][1]The blog hopes you are all enjoying a splendiferous Easter break and haven’t yet turned green from eating too many chocco eggs and bunnies.
If you have overdosed on sickly treats then you might be interested in something rather more savoury and, unlikely as it may seem, sexy: seaweed.
San Pellegrino and Restaurant magazine recently revealed their annual list of the world’s 50 best restaurants.
This article in The Independent points out that seven out of ten of the restaurants featured, including Noma, the highest ranking restaurant, use seaweed on their menus.
Crispy fried seaweed, or lettuce in the more unscrupulous venues, has long been a staple in Chinese restaurants but it seems that everyone else is now getting in on the act.
Stravaigin featured seaweed in their March Wild Seafood dinner and Roy Brett uses it in his award-winning Ondine restaurant.
Earlier this year, we blogged about Iain Mckellar and his recently launched Just Seaweed company which harvests seaweed from the shores of Bute and sells it to restaurants all over the UK.
However, it would appear that seaweed is not just the hot ingredient of the moment.
According to this report in the Record, it can also help prevent Swine Flu and, rather more racily, the Irish Independent has a cracking story about the sea vegetable’s aphrodisiac qualities, particularly for women.
Great headline: Girls are getting a little kelp from seaweed – the new Viagra.