Crab and kelp noodle salad and kayak dyslexia

For anyone who hasn’t tried kayaking, I can highly recommend it – it’s enormous fun. Especially if the person at the helm (in our case, my husband) yelling navigation instructions suffers from left-right dyslexia and is wearing heavy-duty earplugs. We had friends to stay and decided to hire two kayaks to travel 10 kms down a very wild and unspoilt river nearby. Léo organised the teams, taking the person most likely to agree to capsizing at will with him, leaving me with my momentarily deaf husband and girlfriend with whom I chat relentlessly. Hence the earplugs.

Between the incessant chat, barked back-to-front instructions from our ear-plugged, laterally-challenged helmsman, our unheard retorts and copious giggling fits, we descended the river in the most inelegant and perilous zigzag fashion imaginable, ploughing into the banks on one side, only to veer off to hit the verges on the other side. At one point, we all had to disembark to dig the front half of the kayak out of particularly prodigious sandbank. Meanwhile, Léo and his teammate’s boat was approximating a washing machine on spin cycle, and they were dunking in and out of the water like over-excited labradors.

When we finally arrived at our destination, I was mortified to see that our party were the only ones to be soaked through. I was also covered in wet sand, bumps and scratches and a tree branch had taken root in my hair.

Glancing at the brochure when we got home, absolutely wrung out, I was amazed to see that there were all sorts of wildlife to be seen on the descent – turtles, rare birds, salamanders, otters and beavers. Of course, we had created such chaos that all the wildlife had fled, bar a very intimidating and bossy-looking duck that had quacked at us in outrage. Who can blame him?

Needless to say my shorts were no longer white at the other end!

Ingredients (serves 4)

400g kelp noodles

200g crab meat (I used tinned)

3 shallots, chopped

100g sweetcorn

2 small carrots, julienned

1 red pepper, julienned

100g cashew nuts

handful of mint leaves

Dressing:

4 tablespoons sesame oil

1 tablespoon peanut butter

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon fresh ginger, crushed

1 clove of garlic, crushed

½ teaspoon chilli powder

Drain the noodles and add to a large bowl. Add the crabmeat, shallots, sweetcorn, carrots, cucumber nuts and mint leaves and mix well with your hands. Combine the ingredients for the dressing together in a jar and shake well. Add the dressing to the salad, mix well and serve.