The tale of the strange sea vegetable...

I recently spent a few days on the north coast of Norfolk, UK. It was intended to be a few days away in lieu of a proper summer holiday and it was fantastically relaxing. We stayed in Blakeney and spent days walking on the beaches for miles with no one in sight. It's a rare time when you can stand on a beach in the UK with a view of miles in both directions and there not be a soul in site, especially in July.

One of the great joys in travelling anywhere is to discover food. You may think that travelling just a few hundred miles would have little new to offer, but this wasn't the case. Norfolk is famed for it's scenery but a lesser known jewel is a coastal plant called samphire (Latin: Salicornia europaea). It's common (but not that common) to European coasts but isn't found in North America. It's existence has been known since ancient times; Culpepper the famous herbalist wrote of it and Shakespeare mentions it in King Lear (though to be pedantic, that's rock samphire as opposed to the now more common marsh samphire).

It's name (sometimes given as sea-fennel, also in German meerfenchel) is derived from Saint Pierre, the saint of fisherman, probably because it tastes quite salty, just like fishermen. Hence its name in French, sampier, and in Italian, Herba de San Pietra. (Source: Botanical.com)

It's season covers the spring, when it can be eaten raw, and summer in the UK. By the end of the season, you really do have to cook it. The web site for the wonderful village of Cley (where we stayed last year) has details on cooking it, which can be summarised as:

1. Boil it for 6-8 minutes.
2. Drain it.
3. Toss it in extra virgin olive oil and a dash of lemon juice.
4. Eat it. Etc.
   

What they don't say is the additional step that I read on a set of cooking instructions pinned to a gate post just outside Cley. Here some young entrepreneur had been out that Sunday morning collecting fresh samphire and had left a bucket of it by his gate for sale (put the money in the tin sort of thing) and some cooking instructions. Theses were:

1. Boil for 10 minutes and drain.
2. Strip the fleshy part away from the woody inner stem, which is discarded.
3. Etc.

The part about stripping it away from the woody stem made a world of difference to the edibility of late season samphire.

Anyway to conclude is the recipe we cooked with this samphire in the cottage we rented in Blakeney.

Goats cheese and samphire tart
1 packet puff pastry
1 lump of goats cheese/chevre
1 bunch of samphire

1. Roll out pastry to fit a greased baking sheet.
2. Fit pastry to said greased baking sheet. (NB. no need to use adhesive, gravity will suffice.)
3. Cook samphire as directed above.
4. Score a border about one inch in from the edge of the pastry and brush this with milk or beaten egg.
5. Prick the area inside the border with a fork.
6. Chuck the samphire in an artistic manner over the middle of the puff pastry, making sure you stay inside the border, just like you learnt at school.
7. Crumble the cheese over the top and season the top with pepper - you won't need any salt as you should now by now that there is plenty in the samphire.
8. Bake it for as long as it takes in as hot an oven as it needs. Probably something like 10-15 minutes at 180 Celsius.