Artisanal Salt
You wouldn’t readily describe me as a salty character, someone who just lives for the spray and foam of the sea: Arghh, me matey! Here comes another 20-foot wave!.. WOOHOO!… I’m a cat, after all. A stuffed cat, even (hey, I’m in touch with who and what I am… :-3). So “salty” isn’t a word that comes immediately to mind. However, when it comes to fleur de sel, like the kind gathered off France’s Brittany coast, that’s a different story.
I’m talking about gourmet salt—not the refined table salt you buy in a box at the grocery store—I mean sea salt, organic salt, artisanal salt. Not all salts are created equal and not all sources of sodium are the same. There is no connection, for instance, between the chemically-cleansed sodium chloride table salt you buy in the supermarket—which is added to virtually every processed food you buy—and the mineral rich organic unrefined sea salt available in health food stores and gourmet food shops.
So, if you’re going to indulge—remember, too much sodium can lead to high blood pressure and increased incidence of heart attacks and strokes—then do it in moderation and do it well. I treat salt like I treat coffee. I don’t drink coffee all the time so when I do, I make sure every cup I drink is brewed well, is a deliciously sensual experience and warms my little heart. So, why settle for plain table salt when you can titillate your palate with
Gourmet sea salts
the exotic flavors of exotic gourmet finishing salt, playful, opulent and startling.
Various gourmet finishing salts that fall in the category of artisanal salt, vary greatly and include fleur de sel, sea salt with truffle, Bali salt with coconut and lime, sel de guérande, Himalayan pink salt, Eurasian black salt, Hawaiian red salt, sel gris, and Chardonnay oak-smoked salt, to name just a few.
Most specialized salts require finicky harvesting processes that are often subject to climate and can extend over a long time period.
You get sea salt (also called solar salt) by evaporating seawater. Let’s start with fleur de sel, the sea salt harvested from France’s Brittany coast. Harvesters (called Paludiers or salt farmers) first channel the Atlantic waters into clay-lined salt ponds (called polders) where, if the sun and wind are favorable, the minerals form salt crystals on the surface. The crystals are then raked by hand off the top. Grey salt or sel gris is a moist fleur de sel found along the Brittany coastline and colored by the clay. The salt is hand-collected using wooden rakes like the Celts (metal rakes ruin the flavor). A
harvesting fleur de sel
seaweed aftertaste lingers in fleur de sel that excites the palate and can vary even within a single region like Guérande, depending on the mineral content of the water. Italy has its version called Fior di Sale from the Tripani area of Sicily, where harvesting only occurs on windless mornings when the Mediterranean Sea is “unruffled”. Hawaian sea salt (Alaea) gets its pink color from the volcanic baked clay.
Black salt (Kaala Namak, Sanchal), an unrefined mineral salt, is actually a pinkish-grey color and gives a sulfuric or smoky flavor thanks to the minerals. It’s used in authentic Indian cuisine.
The tiny crystals of Himalayan pink salt are mined deep in the mountains of Tibet from an ancient sea and contain over 84 trace elements. Often brought down on the backs of yaks, these unrefined and unpolluted pink crystals have a subtle crunchy texture and dissolve easily into food.
Flavored salts range greatly from being smoked over various kinds of wood, mixed with spices or spiked with
Himalayan salt
other ingredients like white truffles or hot peppers to assert more flavor.
Fumée de Sel is fleur de sel that is cold smoked with oak wine barrels that have been used for years to age fine Chardonnay wine. This one-of-a-kind salt is excellent as a finishing salt on salads, veggies, and meat. Smoked salt also goes very well with grilled fish or chicken. Chef Matthew Accarrino of the San Francisco restaurant SPQR uses the intensely flavored salt smoked over applewood to spice uo his ricotta fritters, a personal favorite of mine. Chef Mikey Price of New York City’s Market Table adds texture as well as flavor with coarse large-flaked Maldon salt on his hush puppies with clover-honey butter.
For those of you who turned your nose at my suggestion of using salt on apples, Chef Mackinnon-Patterson from Boulder (where I just visited) suggests a party canapé of apples dipped in caramel and sprinkled with Murray River salt from Australia. :-3
Fleur de sel caramel
Chefs Mark Gaier and Clark Frasier of Arrows restaurant in Maine add zest and flamboyance to their prosciutto-wrapped melon and mangos with reddish Hawaiian red sea salt. This salt gets its color from the clay in the tidal pools where it’s harvested.
According to Salma Abdelnour, New York-based food writer, Italian chef Odette Fada of Manhattan’s SD26 “tops her fish dishes with a Sicilian citrus-spiked salt, made with bits of orange, bergamot and lemon. She sprinkles seaweed-studded salt from Italy’s Adriatic coast on her sea bass poached in fish broth.” Mmmmm! I’ll have to try it next time I’m there.
AtTheMeadow suggest that “As a general rule, you get the most from your food—and from your gourmet salt—by using as little salt as possible during cooking, then sprinkling your food with a finishing salt at the end. “
Here are some salt categories based on their use:
Finishing Salt – Distinctive salts that add something special when sprinkled on food. Some
finishing salts can also be used as cooking salts. A good finishing salt has unique mineral, moisture, and crystal qualities that play off your food to create more flavor, better texture, and new beauty.
Cooking Salt – Salt for roasting, brining, boiling water, & seasoning. Some cooking salts can also be used as finishing salts or curing salts. A good cooking salt is rich in trace minerals, inexpensive, and contributes to environmental and cultural preservation.
Grinder Salt – Salt for use in salt mills as a finishing salt. A good grinder salt has virtually zero moisture, is unrefined, and is high in minerals.
Pickling & Brining Salt – Salt added to water to preserve foods in brine, or added to water to hydrate and tenderize (mostly meats) in brine. A good pickling or brining salt is naturally rich in minerals, unrefined, and made in an environmentally supportive way.
Curing Salt -Salts for curing meats, such as in the preparation of dry cured sausages or hams. These salts can include one or more of the following: potassium nitrite, potassium nitrite, sodium chloride. A good curing salt depends on the cure, and it is important to follow curing recipes closely. Never eat a curing salt by itself.
Okay. Now go eat and watch your salt! Toulouse said so. :-3
Black Hawaiian sea salt
p.s. back in Chicago, I discovered a wonderful chocolaterie, Vosges Haut Chocolat, which sells — among other exotic delectables — a chocolate bar made with dark chocolate (70% cacao), burnt sugar caramel and black Hawaiian sea salt. It’s called Black Salt Caramel Bar. I carefully followed Katrina’s formula for fully enjoying this ambrosia: take several deep breaths and quiet my mind, rub my paw on the chocolate to release the fruity caco laden aromas and inhale deeply. Then take a small piece, press it on the roof of my mouth, and savor the bouquet of rich burnt caramel notes with essence of black Hawaiian salt as they release with the melting chocolate. It is a unique exotic experience that will linger with you. Black Hawaiian salt is actually a blend of sea salt and volcanic charcoal; the salt is harvested in ocean pools that have formed from past volcanic eruptions. Its striking obsidian hue is matched only by its smoky, slightly nutty taste. Yum!
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