Sea kale ✦

Chou marin

What it is

William Curtis published a pamphlet in 1799 on forcing sea kale under blanching pots heaped with rotting manure, which brought pale shoots up by December and turned a shore weed into a Georgian table vegetable. Coastal people had been doing it accidentally for centuries, digging out shoots that shifting shingle had already blanched for them.

In the kitchen

Steam the blanched stems 4 minutes and eat them with melted butter like asparagus; they need nothing more. Green unforced shoots are bitter and tough, so buy only pale stems with pink-flushed tips.

Goes with

Butter Hazelnut Lemon Egg Cream Brown shrimp Olive oil

In season alongside

Crosnes Dungeness crab Scorzonera Pauillac lamb Japanese tilefish (amadai) Northern sweet shrimp

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