Is Wakame seaweed heading towards your plate?

WHEN chef Sean Connolly asked Wayne Hulme from Christie's Seafood if he could source something unique for a seafood platter, it began a chain of events that brought the first fresh Australian wakame seaweed into Sydney.

It's now appearing on restaurant plates, including at Rockpool and Sean's Panaroma, and is on sale for the home cook.

Following Connolly's request, Hulme consulted a Tasmanian periwinkle diver, who went on a reconnaissance mission at St Helens and found wakame in pristine waters.

Called undaria pinnatifida, or apron-ribbon vegetable in China, the sea vegetable began growing off the east coast of Tasmania in the 1980s.

“It is an introduced species from the ballast of Japanese ships,” Hulme says. "The plant's ability to adapt is on show as it really doesn't belong in our waters.”

Already harvested for pharmaceutical uses, the Tasmanian authorities granted the first wakame harvesting licence for human consumption to the diver. "I don't think anyone had ever asked before," Hulme says.

He is permitted to remove 10 to 15 kilograms a week and Hulme credits Connolly with “motivating me to find something new. He was after samphire, which is available in limited quantities.”

Dried seaweed is a familiar sight in NSW shops but the fresh, Australian-grown product is new.

All seaweed varieties, including wakame, are without leaves, stalks or roots. Their leaf-like blades absorb solar energy and minerals from sea water. A stipe, similar to a stalk, secures the plant to the sea floor. Only the seaweed blades are harvested, which can be eaten raw or cooked.

Of 8000 seaweed species, only 10 are commonly eaten, referred to as sea vegetables. With its delicate, briny flavour, wakame adds umami (savouriness) to food and is used to enhance soups, simmered dishes and vinegared salads. It can also be blanched or made into chips by quick frying in hot oil.

“It's a seafood vegetable and that is how chefs are treating it, even looking at serving it as a side dish,” Hulme says.

Along with Connolly, Neil Perry features fresh wakame on Rockpool's menu; Sean Moran from Sean's Panorama is a fan; and Akira Urata from Teppanyaki uses it.

"I had never seen it before but we just had to get some," says Rockpool chef Phil Wood. "We are using it in an abalone dish. It's head and shoulders above anything else."

At Sean's Panaroma, the wakame is wrapped around steamed snapper. "We've been working with it to find its best way . . . we weren't sure at first . . . but it's been very interesting," says chef-owner Sean Moran.

Hulme collects about 10 kilograms of wakame, airfreighted from Tasmania, at Sydney Airport every fortnight. He says home cooks can lay small strips over oysters or use it in soups and seaweed salads with sesame oil and chilli.

When wakame first appeared in Tasmanian waters, it created concern as it is considered a marine pest. Studies have since shown the seaweed has a less insidious effect on local ecosystems than other exotic species, such as the Northern Pacific seastar, which also arrived in ballast water. An annual weed that effectively dies off each year, wakame doesn't compete with native kelps but thrives in places that have already been disturbed. If it wasn't for the abundant growth of wakame in St Helens, the edible seaweed could have easily been missed.

Where wakame is harvested from the wild in Tasmania, supplies in Japan, Korea and China are cultivated on ropes. Seaweed spores are seeded onto lengths of string in seawater tanks on land, then transported on to rafts moored offshore.

The vegetable grows to about one metre long and up to 30 centimetres wide. The tattered-shaped blades undulate in the water with the movement of the waves.

“The colour is so natural, to the point that you can see natural flecks when held up against the light,” Hulme says.

Fresh wakame is sold at Christie's Seafood, Sydney Fish Market, for $3.50/100g.