Greek Pickled Rock Samphire Salad (Kritamo)

Kritamo grows where nothing else will: straight out of the cracks in sea cliffs, close enough to the water to be salted by spray. Islanders have picked it for as long as anyone has lived on those rocks, and every taverna in the Dodecanese and the Cyclades keeps a jar of it behind the bar.

The taste is genuinely unusual. It has the crunch of a young bean, the aromatic bite of celery and fennel, and an actual salinity that comes from the plant rather than from the pickling. Nothing else in the Greek pantry does quite the same job on a meze table.

The preparation is the same one used for capers and it has not changed. Blanch briefly to take the raw edge off, steep in vinegar and salt for a day to fix the colour and the crunch, and then keep it under olive oil, where it will sit happily for months and improve for the first few weeks.

Key preparation steps

1. Pick over the shoots and discard woody stems.
2. Blanch for three minutes in salted water.
3. Steep overnight in vinegar and salt.
4. Drain and pack under olive oil.

Which parts of the plant do I use?

The young leaves and the tender upper stalks, picked before the plant flowers. Bend a stem: if it snaps cleanly it is young enough, and if it bends it is woody and should be thrown away.

The seed pods can be pickled the same way and are prized by some cooks for being even more aromatic. The flowers are the one part to leave out, since they go bitter in vinegar.

Why blanch it before pickling?

Three minutes in boiling salted water softens the shoots just enough to take vinegar evenly, drives off the raw resinous edge, and sets the green colour so it does not turn olive-drab in the jar.

Do not go beyond about four minutes. Kritamo is being kept for its crunch above everything, and boiled soft it turns into a limp green thread that no amount of good oil will rescue.

How long does it need in vinegar?

Twenty-four hours, fully submerged, with a spoonful of salt. That is long enough for the acid to penetrate the shoots and do the preserving work, and short enough that they still taste of the plant rather than only of vinegar.

Use a plain wine vinegar. Balsamic is too sweet and too dark, and cider vinegar brings an apple note that fights with the sea flavour that is the whole reason for eating kritamo.

How is kritamo served and how long does it keep?

In small amounts, cold, as one plate among many. A spoonful on the side of a fish dish, scattered over a tomato salad, or simply in a saucer with its oil and a little raw onion. It is intensely salty, so it is a punctuation mark rather than a course.

Under a full covering of olive oil in a sterilised jar in the fridge it keeps for several months. Make sure the oil covers everything: any shoot poking above the surface is the one that spoils.

What matters in this dish