Agretti: Is This the Perfect Green?
With the delighted grin of a new father, Paul Schrade brandished what appeared to be a bunch of chives at last Wednesday’s Santa Monica farmers market.
“Look, agretti!” said Schrade, a forager for Campanile restaurant and obsessive enthusiast of obscure Italian vegetables, as he handed out sample strands of the slender, tubular greens. They had a mineraly flavor reminiscent of beet greens and chard, along with a slight sourness appropriate to their name, which stems from agro, Italian for “sour.”
In central and northern Italy, gourmets and rustic folk prize the succulent, tender young shoots during their brief spring season, but until last week Americans couldn’t buy them. It was Evan Kleiman, the owner and chef of Angeli Caffe, who started the interest in agretti here. After decades of savoring what she calls “the perfect green” in Italy, she had a friend bring in several boxes of seeds bought at a store near Perugia. Schrade, also a friend, distributed them to a few organic farmers.
At the market, Dede and Jon Thogmartin sold all of the 42 bunches they brought in half an hour. “I planted the seeds as soon as Paul gave them to me,” said Dede, who farms east of Riverside. “I love strange, interesting new crops.”
She has spent many hours researching what she calls “the Agretti Project,” discovering that the plant’s scientific name is Salsola soda; it is also known as barilla plant, roscano and riscolo. It’s related to, and occasionally confused with, Russian thistle, better known as tumbleweed: Salsola kali. Later that evening Mark Peel, chef of Campanile, raced about his kitchen preparing monkfish liver steamed with agretti for his special menu of the day. He boiled the greens in salted water for two minutes, tossed them with finely diced shallot, Ligurian olive oil (“not too strong-flavored, so it doesn’t overwhelm the taste”) and a little lemon juice and plated them as a bed for the pale, mild fish liver.
Kleiman plans to offer agretti in a traditional preparation with mozzarella and carrots, and perhaps as a verdura, as a side dish with garlic and hot pepper. “It’s exciting to fall in love with a vegetable, bring in the seed and watch people grow it,” she said. “I can’t wait to see what people will do with it.”
Agretti spaghetti, perhaps?
Thogmartin Farm will sell agretti for the next few weeks at two Santa Monica farmers markets (Arizona Avenue and 2nd Street), Wednesdays 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Saturdays 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.; and at the Hollywood farmers market (Ivar Avenue between Sunset and Hollywood boulevards), Sundays 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Coleman Family Farms will sell agretti starting in a few weeks at the two Santa Monica markets.