Women in Aquaculture: Tara Pitman

Can you tell me a little bit about how you got into this area?

I’ve been cooking for about 20 years, and David and I first came to St David’s in 2006 when we bought our first restaurant, Morgan’s. During the time we ran it, the Really Wild Food & Countryside Festival started. When the festival was on, we offered special menus which incorporated wild food from the hedgerows, coastal plants and seaweed, and I became interested in using foraged ingredients. Wild plants and seaweed are so unique to a place; they really add extra interest to a menu and help people understand and connect with their environment. For visitors to Pembrokeshire who love food and trying new flavours and for people who enjoy nature and the outdoors, that’s a brilliant thing.

In April 2022, I heard that Câr y Môr were looking to develop a range of seaweed products, as well as looking for someone to run their market stall in St Davids and help with crab processing.  I was excited by the challenge and thought that with my interest in using native wild ingredients I could create some good products.

How do people in St David's react when you offer them a product with seaweed in it?

Well, I eased people in gently with a range of seaweed cakes and savoury things on the market stall (white chocolate, lemon and sea lettuce fudge squares with a shortbread base; tahini, cherry jam, dulse and dark chocolate blondies; carrot cake cupcakes with orange and sugar kelp; savoury goats cheese, dulse and chive muffins, and caramelised onion tarts with seaweed tapenade – one of our new products).  The cakes all looked so unique, appealing and different and really got people’s attention. Many locals and regular visitors then started coming back regularly; one chap would even come every time he had guests and buy cakes to cut up into petit fours – a wonderful way to give visitors a taste of Pembrokeshire.  Once people try seaweed and see that it’s actually a really tasty, nutritious and versatile ingredient, they are more likely to experiment with it themselves. What I love about it is that each seaweed has its own distinct flavour and texture – they aren’t just salty and a bit chewy!

A lot of people have a slightly negative image of seaweed because their experience of it is in the summer months when the weather and the sea are warmer and seaweeds are not at their best – so it can be a hard leap to go from that to thinking of it as a tasty food source.

Do you think people are willing to try new things as a one off or do you think we will all be adapting our diets to include more sea-vegetables over the coming years?

My experience this year is that people are definitely game to try something new, as long as it looks tasty and smells good. One of my next new products is a seaweed burger with kelp, mushrooms, black beans and spices. We trialled it at the launch of the Cwrw Kelp (Kelp Beer) in the summer at an event in collaboration with St Davids Old Farmhouse Brewery;  it was really popular and people have been asking me for it ever since.  I think the sugar kelp we grow on the seaweed farm in Ramsey Sound is one of the most versatile seaweeds of all. When it’s dried and rehydrated it cooks down beautifully – a bit like salty/sweet spinach, and it can be used in so many different ways.

Many more people are now choosing plant-bases diets or certainly opting to reduce the amount of meat they eat, and seaweed is absolutely part of that. The fact that it is also sustainable when it is farmed like Câr y Môr are doing and that it needs no fresh water, herbicides, pesticides or fertilisers to grow make it a really exciting potential food source for the future.  Hopefully as more good seaweed-based food products appear on the market people will become more accustomed to eating it, and it will eventually become as commonplace as eating carrots, rice or pulses.

What are the benefits?

Seaweed is high in lots of different vitamins and minerals, low in fat and high in fibre and protein.

Like many foods, it should be eaten in moderation as it also contains high levels of iodine, which is necessary and beneficial to our health in small quantities.

What has been the biggest challenge in creating this new product line?

One of the main challenges with some of the products, like our sugar kelp pickle, has been finding the best way to prepare it or cook the various seaweeds so that it ends up with the right texture for the product. There are so many ways you can prepare it - from dehydrating so that it can be powdered or flaked, to pickling, fermenting it or slow cooking; there are so many possibilities and it takes time to find the best way for different products.  It’s also been interesting and challenging to find the right balance with other ingredients that complement the natural savoury, umami, salty character of seaweed. Anything that is naturally sweet like honey; sharp or mustardy go really well with it, as do spices and fruit flavours like orange, lemon, tomato and berries; or earthy flavours like mushroom.

The biggest thing I’ve discovered is that product development is food science and technology, rather than cooking.  Having the initial idea for the product is the easy part!

Câr y Môr’s new range of seaweed products are available via our online shop, as well as in the Câr y Môr shop at Upper Clegyr, St David’s, Pembrokeshire SA62 6QN and the Peninsula Producers Food Hub. Please call 07773 846560 to check opening hours before making a special journey.

Tara Pitman

December 2022