North Norfolk captured our hearts by stealth. For many of my life, this arcing coastal stretch of East Anglia was someplace I had by no means visited, nor ever spent that a lot time interested by; a span of English countryside that I principally related to Alan Partridge, Colman’s mustard and, within the context of my south London house, a clumsy schlep. However then, nearly precisely a decade in the past, I stumbled by an web rabbit gap on to an entry for a clutch of self-catering cottages in a seaside village close to the gently bougie, wax-jacketed market city of Holt. Resolution made.Quickly we have been rumbling out throughout an impossibly vast and flat expanse, certain for the ripe, blustering winds and billowing steam trains of a different community of time-warp seashores and little cities. Not anticipating a lot, and but falling a bit of extra in love with every passing second and meal, with every glistening fistful of good chips from No1 Cromer or a tea room crab roll after watching seals nostril out of the water at Blakeney Level.The arrival of a second child, pandemic lockdowns and juddering private {and professional} life shifts – all of those important markers throughout the previous 10 years have been punctuated by repeat journeys to this understatedly stunning strip of once-alien shoreline. And although we have now seen this a part of the world in many alternative modes, the phrase that greatest crystallises my associative pleasure is that this: samphire season. I had positively eaten and loved the spindly inexperienced sea vegetable earlier than our north Norfolk years, however I don’t suppose it was till we visited in summer season, when samphire is at its considerable, fleeting peak within the tidal mudflats that gird the shoreline, that I appreciated its connection to East Anglian culinary tradition, or how particular it’s when sampled on the supply. When summer season hits, this briny, delicately beaded marsh grass (regionally pronounced extra like “sam-fer”) is a comforting ubiquity, lurking on restaurant blackboards, in fishmonger window shows and within the DIY honesty containers that decoration the wending coastal roads. There’s a core reminiscence from a couple of years in the past: sticky-fingered, sandy youngsters within the automobile, and my spouse Madeleine working from the passenger facet to acquire one of many final paper baggage of foraged samphire from a roadside desk amid the marshy, glimmering swelter of a bit of village known as Salthouse.An improvisatory hodge-podge again within the vacation cottage kitchen yielded butter-fried new potatoes and samphire, alongside vegetarian chorizo sausages: a deeply bizarre however terribly efficient mixture through which the waxy starch and fatty, paprika spicing one way or the other each muffle and complement the salinity of these nobbled inexperienced tufts. Within the intervening years, I’ve advanced and refined the pleasure of that second right into a free recipe, with the useful lubrication of a potato salad dressing and an elective lily-gilding of fatty fish.Chop 200g chorizo (vegetarian or vegan, if most well-liked) into hunks and roast in a 200C (180C fan)/390F/fuel 6 oven for 15-20 minutes, till cooked by and golden. In the meantime, boil 500g good, skin-on small potatoes in a pan of scantly salted simmering water for about 10 minutes, or till they only slip off the tip of a knife, including 150g samphire for the final two to 3 minutes of cooking. Drain, halve the potatoes, if want be, and depart to steam dry.Make a easy French dressing with three tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil, a tablespoon of white-wine vinegar, a bit of salt and pepper (bear in mind to carry again on the salt), a teaspoon of sugar for steadiness, and a beneficiant, emulsifying dollop of dijon mustard, then costume the potatoes and samphire whereas they’re nonetheless heat. Individually, combine three or 4 beneficiant tablespoons of excellent mayonnaise (I like a sublime, faint cloaking, quite than one thing too gloopy; once more, go vegan, if required) with three chopped spring onions, some chopped capers and cornichons, parsley and dill, then stir into the cooled veg. Serve with the contrasting heat of the roast chorizo and, if it appeals and also you’re not going plant-based, two fillets of recent mackerel, fried for simply two or three minutes on all sides.Creaminess and smoky warmth; succulent, marine crunch and natural freshness. Samphire is an underrated vegetable frivolously reframed, a celebration of treasured excessive summer season, of hyper-seasonality, and a reminder of how, in opposition to the percentages, a British-Nigerian metropolis boy fell onerous for this sleepy stretch of Partridge nation.
Choosy by Jimi Famurewa, is printed by Hodder & Stoughton at £20. To order a duplicate for £18, go to guardianbookshop.com
