A new premium ingredient has appeared on the menus of high-end restaurants across the city: seaweed. Specifically, Korean dried seaweed called gamte costs $16 per pack of seven pieces, which is about half the weight of a Périgord truffle.
When it’s tomato season, Chef Randy Rucker of River Twice and the newly opened Little Water takes thick slices of local tomatoes smeared with smoky mayonnaise and sandwiches them between two slices of Mighty Bread Company bread to create a golden crust. Layer the gamte topped with colored ossetra on the sandwich. caviar. At Jose Garces’ Amada, with locations in Old City and Radnor, gamte is sprinkled over grilled Galician octopus on a cloud of potato espuma.
Gumte tastes like the most delicious version of the sea mixed with fresh bitter grass. A scent reminiscent of the sea and mushrooms.
Niche Bazik, history
Gamte looks like tinsel if tinsel occurs in nature. It tastes like matcha and seaweed mixed with truffles, making it a favorite among chefs. Deepen the natural flavor of tomatoes or add an exotic touch of the sea to your pasta dough. In powdered form, it thickens sauces and, as a garnish, gives dishes an attractive spiky crown.
It is especially popular with Michelin or sets aiming to become Michelin. Just last month, I sprinkled it on amberjack at Provenance, a new tasting menu spot on Society Hill. At Omo by Jonto in Orlando, Florida, it sits on a small pastry dough stuffed with bluefin tuna tartare and smoked onion fudge. At Reverie in Washington, D.C., flavorful seaweed donuts are decorated with eel squares.
At Provenance, where chef Nicci Basik was introduced to Korean ingredients through his in-laws by combining them with French techniques, he serves kamte in a variety of forms, including flavored with sesame oil, powdered, and simply dried. It is used for making bouillon and salting amberjack loin. , as a finishing touch to dishes, and even as a seasoning for other seaweeds. “Gumte tastes like the most delicious version of the sea mixed with fresh bitter grass. The aroma reminds us of the sea and mushrooms,” said Bazik. “I think I’ll make foie aganache, wrap it in gumte, and add white truffles.”
Kajime is the scientific name of gamte. In Japanese it is known as “Noro Kajime”. It has a violent temperament and grows only in the tidal flats of Wando and Jeolla Province in South Korea, and in some areas of Japan. It reproduces because it cannot be cultivated and must be harvested by hand without damaging the roots.
“Part of the name comes from the fact that the threads are so thin that when harvesting they have to be carefully rotated and wrapped around each other,” he says. said Jennifer Jiyun Yu, co-founder of Globe. – Finish Korean pantry ingredients. “‘Tae’ means something green, moss, or weedy, and ‘gamuda’ means ‘wrapping’.”
Gamtae has long been a delicacy in Korean cuisine. “My grandmother would soak the dried gumte until it was soft, strain it, squeeze it, roughly chop it, toss it with anchovy fish sauce, rice vinegar, a pinch of sugar, and gochugaru, then add plenty of chopped white onion and cut it into rounds. “Sesame oil and sesame seeds,” says Seung Hee Lee, author of Everyday Korea and founder of Korean Fusion, a Korean recipe platform.
Yoo, who brings a variety of esoteric seaweeds to the United States from small family-run producers in South Korea, began importing gamte from South Korean seaweed producer Badasoap in 2019. “I was a big fan of their seaweed,” she said.
Yoo has partnered with luxury ingredients retailer Regalis to encourage chefs with no ties to Korea to use Korean cooking ingredients. “My philosophy and hope is that people will start to think of gamte as just an ingredient, like soy sauce or Sriracha. I want to break down the barrier of it being a specialty ingredient.” she said.
One of the chefs who got Yu interested in gamte was Chris Cipollone of Francie in Brooklyn, who says “gamte has a taste similar to truffles.” It’s like a sea white truffle, so wouldn’t it be better to double the truffle flavor? ”
The recent availability of gamtae has also been a boon for Korean chefs in the United States. “When I moved to the United States in 2008, Gamte was nowhere to be found,” Lee said. “The sheet type, which is grilled with salt, is perfect for white rice and banchan.”
Lee has been eating gumte all his life and loves it in its simplest form, right out of the bag. Cooking with dried gumte is “a little more difficult because if you don’t soak it long enough, it can feel like you’re eating wool.”
However, Gamte easily enhances the simplest ingredients. Available at Gotham Grove or Kim’C Market. I would use truffle powder or flavored salt, but try powdered gumte. Try sprinkling the strands over eggs or putting them in tomato sandwiches like lacquer.
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