Within the soft, nutty yellow corn tortilla is a slick of piquant, smoky salsa, pan-wilted rainbow chard and a crowning of cheese, finely grated in pale, positively delicate curls. The main bulk of the filling looks and bites like stewed lentils, but the fatty texture and umami complexity is more reminiscent of minced meat, all slow-stewed and jammy. Yet, it’s neither — it’s made from dried seaweed pulp.
“It’s a funny story with this one,” says Sinéad O’Brien, “this was completely accidental and, like most things with seaweed, you’re just experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t.” Sinéad’s mother Cindy is an aquaculture expert, originally from California, but who’s lived in Ireland since the mid-1990s. “One day, Mom made seaweed cookies using sea spaghetti, which she grinds into a pulp,” Sinéad continues, “[she] had some left over, so I suggested we experiment and see what happens, because this could kind of work like minced meat — and it turned out perfect.”
Together, mother and daughter run Mungo Murphy’s Seaweed Co., an organic aquaculture farm producing seaweed products and abalone, as well as hosting foraging tours. The company’s base is a rocky perch in Connemara, where the Atlantic Ocean meets Galway Bay, on Ireland’s west coast. From Mungo Murphy’s glass-fronted container pod at Keeraunagurk, I can look out onto the moody but pristine water. The waves launch themselves at the
