Irish Seaweed Christmas Kitchen book and Guide to Edible Seaweeds

30.00

 

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The book: 191 pages of a delicious food fairy tale with recipes that are designed to help you to keep your food healthy and well prepared in the days before Christmas when time is short. There are clever ways of integrating seaweeds into more traditional menus for Christmas Day. Mince pies, puddings and desserts get a delicious seaweed twist, as do the vegetarian offerings.The book takes us right through the New year and on to the Women’s Christmas with quiet nostalgic reminders that food is a tradition that links us all together, no matter what time of year. (Retail price: €18.50)

The guide: Now in its 3rd edition with 5 additional seaweeds. Describes many edible seaweeds and tells you where these sea vegetables/herbs can be found and also when and how they can be harvested sustainably. (Retail price: €11.50)

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The Book

Honouring traditions. That’s what the Irish Seaweed Christmas Kitchen is about; honouring the customs of Christmas as we know them along the coast, culinary and otherwise, and fusing them with the even more ancient rhythms of the turning seasons and the use of edible seaweeds.

The recipes inside are designed to help you keep your food simple, healthy and well prepared for the days before Christmas when time is short, and also offer clever ways of integrating seaweeds into more traditional menus for Christmas day. Mince pies, puddings and desserts get a delicious seaweed twist, as do the vegetarian offerings. Lazy brunches get an exotic make-over, and go-to Christmas drinks and cocktails stun with the addition of simple seaweed sprigs.

Feeling ambitious enough to tackle your own sourdough bread or fermented carrots over the days of Christmas? Step by step instructions get you easily to the point where you can.

For the less ambitious, the book is packed with simple, delicious ideas, guaranteed to make your table a healthier place in minutes, seaweed pesto, nori butter, and seaweed chocolates coming instantly to mind.

Equally impressive is the section on making practical inexpensive gifts, even a face cream.

Part of the charm of Irish Seaweed Christmas Kitchen is the care with which Prannie inserts memories and insights with the preparation of food. The book slowly unfolds like a delicious food fairy tale with all sorts of good spirits leaping through the pages and a happy ending within your grasp. Many will recognise a custom, or a dish from their childhood, or remember a long forgotten Christmas kitchen smell.

Quiet, nostalgic reminders that food is a tradition that links us all together, no matter what time of year.

Have a wonderful Christmas.

The Guide

The Guide to Edible Seaweeds comes as a pocket sized, splashproof, laminated booklet, designed to survive even the closest encounters with  sea and  weather.

A very clever feature is the QR code on each seaweed page which when scanned by a smart phone links to a short video of Prannie giving a detailed description of the seaweed and how to harvest it sustainably.

Forget the vision of thumbing through a guide book in the whipping wind: this booklet comprises twenty independent, sturdy, free standing cards, firmly held together by a metal keyring so that they can easily flipped open in any weather. Inside is comprehensive and concise information on Irish seaweeds, plus tips on tides, moons and safety, colour photos and clear diagrams on how to sustainably harvest.

Reviews

STEFAN KRAAN, Irish Seaweed Centre

‘Prannie has actually managed to make seaweeds sexy’

NICOLA JEAL, Observer Food Monthly

‘Original and delicious’

Matt Murphy, Sherkin Island Marine Station

For all those who have always wanted to try cooking with seaweed, this recipe book will take the trepidation out of it. It’s a beautiful publication and would make a wonderful gift for anyone interested in cooking with these natural ingredients... full review

Georgina Campbell, Ireland’s leading food and hospitality writer …

A remarkable book by any standards, it comes as no surprise to find that Prannie Rhatigan’s Irish Seaweed Kitchen was many years in the making – the wonder of it is that this wide ranging, searching and very beautiful work ever went to press at all, as its subject is clearly a work in progress for this gifted medical doctor, organic gardener and Slow Food cook... full review

John McKenna, The Bridgestone Guides

‘The most valuable cookery books unveil what is before our eyes, or under our feet, but which we don’t yet appreciate. Prannie Rhatigan’s book performs that demystifying act, superbly. There is a lifetime’s learning here, and a lifetime’s cooking with seaweeds to be enjoyed, thanks to Prannie’s devoted research and endless sense of enquiry’.

Mairin Ui Chomain, Irish Food Writers Guild

.. the most exciting cookbook to reach our shelves in a long, long time, its fresh and individual approach reflects a way of life, making it compulsive reading for anyone who loves food and the coastline...this badly neglected vegetable receives the love, imagination and creativity it deserves. Written in Prannie’s distinctive style ... lucid and charming ... this book is an inspiration and a joy to read. Bravo. Maith thú’


Ross Golden-Bannon, Editor, Food & Wine Magazine and restaurant critic, The Sunday Business Post

‘While others may look to the Mediterranean for culinary inspiration Prannie turns to our shoreline and our rich heritage of seaweeds. She has created a book with an astonishing breadth of recipes and depth of healthful knowledge using seaweed as the ingredient for sweet and savoury dishes, and a healthier diet.'