When we traveled along the Aegean last September I could not get enough of samphire (deniz börülcesi) while my Russian mom insisted on potatoes in every meal we cooked. She parboiled them first and then pan-fried in olive oil to create a cozy crust. A few meze (with the compulsory samphire), grilled wild sea bass and the mom’s potatoes have become the dinner we cooked many times on that trip.
I don’t know why the idea of getting samphire and new potatoes to meet in a single dish did not occur to me back then. Some things take time to distill. And now I think of samphire and new potato salad as the best summer meal ever.
