Taicai (Sea Moss)

Taicai is an edible green seaweed (a sea-lettuce type) harvested off coastal Ningbo, bright green with a fresh, faintly briny scent, used both as an ingredient and as a dried seasoning.

Sitting on the sea, Ningbo has long treated taicai as a signature local ingredient; fishing families gathered and sun-dried it, making it an indispensable note of the "sea taste" in Ning-style cooking.

Common preparations include seaweed dough twists, seaweed-battered yellow croaker and seaweed peanuts, or it is sprinkled into rice cakes and pastries to lift their flavor, savory with a clean breath of the ocean.

Verdant, aromatic and distinctly oceanic, it is the signature flavor source behind many of Ningbo's snacks and time-honored sweets.