Cmon Baby, Light My Samphire.......

This is a recipe that may be hard to replicate outside of the British Isles for the simple reason that it relies heavily on samphire - a sort of sea asparagus that grows on the coast of East England and West Wales and is only available from June to August each year. Samphire has a salty, taste of the ocean and so, you guessed it, it goes great with fish.

This dish combines samphire with spaghetti, sauted zucchini and Welsh smoked salmon. It's delicate, delicious and takes just 20 minutes (count 'em) to prepare. If we had a recommendation of how to import samphire to the rest of the world we'd share.

The Recipe:

-Wash and trim a large bunch of samphire.
Get your spaghetti water boiling, add the dash of olive oil and salt and enough spag for four people.
Slice two zucchini so that they are the same length as the samphire stems.
Sautee the zucchini in butter until cooked. Reserve and add the samphire for four minutes.
Add the samphire to the spaghetti and allow to simmer for one more minute.
Drain the samphire and spaghetti and return to the pan.
Add 1/4 pound of smoked salmon, cut into small squares.
Add the reserved zucchini.

Toss all the ingredients together in the still-warm pan until the salmon is almost cooked through. Garnish with black pepper and serve.

Comments

[rosebengal]

You may find it called sea pickle or marsh samphire, American glasswort etc. I've seen it here in the US sold under its scientific name "Salicornia" - or rather I saw someone selling it at the Portland (OR) Farmer's Market last year. It's a different species from your British Samphire (S. europaea vs. S. virginica) but looks quite similar. I've only eaten it raw from right off the beach - very salty. Don't know if the tastes are similar or not.

[Hugh]

I had some in a schmancy restaurant in Sydney, Australia. I love a vegetable that comes pre-salted!