Limu Salad

Limu salad is the perfect food for the health conscious, ecosystem-aware gourmet.. Seaweed is high in high in iron and other vitamins while being very low in fat. Plus, every time you eat invasive seaweed, you're consuming an over-abundant resource and helping to curtail its spread. Eat as much as you want, knowing that you're caring for both the coral reefs and your own body. Now doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy?

The key to this salad is the freshness of the ingredients. Seaweed breaks down very quickly, so you'll want to get the very best you can. Go to the ocean yourself and grab an armful. The best edible seaweeds only grow down to a depth of about 20 feet, so you shouldn't have to go too far.

Run--don't walk--back to your prep area. If you trip and fall down, start over, because you'll already have taken too long. I said fresh!

• 1/3 c. soy sauce
• 1/3 c. cider vinegar
• 1 T. Sriracha hot sauce (optional, but tasty)
• 1.5 lbs. Gracilaria salicornia (substitute ogo or limu manauea, but you don't get as much credit for helping the reefs), well-rinsed and coarsely chopped
• 2 tomatoes, diced
• 1 Maui onion, diced
• 1 cucumber, diced

Start a big pot of water boiling. While it is coming up to temp, mix the soy sauce, cider vinegar and hot sauce in a small bowl and set aside. Drop the limu in the boiling water and blanch it for one to two minutes, or until it turns bright green. It'll darken up again when you add the sauce, but the blanching softens the crunch nicely, and the bright green color allows you to easily spot critters that may not have rinsed off.

Toss together the tomatoes, onion, cucumber and tomatoes then pour the sauce mixture over top. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. This doesn't count against the freshness countdown, because we're now allowing the flavors to intermingle together in one big lovefest of flavor. If that's not fresh, I don't what else you'd call it.

Enjoy!

This recipe is my attempt to recreate a salad at a recent He`eia Fish Pond work day. If it tastes good, they get the credit. If you hate it, blame me.