Ocean Approved, a Maine grower and suppler of frozen kelp, hopes this deeply nutritious, seriously local product, will soon lose its Japanese-restaurant, dried-macrobiotic-staple profile, and become nothing more exotic than a good local choice for a mild green vegetable.
What should we serve with the grilled salmon tonight, peas or kelp? – That’s the question Ocean Approved wants to make standard.
Ocean Approved grows – yes, grows – their kelp in Casco Bay, in the Gulf of Maine. Spores are nurtured on land, set on “long lines” in the ocean once they mature, and harvested off the ropes from March to May. The company is the happy collaboration of Paul Dobbins and Tollef Olson, former mussel farmers, and it’s is the first kelp “farm” in the U.S.
Raising kelp requires no fresh water, no arable land, no fertilizers, and has a positive impact on CO2 levels; it’s thus a bandaid for the ocean’s acidification perils. There’s nothing ironic about the name, “Ocean Approved,” Dobbins told me. The owners believe in running their farm – kelp isn’t seafood; it’s a sea vegetable – with the sea’s blessings.
Leave behind the salty, dried product in cellophane packages; Look for Ocean Approved’s frozen kelp in freezer section of specialty stores, right beside the organic frozen peas. Again, Olson and Dobbins want frozen kelp to simply be another frozen vegetable choice. What you do with peas – a side dish, a salad, tossed into a soup – you do with frozen kelp, (thaw, drain, and it’s ready to use). Choose kelp over peas and your finished dish will ripple with calcium, Vitamin A, K, magnesium, iodine, and all the trace elements anyone needs.
Cook it like pasta, treat it like a slaw. For Dobbins a crumble of it is the ideal topping on grilled salmon. England, Ireland, Scandinavia, Japan, all considered kelp an easily harvested fresh vegetable. Dobbins explains that the reason there’s no kelp section in the indices of our old cookbooks, although people were known to use the vegetable here, is that a limited population – only those living on a coast – had ready access to it.
Samples of kelp cuisine – pickles, soup, slaw – will be generously distributed at the Boston Local Food Festival. Speaking to me over the phone, Dobbins was audibly excited when I brought up Ocean Approved’s representation at the festival.
“It’s a great way to reach new people – we served 3,000 samples last year!” Visibility, feedback, education, it’s all there, Dobbins said.
Kelp, washing up on your beach today, is probably the most local, sustainable vegetable we can be serving. Ocean Approved’s place at the Boston Local Food Festival is natural, a place reserved by the sea itself.
As a painter and writer, Heather Atwood spent a lot of time waiting on tables in great restaurants. While struggling with color and line, she was also learning how to roast a great chicken, and what it means to balance textures in a dish. She’s been interested in good food ever since. Married, the mother of two daughters, Heather now lives in Rockport, Mass. and is the food columnist for the Gloucester Daily Times. She is featured regularly in Taste of the Times videos and her writing can also be seen in the Wednesday food section of the Times. She is also a contributing writer to Local in Season