Sea herbs
In Rick Stein’s latest TV series, Secret France, which explores whether cooking standards have slipped in the motherland of haute cuisine, the chef goes foraging for sea purslane and marsh samphire, both of which are set to be big on menus this year.
While samphire is nothing new – Waitrose has been selling the salty shards for yonks – 2020 will see lesser-known sea herbs like sea aster, sea beat and sea fennel come to the fore, along with nutrient rich kelp and spirulina, which are increasingly being lauded for their health benefits due to being rich in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.
Isle of Harris distillery in Scotland uses sugar kelp as a botanical in its gin foraged from the seas around the Outer Hebrides, while the Isle of Wight’s Mermaid Gin uses rock samphire, and Rock Rose gin, hailing from Scotland’s Dunnet bay, makes a hero of sea buckthorn.
