Samphire. Photo: By Heather Kelly.
Worthy of its salt: Martyn Kelly on samphire
‘It was my first exposure to the succulent, salty stems.’
My first encounter with samphire coincided with one of my earliest encounters with Quakers. I was heading to an undergraduate field course in Norfolk, and our lecturer diverted our minibus to the Friends School at Saffron Walden to collect his son, who joined us on the bleak shingle spit for the rest of the week. This spit is integral to the story because, by shielding the tidal stretches of the River Glaven from the ravages of the North Sea, it creates the conditions for a salt marsh.
Our lecturer led us across this marsh and the adjacent sand dunes, teaching us about the plants that grew there. Most identification was based on what plants looked like, but he flourished some samphire in front of us and told us about its distinctive taste. It was my first exposure to the succulent, salty stems, but also my last for some time – its habitat was never within easy foraging distance.
My next encounter came on holiday on the North Norfolk coast about twenty years ago, when a shack selling seafood had a pile of it for sale. Then I started to see samphire more regularly on the fish stall at our local market, and it became a more regular part of our diet – an excellent vegetable to serve with fish pie, for example. At first, I assumed that the samphire was foraged but, as it began to appear more regularly on restaurant menus, regardless of season, I realised that this was a naive assumption. One day, I asked and our fishmonger told me it came from Israel.
‘This changes all the parameters.’
The samphire I knew from Norfolk salt marshes is at its best in the summer months. But the plant has a wide distribution, including the eastern Mediterranean. Much imported samphire is grown commercially in polytunnels in the Negev Desert, meaning that it is now available year round. But this changes all the parameters. Samphire, for me, had always evoked a spirit of ‘living off our natural bounty’. Knowing that it was transported here by freight knocks those warm feelings out the window. Part of the joy of living off the land is an awareness of nature’s rhythms, and anticipating the pleasure of tasting a seasonal product when it first becomes available again.
Then, of course, we have to consider the country of origin. The Negev region has been part of Israel since 1947, so samphire would not be covered by the Quaker boycott of companies profiting from the occupation of the West Bank. Many Friends, however, seem to be extending the boycott informally.
The loss, for me, is the near-instant gratification of an unusual vegetable that complements fish extremely well. The offset, however, is that I’m already anticipating summer 2025 and planning a foraging trip in search of native samphire. And, as Shakespeare’s Prince Hal has it, ‘being wanted’ it ‘may be more wondered at’.
