Seaweed

Seaweed is used in Cuisine Minceur, for instance in the recipe, as a humidifier in the cooking of fish. It adds a strong flavour of its own too, a flavour very similar to the smell that rises from seaweedy rocks when the tide goes out, rather pungent and salty. Use young Bladder Wrack (fucus vesiculosus) or Knotted Wrack (ascophyllum nodosum) the dark green-brown common varieties covered with oval bladders which pop when you stand on them. If you can’t pick it yourself at the seaside, you can buy it at wholesale fish markets or, possibly, order it from your fishmonger, although he may be rather surprised.