Indian Summer :: the sea :: oyster seaweed

The diets of coastal Indians were largely dependent on the bounty of the sea. In colonial times, oysters were abundant in the brackish waters of estuaries. This has been well documented by the early settlers. Among them, William Strachey, wrote in 1612: "Oysters there be in whole banks and beds, and those of the best. I have seen some thirteen inches long." (!) 
We know that Native Americans enjoyed oysters by the tremendous piles of shells that they left behind. These piles, called middens, have been found by archaeologists up and down the eastern seacoast, including many in New York City (one directly beneath a subway line). Some of these middens were four feet deep and contained thousands of shells.   
Although Native Americans ate massive amounts of oysters, it's unlikely that they ate them raw. Their tools of stone and bone were too brittle to pry open the abductor muscle, capable of exerting twenty pounds of pressure. It's far more probable that they were wrapped in seaweed and baked in pits with hot rocks, as that was the traditional way of cooking shellfish and mollusks— and the origin of our modern clambake.

Seaweed was prized by the Native Americans. Besides its use to steam-cook foods, it was eaten as a vegetable, or dried and used as seasoning— in much the same way that we use salt. Some varieties, like Irish moss, contain polysaccharides that form gels when boiled. These were used to thicken soups and make a type of pudding. 

Irish moss (Chondrus crispus) is a red alga found along the Atlantic coasts of North America and Europe. More closely associated with the potato famine in Ireland, where its consumption warded off starvation, it also proliferates along the rocky outcrops of the New England coast. Alternately, it is known as carrageenan moss because it contains up to 55% of the polysaccharide. When dried in sunlight, the color bleaches to pale yellow.

Irish moss needs to be soaked before cooking, which causes it to swell but not soften. The difference can be seen in the photo above— dried is on the right, soaked on the left. In the soaked stage, it has a weird synthetic texture, like plastic aquarium plants. When cooked in liquid, it begins to soften and eventually dissolve, forming a soft gel when cool. Cooked in just water, the gel has a mild and pleasant taste of seawater. Cooked in oyster liquor, as I have here, it tastes like the essence of the sea.

The Essence of the Sea

seaweed-roasted oyster
irish moss gel