On a recent trip to Savannah, Georgia, I splurged on dinner at Husk, a fine-dining restaurant helmed by chef Christopher Hathcock. Of all the dishes I tried, one stood out: a tuna crudo garnished with translucent slices of watermelon radish and samphire. The samphire provided a salt-tinged jolt of flavor that seemed to wake the whole dish up. I was surprised to see it on my plate, since I’d stumbled across it growing wild on one of Georgia’s barrier islands just the day before. Sometimes known as “sea beans,” it grows wild throughout salt marshes around the globe. It’s delicious, but until recently, the only way to get it was by foraging. I’d never encountered samphire on a restaurant menu before, but I am willing to bet that we’ll see a lot more of it soon. With natural sources of clean freshwater in increasingly short supply, a number of scientists are banking on sea vegetables as a lower-carbon way to feed a growing world.
Source: The case for farming sea veggies
