I’ve had a busy couple of weeks checking out the brand new Barton Rouge restaurant in Liverpool and indulging in a liquid diet at the Cocktails in the City party so time spent in the kitchen has been a little thin on the ground. I’m not one of those people who cooks 100 chicken breasts and 500 kilos of brown rice at a time in a bid to meal prep 6 months in advance but I do sleep easier knowing my other half and I are eating something home-cooked and nutritious at least a few days each week. With that in mind, this week it was back to the grind.
When it came to rustling something up last night, I remembered the pouch of Seamore I Sea Pasta I had been sent to review a couple of weeks back. Bingo. A low carb, low calorie, gluten free alternative to regular pasta – the perfect find for a cupboard scavenger on the hunt for something healthy. The Amsterdam-based brand is all about organic, sustainable ingredients that ‘upgrade your favourite food’ in the form of seaweed produced in ‘seafarms’ that use the power of nature as opposed to fertilizer and pesticides.
As cute as the concept is, I’ve gotta be honest, ’cause that is what Hungry Harriet is all about… this product ain’t for me. The texture was bob on – just like the real McCoy – after I chose to boil the seaweed strands for 15-20 mins for a ‘more tender’ texture. In fact, if I’d have had my eyes closed and a peg on my beak, I could have been easily fooled. However the distinct ocean breeze whipping around my kitchen and the ominous tendrils of deep green ‘tagliatelle‘ floating around in a pan of brown ‘seaweed stock‘ in front of me, I can’t profess to be a covert.
I just love fresh pasta too much. I mean, I even just took a gluten free pasta making class.
Nevertheless, I decided to throw the pasta impostor together with some chicken and tenderstem broccoli sauteed in a bit of coconut oil, garlic butter and cracked black pepper. I topped it off with some crispy bacon which I trimmed of fat and tore into the same frying pan I had cooked the chicken and veggies in but even those big flavours didn’t mask the undeniable taste of fishy sea air. Not necessarily a bad thing if that’s the kinda thing that floats your boat.
The mantra behind the Seamore brand range is super cool and I do always appreciate a good set of healthy alternatives – my tastebuds just didn’t want to play ball this time. If, unlike fussy shallow old me, you don’t mind taste of the seaside on your plate and you aren’t easily swayed by the way things, by all means give it a go. They even have a seaweed-based organic alternatives to bacon and I mean, don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it and all that…