising British name; Saltwort. That surely goes some way to explain why the Italians are doing so well out of growing it and selling it and we’re, ahem, not. Anyway, we had some in the Cellar at Anstruther and while its soft green saltiness – like irony samphire – is pleasant it’s not going to be popping up in McDonald’s soon.
The Cellar didn’t say whether their Monk’s Beard was supplied to them by its Italian importers or whether in true Michelin restaurant style they had sent kitchen staff out grubbing on the Fife seashore early that morning.
But of course it wouldn’t be a Modern Michelin meal if there wasn’t some ingredient snatched in true Scandinavian culinary crackpot style from under a hedge, or behind a tussock. Sometimes it’s about improving the flavours, often it’s about giving us something rare and therefore thrilling to talk about, but mostly it’s just about saying: we don’t buy our supplies from the back of a freezer van mate. Don’t expect Agretti at McDonald's though. It’s not a volume fad, even though it’s actually Jamie Oliver Restaurants Inc who are credited with making it popular in the UK. Creating one of those rare occasions where an ingredient moves up the food chain.
The thing is: while we’re eating Monk’s Beard in Anstruther the Americans are going crazy about a far more accessible and fully Scottish ingredient. Kelp. Yeah, the stuff that about 300 years or so ago we used to harvest in vast coastal quantities. The stuff the Americans are right now calling gourmet carbon – don’t even ask why.
Of course if you pop up to the vast Chinese See-Wu supermarket in Glasgow then there are mounds of it, dried, salted, baked with olive oil, sold in packets with cartoon covers; the Japanese, Koreans and now Americans give it to their kids as a playtime snack. Nori sheets. Very nice and sweet and healthy they are too.
In Oregon they’ve actually invented a bacon-flavoured variety. Seriously. Everyone’s apparently very excited. Dulse, wasn’t harvested to eat in Scotland and Ireland, but it was eaten during famines. Now it’s gobbled down in Michelin-starred restaurants in the States. Kelp noodles, dulse flakes, yadadada. And it’s staggeringly easy to grow.
An American kelp farmer named Bren Smith has claimed that with a $30,000 dollar investment fishermen who become sea farmers could easily be making $70,000 a year. Of course Americans rave about the coconut water that lies unsold on our supermarket shelves. The Chia seeds that nobody touches. But as the ocean covers 70 per cent of the earth and so far only produces two per cent of our food, this time they could be onto something.
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