Savour Crispy Green Seaweed

Some warungs or food stalls on the street side in Bali usually sell local delicacies like tipat cantok (gado-gado); fresh wet cakes (as contrasted to crackers or biscuits), rujak or assorted fruit slices with sweet hot sauce and seafood. The latter may consist of tuna satay and its soup with thin slices of young banana trunk. There is also another seafood left becoming a favourite of the locals, namely green seaweed.
Physical appearance of this seaweed is like translucent string with some branches. It’s widely available in the market, both at traditional and supermarket. Do not be surprised if you find it in different two colours. The fresh one is green while another is white as has been dried. Both can be made into vegetables. Here is its simple recipe.

Ingredients: 200g seaweed Spice:

1. small chilli, 2 cm greater galangal (grated), ½ tsp salt, 5 tbsp grated coconut, 5 tbsp broth of preserved fish (optional)
   Method:
   1. Rinse the seaweed thoroughly.
   
2. Use mortar and pestle to pound the chilli and then mix it well with other spices.
   
3. Add spices to the seaweed and blend them together. It’s been ready to serve. If you like, it can be added with broth of preserved fish.(BTN/029)

Hand-Made Gel Cake

When the dry season comes, it’s time to turn to beach to find out some foods. Tidal area of rocky beach has spacious habitat for a variety of seaweeds, ranging from the blonde to green ones. Villagers at coastal area usually take advantage this moment to search for some of them. They may get what the locals call by cake seaweed, tobacco seaweed (a bit bitter), chicken intestine seaweed or sargasso and so forth. Sargasso is brown seaweed with berry-like air bladders, typically floating in large masses. It can be consumed as vegetable or cake. If it’s intended for making cake, it should first be dried under the sun. Rinse it again and again (at least 3 times alternately) and be dried thoroughly. When it dries, it will turn white. Then, it can be kept within few months. This can be an alternative of seaweed-based gel that is sold in the market.

Ingredients:
A handful of dry seaweed.
5 glasses of water
150g refined sugar
1 tsp salt

Method:

1. Rinse rigorously the seaweed and then soak for some 2 hours.
   
2. Boil the seaweed until it gets shattered and stir up repeatedly.
   
3. Afterwards, take out and strain it. Meanwhile, its dregs is added with a glass of water and kneaded again and again. After straining this one, please add to the first filtrate and its dregs can be discarded.
   
4. Re-boil the filtrate and added with sugar and salt. Wait a moment until it boils and gets thick.
   
5. Finally, take it out and pour into container or conical wrap. Let it cool and thicken. It’s then ready to serve.
   (BTN/029)