Wild, wonderful, SEAWEED
Several times a month, Peter Langlands forages along the Banks Peninsula coastline for seaweed. A professional forager for the last seven years, Canterbury-based Peter also travels around the country running foraging workshops and hunting for wild foods for restaurants who want to add them to dishes.
About 70 percent of Peter’s daily diet is foraged from the land or ocean. While he rummages through nature for anything that’s edible, he is particularly knowledgeable about seaweed – or sea vegetables, as the ocean plants are commonly known in Asia and beyond.
Seaweed has been farmed in Asia for centuries, and is commonly used in coastal cuisines in Japan, China and Korea, while it is also eaten in coastal Europe, in places such as Iceland, Norway, and Wales. Māori once ate karengo, a red seaweed found on rocky shores, and used bull kelp to store processed muttonbird.
In Japan, seaweeds feature in everything from preparing dashi broth to salads, soups and wrapping sushi rolls. Here,
