Hunting for horta: The beloved Cretan pastime of foraging wild greens

The Minoans—a Bronze Age civilization named for legendary King Minos that inhabited the island from around 3500 BC to 1100 BC—were big fans of wild greens.

Although very little is known about this ancient civilization, a recent ethnobiological study funded by The University of Gastronomic Sciences, Pollenzo, Italy and by the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics of the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, found that wild greens are thought to have played a crucial role in the post-Neolithic Mediterranean diets of the Near East and the Mediterranean.

Comparison with some Greek historical data of the 19th and 20th centuries shows that wild greens have remained resilient and are still crucial in the daily Cretan diet, according to the study.

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“The soil here has always been very fertile, which is why we grow most of our own vegetables here in Crete—and we send a lot overseas,” Giorgos tells me.

Some foraged greens are as highly prized as truffles are in other parts of the world. One of these is the golden thistle askolimbi. Its scrubbed roots taste like artichoke and are often served with octopus and lamb, and are purported to be an aphrodisiac.

Time to find our own. Clad in a battered cap with ‘Coca-Cola—The Pause That Refreshes’ emblazoned on its brim and armed with his special foraging knife—its blunt muddy blade engraved with one of the local rhyming couplets known as mantinades that are inscribed on everything from tombstones to T-shirts—he leads me away from the flat roofs of our tiny mountain village on the Lasithi plateau and up into the hills.

A brisk wind that spins the white canvas sails of a dozen artesian windmills rustles the plastic bags we carry, which are carefully kept for just such occasions. Giorgos collects the bags on his rare shopping expeditions to Sitia—the nearest town—which is a 40-minute drive away.

We climb a goat track littered with slippery scree. The hot air buzzes with odd and powerful odors: there’s an overpowering toilet cleaner-esque scent of wild sage mingling with the honeyed smell of almond blossom and the pungent incense of wild thyme, its purple flowers carpeting the hillsides like scrubby, low-growing lavender.

“I’ve been coming here looking for horta since I was a ‘moro’, a baby. During the war, this was all we had to eat. We’d come here to hide from the Nazis sometimes, too.”

- Giorgos Papadakis

Above us stands a cirque of grizzled mountain peaks where the Minoans once buried their dead. The only sounds, apart from our grunts as we climb the steep path, are the lazy drone of bees, the jingling of sheep bells and a few yelps from a couple of griffon vultures circling overhead.

The heat is intense. I’m soon dripping with sweat as I follow Giorgos, who skips along the steep path ahead of me as lively as a satyr in his Greek-blue shirt.

“I’ve been coming here looking for horta since I was a moro, a baby,” he tells me. “My father used to come here and his father before that. During the war, this was all we had to eat. We’d come here to hide from the Nazis sometimes, too,” he says, pointing to the surrounding caves with rocky mouths that gape at us like rubber Halloween masks.

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“They were here for nearly four years, the Germans. They destroyed dozens of our villages during the war,” he adds, signing himself with the cross as we stare out over the olive-tree-tousled hillsides to a pocket of blue sea glittering far in the distance. “When I was a boy, I was so scared of them I would wet my pants. The Italians who were here first in Crete were much better; they are more relaxed—like us.”

We emerge on a wide plateau. In striking contrast to the surrounding crags, it’s a blaze of color. There are orchids everywhere at the peak of bloom. On the island of Crete, there are more than 70 different varieties of orchids, of which 14 are endemic. Many of them grow here in the unpolluted eastern half of Greece’s largest island.

Giorgos points out deep holes in the rust-colored soil. He tells me that people come here to find rare orchids, which they sell to the highest bidders. Badly hit by 10 years of austerity, followed by two years of the pandemic, Greece currently has high unemployment and many families struggle to survive.

The soft heap of greens is moist, meltingly textured and mildly astringent. I suddenly understood why top Greek chefs are reintroducing Greece’s favorite foraged greens to their menus.

“Orchids are just another victim of our long-drawn-out economic crisis,” he says, waving an angry fist. “People have no money and these collectors pay a lot for them—enough to feed a family for a month. Ti na kanoume, what can we do?”

Pulling out his knife with a sigh, he sets to work. Ignoring the white-laced tongues of ophyrys ariadnae and purple flags of Cretan iris, he skilfully fills his bags with lapatho (bitter dock); stamnagathi (dandelion leaves); asparagus-like spears of avronies (black bryony); armfuls of aniseed-scented wild fennel feathers and cucumber-flavored boratzi (borage). It’s quite the haul.

Back at the kafeneio, Giannis’ wife Maria cooks the horta, heating the room with steamy bonfire smells.

Giorgos drinks some of the water in which the greens were boiled, adding a little lemon juice. “It cleans your gut,” he says with a wink.

A few days later, it’s Easter. The streets of our tiny village are packed with children throwing crackers while their parents greet each other with cries of Xristos anesti! (Christ is risen!) and Xronia polla! (May you live many years!).

I sit with Giorgos at a long trestle table set up for the occasion outside the kafeneio. Giannis’ wife serves us crisp kalitsounia pies filled with foraged herbs. They are followed by the tender grilled lamb dish antikristo—served with lightly steamed stamnagathi dressed with a squeeze of lemon juice, a drizzle of Giannis’ olive oil and a dusting of sea salt collected from the driftwood-lined beaches of Sitia the previous summer.

The soft heap of greens is moist, meltingly textured and mildly astringent. I suddenly understood why top Greek chefs—like Costas Spiliadis of five-star Athens hotel Xendocheio Milos—are reintroducing Greece’s favorite foraged greens to their menus, serving them prepared in the traditional way as an accompaniment for a wide range of fish and meat dishes.

“Delicious,” I tell Giorgos as I help myself to another mouthful.

He snorts as if it’s obvious. “They’re the ones we foraged, I can tell,” he whispers in my ear. “I know all the best spots for foraging. So of course, my greens taste better than anyone else’s.”