Red Algae – A Thousand-year-old Specialty Of Ireland

The purplish-red seaweed in the Northern Ireland waters from the anti-hunger food, today creates a new culinary trend.
Red algae - a thousand-year-old specialty of Ireland
At 4:00 a.m. every day from May to September, Stephen McAllister pulled the curtains of a room next to the coast of Antrim, northern Ireland, to look out at the sky and decide whether to walk to the ocean. If it was clear, he would wear waterproof pants, grab a plastic bag and follow a path to the beach at Cape Garron, where four generations of the McAllisters also worked

. For the next three hours, McAllister uprooted the purple-red algae clinging to the exposed rock as the seawater receded. Then he put it in a cave to keep the seaweed moist.
Dulse algae has been a regular dish of the Irish people for over 1,000 years This algae helps communities near the Antrim Sea survive the most terrible famine in Irish history (1845 - 1849).



“My father and my uncle both went to get dulse,” said McAllister. Even my great-grandmother, a widow with one-eyed blindness, also worked in this profession. Because there was nothing else to eat at that time.
Dulse is abundant in cold water areas such as the North Atlantic and Pacific from Canada to Scotland. According to chef, writer and documentary director of Slow Food Northern Ireland, Paula McIntyre, "dulse is very Irish." In fact, the priests of St. Columba have harvested Irish dulse from more than 1,400 years ago In the 7th and 8th centuries, it was the custom of the local people that any visitors who came to the house were invited to eat algae, and it was very common to harvest algae on the rocks.



Since then, fishermen from Cork to Carnlough have been supplementing their income and food from this protein and mineral rich algae. When Ireland lost its potato crop in the 1840s, many inland inhabitants moved to the coast in search of algae and seaweed. Groups of people living along the sea have survived thanks to porridge cooked from algae or dried algae and eaten. However, in the 20th century, many Irish people were no longer salty with this rustic dish. Dulse is listed in the forgotten foods group and Slow Food's Ark of Taste list (a list of foods of heritage, special flavors and rare flavors).
In recent years, chefs and artisans have created this wave of "renaissance" of seaweed all over Ireland. Today, you can buy bags of dulse for sale at St George's market, Belfast or find them on the menu of upscale British restaurants. Even supermarkets, sweets shops, post offices and bars from Clare to Antrim sell this algae.



“Dulse algae is a representative of Irish cuisine. It contains our history, saving Irish people during difficult times but we forgot it just because it was the food of the poor, ”McIntyre said. It is also one of the most nutrient dense foods available. Over the past five years people have regained consciousness and dulse has been on the menu, and pioneering chefs have begun incorporating it into dishes. The world has also come to know the importance of dulse algae. ABC News calls this algae precious as the "holy grail" of seafood. The New Yorker thinks that this algae could become a "miracle food". Jamie Oliver, a famous British chef, commented that this is the most nutritious vegetable in the world after he ate it himself and lost nearly 10 kg.




Five years before working as a sheep farm in Dromara, a couple Allison and Will Abernethy started their idea of making dulse and sea salt butter with a hand-crank camera. "Dulse itself, when eaten raw can also increase energy for you, when crushed and mixed together, the butter will taste better and have a more natural salty taste," says Allison. Today, Abernethy Butter is the only food company in Northern Ireland to be certified by the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). The couple also made butter for chef Heston Blumenthal's 3-star Michelin The Fat Duck. They were invited to 10 Downing Street to meet Prince Charles, the Duchess of Camilla and the Duchess of Gloucester.
According to Chris Fearon, a chef who won the BBC menu competition and now head chef Deanes (Qeens, Belfast), dulse is a special ingredient that is extremely easy to use for many dishes. “When you eat this algae raw, you feel like you are chewing on the ocean. Fresh algae actually have a sweet taste, but the longer it stays, the more salty it gets.



And when you stir-fry it, it tastes smoke and hazelnuts, almost like bacon, ”said Fearon. This chef also combines dulse with salmon (photo), enjoy with alcohol. It is one of the most famous dishes of the restaurant. Since the concept of refreshing Nordic cuisine was initiated, chefs and people working in the food industry have used more ingredients from the sea, so dulse is also popular again.
According to Kieran Sloan, owner of the Sawers food chain in Belfast, in the past, when the family was in need, mothers gave their children just a bag of dulse algae to eat gradually. Currently, this dish has become a nutritious and rare dish, appearing in high-end restaurants.
Like many other children in Ireland, Gollian Thompson eats dul.

. Dịch vụ: Thiết kế website, quảng cáo google, đăng ký website bộ công thương uy tín