My dear friend Susan Teton is an amazing Chef and one of the wonderful treasures Jon and I have discovered here in Maui. Susan was on of the people I met early on in my journey into Maui and as you all know, Maui for us has been among other things, about food food food. Getting to know Susan has entailed many a meal, mutual membership as board members of Slow Food Maui and loads of learning about getting the most nutrition out of deliciously made meals.
A few weeks ago, I was at her house for a Slow Food Maui meeting and she made us a pot of Khichari (this is spelled in countless ways). I love Khichari and have made it many times, myself, but what she offered as a lovely condiment and topping was something I hadn’t seen before. It was really a zap of salty savory goodness that topped my dish perfectly and it was black so it gave the yellow Khichari gorgeous colorful contrast.
Susan shared that it was her own Mineral Mixture, which was essentially made up of various sea weeds/vegetables. I didn’t give it much thought, although I asked her what she put in it as a way to make a mental note for the future. As with many things however, it just sat there in that little drawer in my brain that should get cleaned out more often!
Susan has created an amazing 4 week Dietary Makeover and she was gracious enough to let me take a look at it. It was here that I ran into this wonderful mixture again, and I ended up making it for myself. I highly recommend you follow the link above and check out her course. I think we should all be so educated on how to get the most nutrition out of the food we make and eat, and Susan has a great way of providing all we need in this amazing and super affordable course.
But… for now… this Mineral Mix.
You know I’m constantly working at building my pantry. I think having things on hand go a long way towards facilitating us all in being able to make great meals at home and not defaulting to running out to eat because we lack the ingredients we need. This Mineral Mix is great on top of rice dishes, meats of all sorts and soups. You don’t need much, just a couple of pinches and it adds a great punch of flavor while also giving you a wealth of minerals that we often fall short of in our typical diets. Susan doesn’t add salt to her mix, but I did to mine. You can see her make this super easy condiment in her Dietary Makeover series. It’s super easy.
I used sea weed and sea vegetables that were available at the store. I used Dulse, Aziki, Nori and Arame along with an amazing Hawaiian Guava wood smoked sea salt that is seriously to die for. As usual, I didn’t use any measurements. I bought one packet each of the sea vegetables chopped them up a bit, placed them in the food processor along with a few tablespoons of salt and blended away.
You can blend this to be as fine a powder as you choose, or flaky like the image above. I like to have some bigger flavors on occasion, and this level of blending works well. I made quite a large batch, placed them in two hermetic jars and it should keep for a good 6 months to a year. I ended up giving one away to a girlfriend of mine.
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