Horta: Greek Wild Greens with Olive Oil and Lemon

Horta, a Greek catch-all term for edible wild plants as well as a recipe made from them, is a delicious, minimalist way to prepare your favorite wild greens. Today we'll go over what makes horta unique, and the traditional way the greens have been cooked and served since ancient times: boiled until tender and served with olive oil and lemon.

What is Horta?

Around the world there's many wild food traditions where one word can be used to describe hundreds of edible wild plants. In Japan they have sansai or "mountain vegetables". In Mexico, they call their wild edible plants quelites.

Horta means wild greens in Greek, and, just like the others, the word can be used to refer to a multitude of wild plants that can be cooked together. I rarely make it the same way twice.

There's a few things that make horta different from a Japanese bowl of Sansai udon noodles or tacos de quelites. Here's what I consider some key differentiating points:

• Horta is a mix of leafy green plants.
• The plants are boiled, this ensures they're uniformly tender and helps calm bitter flavors of some plants.
• The plants need to be the star. Olive oil, fresh lemon juice, and a sprinkle of the best salt you can find are the only seasoning that's needed.
• Ideally, the plants should be young enough they can be boiled whole and not cut up. This allows you to eat the entire plant in a bite and appreciate differences in tastes and textures.

Besides the basic dish of boiled greens with oil and lemon I'm sharing in this post, horta also has derivative recipes. One of the best known is hortopita-a wild greens pie baked with feta cheese in phyllo dough. My friend Ellen Zachos has hortopita recipe some of my friends swear by.

A Few Greek Horta Plants

There's hundreds of plants that can be known as horta, so this is a great place to make your own blend of greens with what's available in the moment.

Here's a quick list of 20 horta plants and their local / colloquial names.

• Bitter Dock (Rumex obtusifolius) known as lapatho in Greek
• Golden thistle (Scolymus sp), a relative of artichokes and cardoons
• Amaranth greens, known as vlita (Amaranthus blitum and others)
• Black Nightshade (Solanum nigrum complex) known as styfno
• Mallow greens or moloha in Greek (Malva silvestris)
• Borage greens, known as boratzi (Borago officionalis)
• Sow thistle greens (Sonchus oleaceous)
• Black bryony shoots (Tamus communis) known as avronies.
• Common dandelion greens or radiki in Geeek (Taraxacum officinale)
• Chicory (Chicorium intybus) like dandelions, these are also known as radiki
• Garden cress or kadamo in Greek (Lepidium sativum)
• Mediterranean hartwort or kafkalida in Greek (Tordylium apulum)
• Common nettles or Tsouknida (Urtica dioica and others)
• Redstem stork’s bill (Erodium cicutarium), known as Monk or kalogeros in Greek
• Shepherds Purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris)
• Mediterranean wild mustard greens or vrouves in Greek (Hirschfeldia incana and others)
• Prickly golden fleece (Urospermum picroides)
• Prickly Lettuce (Lactuca serriola) or petromaroulo in Greek
• Purslane (Portulaca oleracea). Known as glistrida, meaning slippery
• Wild Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)

My Simple Horta Recipe

This is a simple dish to make: all you need are fresh wild greens, lemon, salt, olive oil and water. With such few ingredients, it's important to pay attention to the technique.

To make it, first you bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add the greens. It's important the water is salty enough to taste like the sea.

Push the greens under the water and boil them until just tender. Some greens will take longer than others to become tender so you'll need to use your instinct here. When they're tender, remove the greens and drain in a colander.

Arrange the greens, spreading them out in a serving dish so they don't look like a pile of grass clippings. Drizzle them with your best Extra virgin olive oil, or another oil you like. I really like Smude's sunflower oil which has a strong sunflower / aster flavor.

Finally, season the greens with salt and fresh squeezed lemon juice and serve. Instead of using a knife and fork, twirl the greens around a fork.

Using so few ingredients keeps the greens as the star of the show. The flavor of the greens mixed together, drenched with oil and salt keeps the flavor fresh and bright.

Related Posts

• Cicoria en Padella: Italian Wild Greens with Garlic and Chili
• Hindbeh: Lebanese Dandelions with Caramelized Onions
• Quelites: The Edible Wild Greens of Mexico