#389 Salmon Stewed in Seaweed with Dulse Hollandaise

Seaweed is not so popular in this country and this recipe requires two different kinds. The first is dulse and I have used it before to make #307 Mashed Potato with Dulse. There’s some information about dulse on that post, should you want it. 

However, the other seaweed – the one the fish is stewed in – is not so familiar. It is called fingerware, and according to the recipe, comes in ½ ounce (or 15g these days) packets. I could find no mention of fingerware in any of my books, or in shops. I did manage to find its Latin name in A Dictionary of Food and Nutrition by David A Bender, but that was all I found though. Here’s the full entry:

                fingerware Edible seaweed, Laminaria digitalia

This name sounded familiar (being an ecologist one picks up the Latin names to some organisms), and it turned out to be good-old kelp. Now I had something to try and order. Unsurprisingly, I was able to find it on Amazon, but only in massive triple packs. Hey-ho. It just had better be bloody nice!

Fingerware, Laminara digitalia, in situ

Now I had my two seaweeds I could cook the recipe, which, by the way, is one that Jane modified from a book from Karin Perry's Fish Book. Originally, halibut was used, but you could also use any round sea fish like sea bass, cod, or grey mullet.

 Fingerware how I received it.

Begin by preparing your whole salmon. According to Jane, it should weigh somewhere around 2 ½ pounds, mine was a little larger because the only salmon available to me was farmed, and they grow much larger than wild salmon. Anyway, give the salmon a rinse and pat it dry. Leave out in the kitchen for it to warm to room temperature for 30 minutes or so.

Next prepare the fingerware, you’ll need ½ ounce of it. I could only get it in huge sheets, so I cut out a piece and cut that into broad strips. Pour boiling water over it and leave it to rehydrate for 30 minutes.

While you wait, get the fish kettle ready: place two upturned ramekins inside end-to-end to act as a stage for the rack; the idea here is that the fish cooks in the steam rather than in the water. Lay the fingerware over the rack and then brush the upper side of the fish with some melted butter. Season it with salt and pepper, and then lay the fish butter-side-down on the rack. Brush the other side of the fish with more melted butter and season. Don’t forget to season inside the fish too. Lay the rest of the fingerware over the fish.

Next, get some hot water on ready to pour into the kettle. Cut a piece of kitchen foil large enough to cover the fish in its kettle; the lid cannot be used because of the ramekins. Pour in the hot water, then place the rack and fish inside the kettle. Cover with foil, put over two burners and steam for 15 minutes.

When the time is up, have a little look and see if the fish is done. You could use a knife to have a little inspection, or pull a fin; if ready the fin should pull out in a satisfying way. If not ready, leave another 5 minutes.

When done, take the kettle from the heat, but keep the foil over it for another 15 minutes. While you wait, prepare the hollandaise sauce.

Take 2 tablespoons of crumbled, dry dulse in a bowl and pour over it boiling water. Leave for 2 minutes, strain it in a sieve and refresh with cold water. Pat dry with kitchen paper.

Start by cutting 7 ounces of softened unsalted butter into small cubes. Place 3 egg yolks in a bowl along with a tablespoon of water. Whisk well and then place the bowl over a pan of simmering water. Then, whisking all the time, add one or two cubes of butter and when incorporated add a couple more cubes until all the cubes are used up. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice and stir in the dulse.

Transfer the salmon to a serving dish and pour the sauce into a jug.

When portioning out the fish, Jane suggests, giving each person a small piece of the fingerware. She also suggests to accompany it with boiled new potatoes and samphire or blanched cucumber or mange tout.

 #389 Salmon Stewed in Seaweed with Dulse Hollandaise. Hmmm. A tricky one to judge, this one. I thought the salmon was cooked very nicely and one cannot ever complain about hollandaise sauce. The problem was the seaweed didn’t seem to add anything at all to the dish. I think if I had used partially-dried dulse like you can get in Ireland, fried it to make it crispy and used that in the sauce, it would have made a world of difference. For that, it loses points, so let’s say 6/10.

#307 Mashed Potato with Dulse

Nobody really eats dulse, or any other seaweed, in England these days, though they used to. It is a pity because I do like the stuff. It seems to be popular still in Ireland though; my friend Evelyn often brings back a bag of it whenever she visits home and I like to steal a few pieces.

Dulse had been eaten for over one thousand years in North-Western Europe, the ancient Celtic Warriors of old ate dulse as they were marching and during the seventeenth century, and British sailors used it to prevent scurvy (although it was actually originally used as an alternative to chewing tobacco).

Its popularity in Ireland as well as Scotland led to dulse becoming liked in the USA too when they immigrated over the pond, although none of my American friends seem to have heard of it.

The Dulse Gatherers by Willaim Marshall Brown, 1863-1936

The dulse industry has obviously died a bit of a death in England and the rest of the UK and Ireland compared to days of yore. Charles Dickens, writing in 1858, reminisces about childhood holidays in Aberdeen where there were often over a dozen ‘dulse-wives’ selling dulse:

[O]f all the figures on the Castlegate, none where more picturesque than the dulse-wives. They sat in a row on little wooden stools, with their wicker creels placed before them on the granite paving stones. Dressed in clean white mutches, or caps, with silk-hankerchiefs spread over their breasts, and blue stuff wrappers and petticoats, the ruddy and sonsie dulse-women looked the types of health and strength... Many a time, where my whole weekly income was a halfpenny, a Friday’s bawbee, I have expended it on dulse, in preference to apples, pears, blackberries, cranberries, strawberries, wild peas and sugar-sticks.

He recalls a conversation:

A young one would say: “Come to me, bonnie laddie, and I’ll gie ye mair for yer bawbee than any o’ them.”

An old one would say: “Come to me, bonnie laddie, and I’ll tell what like yer wife will be.”

“Yer dinner ken yerself.”

“Hoot aye – I ken brawly: she’ll hae a head and feet, an mou’, and eyen, and may be a nose, and will be as auld as me, if she lives as lang.”

“Aye: but ye gie me very little dulse for my bawbee.”

“Aye,” replies the honest woman, adding another handful, “but sic a wife is weel worth mair siller.”

The dulse-wives exploded into laughter, when the woman suggested some one like herself, as the ideal wife which youth is doomed always to pursue and never to attain.

Oh! those dulse-wives.

Anyway, enough prattle, time for the recipe:

It could be easier, really. First, scrub and then boil some potatoes in their skins without adding any salt. Remove the skins and mash them. Next, crumble the dried dulse and fry it in olive oil – you’ll need a quarter of an ounce of dulse for every pound of potatoes used. This takes just a few seconds. Add the oil and dulse to the spuds and mix, mashing in some extra olive oil if need be.

Serve with lamb (as I did), beef, chicken or fish.

#307 Mashed Potato with Dulse. Well this was good mash, but there wasn’t much flavour of dulse in there. It did give the potatoes an attractive green colour though. I thought it strange that the recipe asked for olive oil rather than butter – olive oil was not used that much when English Food was first written in 1974. It would have been most likely found in chemist’s shops, where it was used to remove ear wax. 5/10