Get Your Hijiki On: Spicy Seaweed Sauté

I live in a dorm and eat most of my weeknight dinners in the cafeteria downstairs from my apartment. I am not complaining. I love having a meal plan. It's great to be able to come home from work after a long day, put on a pair of slippers and schlep down to an all-you-can-eat buffet. No frantic 5:30 trips to the grocery store, no tired pizza orders, no sink full of dirty dishes.

But let's just say I eat a lot of chickpeas during the week. A lot of salty lentil soup, bean burritos, and baked potatoes. I don't mind simple food, and it's fine, but usually by the weekend I am ready for something a little wilder, something that makes my cells and tastebuds sing a different song.

Add to this my recent fixation on seaweed, and here's what you get: a bowl-full of lively macrobiotic-inspired dishes: soba noodles with tahini-umeboshi sauce; tofu marinated in soy sauce, browned in coconut oil and coated with toasted sesame seeds; piles of steamed baby kale; and the pièce de résistance, a zingy sauté of onions, carrots, and the most powerful tasting seaweed of them all, hijiki.

Hijiki is briny and fishy and tough; it needs soaking and takes a while to cook; it's strong-smelling and takes some getting used to. But I have grown to love it, especially when cooked for a good long time with sweet vegetables and the toothsome seasoning trio of soy sauce, mirin (cooking wine) and cayenne. A little hijiki goes a long way, and it makes the perfect side dish to a grain-and-vegetable-based bowl of food like this, adding flavor and texture and a wallop of nutrition.

This is a bowl of food just begging to be mixed into a jumble, and hijiki is the magic element that brings it all together.

Spicy Seaweed Sauté

Serves 3 or 4 as a side dish

2 tablespoons coconut oil

1 small onion, sliced thinly

Big pinch sea salt

2 carrots, sliced into thin rounds

Big handful dried hijiki, soaked in water to cover for 30 minutes (or you can use arame, no need to soak)

1/2 cup water

2 tablespoon shoyu or any good-quality soy sauce

2 tablespoons mirin or cooking sherry

Big pinch cayenne pepper

Heat coconut oil in skillet, add onion and salt and cook ten minutes over medium heat. Add carrot and stir well. Drain hijiki and stir into vegetables, cooking for a few minutes.

Add water, shoyu, mirin, and cayenne. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. Check and add a little more water if you need to.

Uncover and cook off any remaining liquid. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Hail hijiki! Baked potato, I'll see you on Monday.