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Gregory Schaefer from the G Word here! My second shoot for the “Ultimate Eco Cook Off” had me wading in shark-infested waters in search of delicious seaweed! What fun!!!
Harvesting kombu (tasty brown kelp) was awesome for many reasons. Always great to hit the North Coast of California and our beautiful tidal pool was stunning! The incredible seaweed buffet was tasty, delicious and enlightening. Overall it was our kombu experts that made this a most incredible shoot. Chef Wild is one enthusiastic bad ass, while John and Barbara are adorable eccentrics. Everyone had a blast!
After an insanely twisty drive we landed at the HQ of the Mendocino Sea Vegetable Company. I was engulfed by the smell of the sea as soon as I hopped out of the car, even though we were about twenty minutes from the coast. Seaweed was drying all over the garden and a couple of folks were bagging and packaging the sea harvest.
Barbara greeted us and immediately began playing show and tell with her many seaweeds explaining in rapid detail the nutritional benefits of each type and which ones made great additions to the bathtub. Clearly our host was a seaweed junky. Then there was John who made his grand entrance by walking out of the woods chomping on a huge piece of celery, grabbing fistfuls of wet seaweed and throwing it on my head! “YEAH MAN,” he shouted to the crew and the hunt was on!
We landed at the ocean and got ready for the harvest. John and Barbara’s friend showed up to help out by lighting a big piece of white sage on fire and blowing smoke all over us—including the camera. Now in tune with a higher consciousness we were in for a great shoot.
Into the water we went! My feet were so cold they ached with pain, the temperature was around 50 degrees! Hypothermia, sharks and a million sea anemones were out to get me! As we got deeper into the tide pool, Barbara kept picking different seaweeds and devouring them. Andrew and I followed suit. There was one that tasted just like scrambled eggs, another had intense umami and the red nori we found was just unreal. Each seaweed seemed to be alive, vibrating with mineral content and energy. I felt great, save for my legs, which had gone numb by this point.
The kombu was beautiful. They look like giant brown snake tongues and they sway on the surface sometimes poking out of the water and glistening in the sun. But man, they were slippery and tough, I began to wonder if my recipe was gonna work…
After the harvest we had to do the drying which was kinda disgusting due to all the slime. It's like aloe vera but more viscous. Barbara told us she has a recipe for “love juice” that's great for intimate bedroom moments. At one point while Andrew and I were snacking on some kombu she told us about how the slime is used in Finland to aid in childbirth…we spit out the seaweed when cervix and crowning were used in the same sentence!
Being on the beach and in the water took it’s toll on me. By the time we were in the kitchen and ready to rock the cook-off I was beat! What I did was sacrilegious—a Japanese chef would never hard boil kombu like that. But I was doing an experiment in fusion! I’d practiced this dish at home with great success. I have always used Japanese or Korean kombu which is a bit thinner and more tender than John and Barbara’s stuff. It took a lot longer to tenderize their seaweed. I’m still proud though, my dish was tasty and quite ingenious. And how cool to utilize kombu as THE MAIN INGREDIENT creating a nutritious, carb-free, iodine and mineral rich pasta!
Great experience! Even though I lost the challenge, I wouldn't change a thing. Chef Wild is the coolest, and his dish rocked, and John and Barbara are just awesome. They really turned me on to the world of seaweed and I've added more of it to my diet since the shoot. Their enthusiasm for sea veggies is really infectious and I look forward to meeting up with them to help out on another harvest soon!
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