Superfood Seagreens: A Guide to Cooking with Power-packed Seaweed (Superfoods for Life)

I love this book! Great illustrations, easy to read, colorfully perfect 👌

As with all of his books, Barton doesn't just give us a collection of great recipes, he gives us the story behind the food. All of his cookbooks can be enjoyed as a story as well.

As a 13 year vegetarian and dabbler in macrobiotics, I'm pretty familiar with sea greens. I've re-constituted shreds of hijiki to make the faux "tuna" salad (made out of mashed chick peas) from Vegan with a Vengeance and, since reading Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Life, have been adding sheets of Kombu to my soups and stews for that extra punch of umami flavor. I frequently order the seaweed salad at my local sushi place and can't get enough of Annie Chun's wasabi-flavored nori sheets.Since I know how nutritious sea greens are, I'm always looking for new ways to incorporate them into my cooking so Barton Seaver's book is the perfect addition to my vast cookbook collection. At the very least, I figured it might prompt me to finally open those bags of dried wakame and arame that I bought at the Asian grocer last summer but never found a use for.There are a bunch of great recipes (not all of them strictly vegetarian) ranging from smoothies and sauces to burgers and, believe it or not, desserts. While I'm not yet brave enough to attempt a sea weed fortified chocolate cake, I've already delved into quite a few of his savory recipes. I prepared Seaver's excellent version of Goddess dressing, always a favorite, made extra savory with the edition of rehydrated kombu. If you're a vegetarian, like me, it's easy to leave out the anchovies since the kombu gives the dressing enough of a briny kick to render them pretty much unnecessary. And the Kelp, Walnut and Ginger Pesto recipe is the bomb! So flavorful and unique; the addition of ginger adds a bit of an Asian flare to an Italian classic. The Seagreens Sushi-Joint Style is a great way to make a restaurant staple at home (quick tip: the longer you can marinate this - the yummier it is). I've also tried his Lentil Soup recipe, which isn't much different than my own lentil soup, except for the welcome additions of both dulse flakes and smoked paprika. Very hearty and warming on a cold February day in New England.I have yet to try any of the recipes from his chapter on larger dishes (many of which include meat) but look forward to giving the Veggie Burgers a go, since they include beets (the hot new ingredient in non-meat patties), as well as the more unusual addition of chopped prunes. I'm always looking for new ways to make moist, beefy non-meat patties, so maybe beets, prunes and sea greens is the magic combo.But for all the great recipes, I think the most valuable part of the book for me was the opening chapters, which talk about the nutritional value of sea greens, provide an overview of the different kinds, explain how to re-hydrate dried sea greens, where to get the best product (and what to avoid) and how to properly equip a healthy, nutritious pantry. So much good information here.I'm a person who tends to be very leery of the latest superfood trends. I've viewed every craze from oat bran to acai berries with a fairly jaundiced eye. However, I really do believe that sea greens are a nutritional power house that people should add to their diet. Barton Seaver's book provides easy and delicious ways to do just that.

The title of this book was appealing to me because I like the sea greens that I've eaten in Japanese restaurants but I never had much of a clue how to make them. The only thing I regularly use sea greens in is Nori, which is the outside part that is used to wrap the fish and rice in a sushi roll. I've also attended trade shows where companies that harvest and dry sea greens, had samples of salads made with a combination of sea greens and dressing, resulting in some very unique salads. But I had no idea how to actually make them. This book not only has lots of recipes using these ingredients but it tells why we might want to use them.This book contains a great explanation of the vitamins, minerals and benefits of using sea greens in our diets. I knew that they contained iodine but was clueless beyond that. This book gives a very good explanation of some of the health benefits of including sea greens in our diets. It also tells the characteristics of several and where to buy them or the possibility of harvesting them yourself if you live near a coastal area.The thing I liked best about this book was that Barton Seaver, the author, took many mainstream types of recipes like Italian Fennel Salsd or multigrain crackers and added sea greens to them. The sea greens in some of these recipes is almost like a spice or herb. And trying a few of the recipes has introduced me to the different flavors and inspired me to add them to other dishes that I usually make, but with a different twist. I ended up purchasing most of these sea greens in a dried version at Whole Foods, but after trying them I'll probably order them on Amazon the next time around.There are 75 recipes in this book and most are pretty mainstream with sea greens added. There aren't a lot of strange foods you've never heard of before. Now that I have some of these sea greens in my pantry and have tried them in a few dishes, I'm going out and trying some of them in other dishes and coming up with new ideas for using them. This was a great introduction to sea greens and made me feel comfortable with adding them to some of my old recipes as well as showing me the characteristics of different varieties and ways that they could be used.

A good guide

Wonderful recipes