Seaweed Surprise - Cucumber & Arame Salad

I've been wanting to learn how to use seaweed for a while now. I bought some arame a while ago but my attempts at "intuitively" using it haven't been particularly successful. So, I resorted to google and found this recipe that sounded easy and interesting: http://renegadehealth.com/blog/2009/04/29/raw-food-recipe-for-cucumber-arame-salad/. As I was boiling the arame (I decided to soak and boil it, as the packaging suggested), I started wondering if I would just have to chuck the whole salad out; the smell of the boiling seaweed wasn't particularly appealing. So, I was all the more surpised at how tasty and wonderfully refreshing the salad turned out to be. I'm already thinking how perfect it would be for one of those hot summer days in Turin.

I modified the original recipe a little bit; below is what I did.

Seaweed Surprise 

25 g arame
1.5 long, thick cucumbers
1 red pepper
1/2 medium-sized onion
3/4 lemon
sea salt
black pepper
extra virgin olive oil

1. Wash the arame and let it soak for 10 minutes. Then boil it for 15 minutes.
2. Peel the cucumber and slice it as thinly as possible. I used the peeler to slice the cucumber, too.
3. Sprinkle sea salt on the sliced cucumber and let set in a salad bowl for a bit.
4. Dice the pepper and the onion, and add it into the salad bowl.
5. Rinse the boiled arame, chop it into smaller pieces, and add it into the salad bowl.
6. Add the pepper, the juice of the lemon and the olive oil, and mix.
(7. Stick the salad into the fridge for a bit for an extra refreshing effect.)
8. Eat and feel refreshed!

Annika

Merry Berry Icecream

I´m holidaying in Finland at the moment, and I´m making the most of the plentiful supply of frozen berries by making "berry icecream" every day. The recipe was actually invented by my friend Michael, and it's one of the things I'm craving for the most in Italy where it´s really hard to find frozen berries (you might be asking yourself why I am not freezing berries myself but somehow I just find it a real shame to freeze fresh berries and, therefore, prefer to eat them as such).

Merry Berry Icecream

frozen berries of your choice
coconut milk

1. Put the frozen berries and the coconut milk in a bowl.


2. Blend! (If your blender is old and powerless, you might have to wait until the berries are a little bit softer.)

3. Enjoy!

I´m mainly using black currants, red currants, blueberries and lingonberries here in Finland, and the resulting icecream is not particularly sweet. If you prefer something sweeter, it's obviously better to go for strawberries, raspberries and the like.

Annika