Buck’s-horn plantain ✦

Plantain corne-de-cerf

What it is

It is a salt-tolerant coastal plant, which is where the faint saline edge comes from, and Italian growers sell the cultivated form as minutina or erba stella. That form — narrow antler-shaped leaves cut as a salad crop — is a table vegetable, not the broad medicinal plantain of lawns and verges.

In the kitchen

Cut it, do not pull it: the crown regrows three or four times across a winter, which is the whole economy of the crop. Dress it late — the leaves are crunchy and hold well, but salt collapses them within a few minutes.

Goes with

Olive oil Lemon Oyster Samphire Egg Mackerel Shallot

Same species

Ribwort plantain

In season alongside

Salt marsh lamb Bamboo shoot Barbe de capucin Bettarazuke Blue foot mushroom Brousse du Rove

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