Chef’s Capsule Collection: Agretti
Saltwort. Land seaweed. Monk’s beard. Russian thistle.
These are some of the different monikers for agretti (Latin name: salsola soda or sola inermis), a small annual shrub that we are growing for the first time this year as part of our Chef’s Capsule Collection.
Table of Contents
MEET THE CHEF
When we reached out to Matt Kelly, co-chef and co-owner of Nanas in Durham, to brainstorm crops we could try growing for him as part of our Chef’s Capsule Collection, we knew he’d come up with something unusual. Matt sources from dozens of local farms - he even lives on a farm - so he has full access to the best sustainably grown local produce.
Truly, the Nanas menu doubles as an agricultural treasure map radiating out from the restaurant. On the current spring menu, the asparagus from Lyon Farms in Creedmoor is grilled and served without adornment (because it doesn’t need it); broccoli, grown at Red’s Quality Acre in Durham, is balanced with the richness of a silky lemon hollandaise; and a riff on a Caesar salad features the petite heads of Little Gem lettuce (a miniature romaine) from Li’l Farm; while scallions from Super Rad farm, run by Matt’s cousins, infuse the foamy envelope of sauce atop wood-grilled oysters with their distinct allium bite.
With such a bounty already within reach, what could he possibly have in mind for us?
“Agretti.”
Leave it to Matt to stump us on plant knowledge. If you’ve never heard of agretti before, neither had we. A distant cousin to spinach, this shrub is most commonly grown and eaten in Italy, where it’s also known as barba di frate (monk’s beard). With a delicate, slightly salty flavor and a unique shape (the leaves are more like long needles that resemble spaghetti when cooked), it's an unusual and delicious plant.
Why agretti? “I’ve never seen it here before, and I’m curious about it. And I think other great restaurants in the area would be excited about it.” He can’t remember exactly when he came across agretti for the first time, but he thinks it was in an old cookbook. “Produce markets and cookbooks are the chef’s cheap plane ticket to exploring new things and new dishes,” he tells us.
His plans for the agretti aren’t fully formed yet, but they’ll follow the same process he uses for any new dish or technique: “First you cook with what you’re familiar with, then start to explore. So I’m going to start with the basics and cook it with a bunch of garlic. Then I’m going to try it with lemon zest and anchovies, then maybe try with some rice, do a dish with some snails, maybe use it as a garnish.”
As for which dish will make it onto the Nanas menu? We’ll just have to wait and see.
What is it? Agretti is an annual shrub that is most popularly known, foraged, and cultivated in Italy (specifically central Italy). It features needle-like leaves (almost like rosemary, but longer) that have a crunchy, vegetal, and slightly briny flavor. Part of the amaranth family, it’s loosely related to spinach and beets, but more closely associated with sea beans in flavor. It’s halophytic, meaning that it can tolerate salt, and was historically cultivated near brackish waters where other plants couldn’t survive.
How should I eat it? Agretti has a mild, grassy flavor when raw - it has a nice textural crunch and a delicious earthy yet briny flavor. But in Italian cuisine it’s frequently cooked - typically sauteed with aromatics (like oil and garlic) and served as a side dish. We’ve seen it as a topping on pizza, folded into a frittata, trying to blend in with spaghetti in a pasta dish, and punctuating a bowl of risotto.
Where can I find it? Great question. It’s not widely available in our area (that we know about). Ask your local farmer if they’ll try growing agretti next spring season!
ABOUT AGRETTI
SEEDS, GERMINATION & GROWING TIPS
Seeds
Agretti seed is known for being finicky. We sourced our seed from Seeds of Italy, which lays this volatility out with a clear disclaimer: “We will no longer offer a germination guarantee on Agretti. We've taken every possible step to ensure that the seed retains viability from when it is germination tested in Italy prior to packaging in the fall. That being said, this is an incredibly delicate seed with very short viability that is very hard to find outside of Italy. Order at your own risk.” Undeterred, we ordered our supply, but as an insurance policy we also ordered some saltwort seed from Johnny’s, which isn’t the same cultivar as the Italian agretti, but has a similar flavor and appearance.
Germination
We planted four trays of Seeds of Italy seed in early February, and were pleasantly surprised when our germination rate was pretty high. But a few weeks in, we struggled with damping off in three of the four trays, which left us with one tray of viable seedlings for transplanting. We also direct-sowed some seed in late March, for comparison. In total, we have about 50 row feet of agretti in the ground. Our agretti grew more slowly than we anticipated; we harvested at about 75 days instead of the forecasted 50 days.
Resources
We reached out to Evan Chender of The Culinary Gardener in Asheville, who has been growing agretti for ten years. “It’s a super interesting and unique vegetable, which excites me. But I’m the only farmer in my area who grows it. I think farmers have bad experiences with low germination, and then they never try again.” After a few hit or miss seasons with germination using seeds from Seeds of Italy, he’s resorted to importing his own seed directly from Italy. “Old seed, or seed that has gone through temperature volatility, seems to lose its viability really quickly.”
This year he has 600 row feet of agretti in the ground. He sows seeds indoors, adding beneficial microbes to his soil to avoid damping off, and then transplants to caterpillar tunnels. “It wants to grow fast, and and it doesn’t want to be stressed,” he told us. In terms of soil amendments, he adds just a little bit of nitrogen.
He sells 90% of what he grows to restaurants in the Asheville area; agretti customers include restaurants like Cucina 24, Bull & Beggar, Golden Pineapple, Leo’s, and Neng Jrs. Due to the scarcity of the crop, and the extra lengths taken to grow it, he’s able to charge a premium of $20/pound, but notes that the demand for it from year to year is inconsistent.
Harvest
Timing
We waited on harvesting, hoping that our agretti plants would get bigger and bushier like many of the reference photos we saw in our research online. But by May 27th, we couldn’t wait any longer: The agretti immediately showed signs of stress after the first days that broke 85 degrees. All in all, our agretti took longer than expected to reach maturity - approximately 75 days instead of the 50 days that our seed instructions forecasted.
Future adjustments: We’d start seeds earlier and transplant earlier, potentially to a bed in the hoop house.
Whole plant harvest or cut-and-come-again method?
By the time we began to harvest, it made more sense to cut the whole plant at its base, rather than cut the tops off and wait for regrowth, known as the “cut-and-come-again” method.
Future adjustments: We’d aim to begin harvesting at the beginning of May, and try to use the cut-and-come-again method to increase yield.
Yield
For 50 row feet, we yielded about 13.5 pounds of “sellable” agretti.
Future adjustments: Now that we’ve seen the growing habit, we’d plant more densely (4 inches apart instead of 6) and squeeze an additional row of plants into the bed (totaling 5 instead of 4) for a maximized yield.
Shelf life
Post-harvest, we hydro-cooled the agretti in a tub of cold water, and then let air dry under shade cover before storing in the walk-in cooler. Kept under refrigeration, the agretti’s shelf life before showing signs of deterioration was about 6-7 days.
The Result
Standing in the kitchen of Nanas, a team of cooks moves around with urgency, setting up their stations and finishing their prep lists in anticipation of the evening’s upcoming dinner service. In the middle, chef Matt Kelly stands over a bowl overflowing with agretti. He’s a little quiet at first, as he tastes the raw product with a poker player’s reaction. The flavor of raw agretti is mild and vegetal - on its own, it wouldn’t blow away any taste buds. But by the end of our little R&D session, Matt’s eyes are wide and he’s almost giddy with excitement.
To come up with a dish using this unusual plant, he’s assembled a small pantry’s worth of ingredients, not knowing which direction the process would take him: anchovies, lemon, parmesan cheese, cured tomatoes, Arborio rice, some steamed crawfish meat. Starting to get a feel for things, he tears off and separates the most tender frills of the agretti, setting aside the denser stems. (This was no discard pile, however - “I’ll do something with these…maybe ferment them, maybe dehydrate them. Nothing will go in the trash,” he tells us.) Then, a simple blanch: the agretti frills get a 90-second dunk in boiling salted water. And it all changes after this.
As he tastes a bite of cooked agretti, the lightbulb goes off. To a saute pan, he adds olive oil, then garlic and anchovies, leaning on the heavyweights of savory flavors. The blanched agretti follows, soaking up the oily drippings. Then he adds finely grated lemon peel and turns the contents out onto a waiting plate. To finish it off, there’s a generous sprinkling of breadcrumbs and what he calls “overnight tomatoes,” a fancy restaurant version of oven-roasted tomatoes that have been marinated in oil. The whole process takes no more than seven or eight minutes, the simplicity almost contradictory to what you’d expect in a fine-dining kitchen.
But the flavor reminds you where you are, and the skill with which this was prepared. Each bite of the agretti is excellent, the texture like angel-hair pasta, those grassy vegetal notes developed by heat and expertly balanced with the richness of the other ingredients. It’s a total knockout.
Matt goes a few more rounds, adjusting levels of salinity and acid, but he doesn’t veer far from what we’ve discovered on the first try. With an ingredient like this, only a rookie would gild the lily. Agretti’s uniqueness and flavor should be and is the star.
“Well now I want a lot more of this,” he laughs. But the mark of a capsule collection is that it’s fleeting, and we only have a few more harvests to offer before it’s gone.
No time to spare, then: The dish will be on the menu at Nanas tonight.
Photos and video: Vittles Films