Cold Seaweed Jelly 海菜凉粉

Cold Seaweed Jelly (海菜凉粉), also called Qingdao jelly (青岛凉粉), is a clear, glassy jelly that Qingdao (青岛) makes from seaweed rather than from bean or pea starch. Its main raw material is agar weed, known locally as shihuacai (石花菜) or dongcai (冻菜), and the dish is traced to Laoshan (崂山). In summer it is on sale at eateries all over Qingdao.

How it is made

Agar weed taken from the sea is washed and laid out to dry; after several days in the sun it turns a yellowish white. It then goes into a pot with water and is boiled down. When the liquid thickens and turns cloudy and the seaweed has gone soft, the liquid is strained into containers and left to cool and set. Guanhai News notes that boiling down the liquid takes a lot of work. In the Laoshan area, local people go to the shore at low tide on the first and fifteenth days of the lunar month to gather agar weed and boil a large pot of it at home.

How it is eaten

Once set, the jelly is semi-transparent and is cut into pieces with a knife. It is then dressed with crushed garlic, white vinegar, chopped spring onion, light soy sauce, salt, shredded cucumber, carrot and coriander; a few dried shrimps (海米) or tiny dried shrimp (虾皮) add a savoury sea flavour. Qingdao Daily describes it as a summer cooler and a dish to go with drinks, and it is also a common cold dish at the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner in Qingdao households.

Where it comes from

The dish began as a street snack; today it is served in regular restaurants as a Qingdao speciality, and factories produce it in bulk for buyers outside the city. Jinan (济南) has adopted it as a summer dish under the name Qingdao jelly. The agar-weed jelly making technique was entered on the Laoshan District intangible cultural heritage list in December 2012 and became a Qingdao municipal heritage item in July 2015. A legend holds that people sent by the First Emperor of Qin (秦始皇) to look for an elixir of life came to Laoshan and were given agar-weed jelly by Taoist priests there.