Southwest Florida's sea-green delicacy

Sea purslane is a special veggie — freshly crisp and tender, pleasantly salty and rich in antioxidants, vitamins and minerals — but that’s not the only reason it has its very own, new cookbook.

This salt-tolerant “sea vegetable” is being grown in an experimental, eco-friendly system by southwest Florida marine scientist Dr. Kevan Main, whose farm-to-table research emphasizes raising sea veggies together with seafood (redfish), using marine aquaponics to turn fish waste into plant fertilizer.

Main, a Senior Scientist at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota County, Florida, developed the new “Sea Purslane Cookbook” to help local eaters enjoy this beach-dwelling vegetable and encourage forward-thinking farmers to cultivate it.

“Our goal is to help sustainable farms start doing this — farming seafood and sea vegetables in recirculating aquaculture systems that contribute to local food production,” Main said. “Freshwater resources are limited, so one of the only ways to expand food production is through seafood and sea vegetable production — and we need to identify marine plants that can be farmed to provide new sources of vegetables. So far those include seaweeds, sea purslane and sea asparagus, and I hope this new cookbook highlights the exciting potential of sea purslane.”

The “Sea Purslane Cookbook” is brimming with recipes for appetizers, soups, salads and entrées for virtually any palate: Purslane chicken curry, black barley, purslane and walnut salad, numerous delicious purslane-seafood pairings and much more. The recipes show this veggie’s international range — with Italian-style pasta dishes, Chinese-style stir fry, and various other recipes evoking the Middle East to the American Southwest.

Sea purslane is sold in Caribbean farmers markets and widely grown in many Asian and European regions. It lives on sand dunes and stabilizes shores in Florida. However, its culinary and agricultural potential is largely untapped in the United States.

At Mote Aquaculture Research Park in Sarasota, Florida, Main developed and maintains the prototype aquaponics greenhouse growing rows of sea purslane hydroponically in high-nutrient, brackish (part salt) water, together with the popular sportfish red drum (redfish) and a self-contained circulation and filtration system. Filters clean the water, allowing bacteria to break down harmful ammonia into other nitrogen-rich compounds used to fertilize the purslane roots. Once the water is cleaned, it is returned to the fish. The system recycles 100 percent of its water.

Since the system launched in 2014, Main and colleagues have: described its operations in peer-reviewed, scientific literature to help enable others to adopt this local, food production technology; hosted tours for local chefs and seafood distributors; and

continued selling their locally grown sea purslane and red drum through the Sarasota Farmer’s Market, seafood distributors in St. Pete and Tampa, or directly to area chefs.

In 2018, Main and colleagues undertook some exciting new steps with support from the Binational Agricultural Research & Development Fund and the Longboat Key Garden Club. In a partnership with the National Center for Mariculture in Eilat, Israel, Mote scientists successfully built 16 experimental systems linked to their marine aquaponics prototype system and began testing a new way to remove nutrients and clean the water. Specifically, they are testing a plant-based biofilter comprising nets covered with “periphyton” — various algae and bacteria — to see if they remove nitrogen-rich waste molecules and produce oxygen better than the systems currently in place.

“We’re interested in testing this new biofilter because the periphyton itself may have the potential to be ‘recycled’ as food for fish,” Main said.

This year Main and colleagues led tours for current and prospective aquaculture farmers and Main worked with a Charlotte Harbor farm that aims to incorporate edible sea vegetable production into their facility design.

The cookbook, as well as fresh sea purslane grown by Main and her team, can be purchased at the Simply Organic booth at the Sarasota Farmer’s Market, which is open 7 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays at 1 North Lemon Ave. in downtown Sarasota.

You can also order the book by emailing: kmain@mote.org. Proceeds benefit the Marine & Freshwater Aquaculture Research Program at Mote.

Check for updated info and buying options: mote.org/seapurslane

Interested in farming sea vegetables? Check out this peerreviewed scientific paper on Mote’s aquaponics system: “Evaluation of water treatment capacity, nutrient cycling, and biomass production in a marine aquaponic system” in the journal Ecological Engineering.

RED QUINOA & PURSLANE RECIPE

Recipe by: Executive Chef Richard Demarse Sandbar Restaurant, Anna Maria, Florida

Serving Size: Serves four

INGREDIENTS

• Pinch salt

• Pinch black pepper

• 1 cup red quinoa, cooked

• 1/2 cup marinated tomatoes

• 1 cup corn kernels, raw

• 1/2 cup Dakin Dairy asiago, small dice

• 2 red radishes, thinly sliced

• 1 cup purslane leaves

DIRECTIONS

Toss everything together and enjoy.

MARINATED TOMATOES:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 pint cherry tomatoes, cut in half

• 1/4 cup olive oil

• 2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar

• 5 leaves basil, chopped

DIRECTIONS

Mix everything together. Good for two days or until tomatoes are too soft.

MOTE MAGAZINE | SPRING 2019