 My name is Willender, and I'm a chef by trade. I've been in the kitchen since I was 17, and it's been my life for all that time. And it's not until like two years ago when I really went into seaweed and exploring different types of seaweed that grows around Iceland and see what the other Nordic countries are doing with these seaweed. The health benefits of seaweed is just amazing. People are linking it to low cancers in South Korea and parts of Japan when people consume a lot of seaweed. It's a challenge to change the Icelandic people diet or the Western market diet, but people are more familiar with seaweed as a snack, as a dried packet thing with flavours. Or they know seaweed, of course, as nori around sushi. So that's kind of the Western take on seaweed. They're not that familiar with it. Yes, they are also in as a garnish in a miso soup, but usually my friends are not bringing home seaweed to cook with it. The flavour of umami is something that everybody is familiar with. Not everybody knows where it comes from. It was formally discovered in 1908 by a Japanese gentleman that loved his wife's soup so much that he really wanted to go into the technical details to find out where the flavour came from. And he told him that it came from the dashi, which is a Japanese broth from seaweed and bonito flakes, which is shaved, dried and smoked tuna. So I'm going to do a little version of it, which is a seaweed soup. So I'm going to make a dashi from Icelandic forest kelp, which is not the kombu that they use in Japan. And I'm going to use for garnish Atlantic vakame, which is very close to the vakame that we use, the green thing that you would get with sushi, but this is in its dry form. So for the dashi, we're going to make a little broth. We will take the forest kelp and put it in water for at least 15 minutes, but it can also be overnight. And why we do that is that it will take any bitter flavours out, most of them, and then take the sliminess of the seaweed and we rinse it and then we put it in the stock later. But for the Atlantic vakame, which is kind of a stringy seaweed, you will see it grows tall and it has this core here in the middle. I'm also going to soak that in water, then cut around the core and use that as a garnish into the soup. Let's start with soaking the forest kelp. While this is soaking now for 15 minutes to half an hour, we're going to start on the other ingredients for the soup. But you can see here before we begin the Atlantic vakame, as it is in a dry form, we also use that into salt blends, which gives a very nice flavour. What I'm making is a lemongrass infused forest kelp broth. So we use a little bit of lemongrass, some vetsi stock, and then I have garnished like carrots and ginger and daikon, some scallion. I use a tiny little bit of tom yum paste just to give it a little spiciness. And then we put some noodles in it, but you will see how it comes together. But the main ingredients is that umami base from the forest kelp that I will show you how I boil. And then how we will dice up finally the Atlantic vakame and use that as a garnish into the soup. I just peel the carrots quickly, and I'm going to use some mantolin to slice them into julienne, which is kind of a string cut vegetable. Nice to have the crunchiness from the carrots and daikon. For the ginger, I always like to peel ginger with a spoon. I'm going to start with the daikon and use the blade from the mantolin. And I get these nice little strings. And then I just cut a little bit of the end of the carrots. So just ginger is one of my favourites. It just adds a little bit of the spiciness and kind of brings the flavour out. So I just cut them in julienne as well. Some of the challenges being a vegetarian or a vegan is that people are sometimes low in iodine. Seaweed is the greatest thing because it's very rich in iodine. And that's where the vegan and the vegetarian has been turning into to get the source of iodine. So I've been soaking the forest kelp now for over half an hour. And what I'm doing is that I'm getting the slime off or the enzymes here because I don't want my soup to be slimy. So I put it back into fresh water and I put it over here. I bring it to simmer just until the bubbles come on the inside of the pot. And I don't want it to boil because it can turn slimy or bitter. I like to keep the heat on low just to bring it up slowly. But in the meantime, I'm going to cut out the Atlantic Wagame. It has a string here in the middle. That's usually not common in the CVT around Iceland. But it's good. It's great. It's good for you. But it is kind of a fibre-y. So I'm not going to use that in the soup. So I'm going to cut that out in this case. So after I've cut it off the stem, I just roll it up like this. So it becomes almost like hand-cut noodles. Put this on the side. And I don't do anything else with it. I just add it into the hot broth after I've seasoned it up when we serve it. Now it's the perfect temperature. It's just almost up to boil. I'm going to take out the first kelp. Now I can actually continue working the soup. I've taken this out. I put that on the side. So now I'm just going to let that simmer. And I'm going to put in just a little bit of veggie stock just to give it a little more base. And I have some tamio paste. Just a tiny little bit. That's all the additional flavours here that I give it like that. And we whisk that together. The flavour is great, but it needs a bit of salt. And what I've made, my own salt blend with dulls and sweet kelp. So it can use a bit of salt, but also gets another base of seaweed flavour in there. Before I put my garnish in, I just want to put a little bit of lemongrass. Just for a minute to infuse the broth. So I just leave it in here while I get my ingredients ready. I'm going to add the garnish into the soup. So I put my carrots, some bell pepper and a little bit of the radish. But I like to put the radish in at the end. So I put the noodles in. And I'm going to turn the heat up a little bit. When I put the noodles, I've pre-cooked them. You know, for whatever type of noodles you're using, I use the pre-cooked. I don't put them in raw. Put a tiny bit of salt because sometimes the broth can change after you put the noodles in. So I'm going to add in the seaweed, the Atlantic Wagamere that I cut. I just put it in here. And we do the final tasting. I'm going to take out my lemongrass. And now we do the final tasting. It's perfect. Now we plate it. So now it's the plating. It's like to get a little bit of everything. The noodles, the seaweed, the vegetable. It literally smells awesome. So here we go. I'm just going to add a little bit of the broth in as well. So the final touches is that I like to do one slice of lime that people can squeeze in. Put a little bit of green peppers. And for extra heat just few slices of red chili. Some peanuts. A little bit of ginger on top. And I like to throw on top just a couple of coriander leaves. Now this lemongrass-infused seaweed broth with Atlantic Wagamere is ready.