Salt News

Once in a while you come across a chef whose culinary acumen exceeds your wildest anticipation, whose sense of style outshines your most lurid food fantasies.  Their accomplishments are legendary, their followers legion, and their place in the pantheon of food history vouchsafed by critics and public alike.  Then there are those chefs who toil in obscurity, seeking not fortune or fame, but the more ephemeral limelight of the home cooked meal.  But when they are good, they are very good.  These are the chefs whose unstoppable energy, unflappable enthusiasm, and indefatigable zeal can recast for diners the very tapestry of cooking itself.  They make cooking more personal, dining more passionate, and reveling in the flavor of food more intimately bound up in life’s vital force.  These are the chefs that provide you with the olive oil and lemon simplicity of fresh fruit de mer pasta that you absently lick from your lips as you gaze into the glittering harbor from a Mediterranean piazza, or the tartiflette you wolf down in the fluorescent-lit kitchen of a motorcyclist you’ve picked up with somewhere on a long road trip through the heart of your incorrigible youth.  I know one such chef, a creature of cunning and instinct, a booming and uncontrollable beast whose unprovoked antics make Chef Gordon Ramsay seem like a snoozing churchmouse by comparison. But we tolerate him out of adoration for his genius in the kitchen.

Here is a chronology of the chef at work, making the eternal masterpiece that is a fried egg sandwich.

“Put some eggs in this bowl and mix them with a spoon.”

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Mark Bitterman :: Jul.16.2010 :: Gourmet Salt, Recipes :: 5 Comments »

Sautéeing on Himalayan salt blocks creates exponentially more flavor than sautéeing in a conventional skillet.  This is because a salt block cooks your food in two ways. At a blazing 500 degrees or higher, the heavy block of salt has enormous thermal mass, sizzling away moisture to produce a thick crust of rich, concentrated flavor.  At the same time, the Himalayan salt itself sets to work, bursting cell membranes, intermingling juices, and breaking loose new flavors that in turn sizzle away to make for even more concentrated flavors.  Want to make the most of this miracle of cooking chemistry?  Balance out the scallop’s rich buttery flavors with a spritz of citrus and reinforce everything with the lip-tingling spice of Szechuan peppercorns. You’ll not have another scallop that’s this fun to cook, impressive to serve, or tasty to eat.

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Mark Bitterman :: Jul.10.2010 :: Gourmet Salt, Recipes, Salt Blocks :: 6 Comments »

Coarse, crunchy salts like sel gris (coarse sea salt) should be a legally required addition to roast chicken.  The real question is, should the salt go on before you tuck the bird into the oven, or after you have carved it and set it on the table?  Before you don your finest wrestling gear to settle the matter with violence, consider the possibility that both are great.  The former delivers extra-crackling skin bristling with popping brittle bits of salt.  The latter lets subtler flavors of whatever seasonings you put on the skin shine forth, and then complements them with a more unctuous crystalline crunch.

Lemon chicken shows very nicely with a touch of The Meadow’s house sel gris rubbed in the poultry’s cavity, and a more generous amount of this warm, supple salt sprinkled at the end, lending a lush mineral crunch to balance the dish’s aromatic citrus zestiness and juicy sweet-sour acidity.  The Meadow’s sel gris is coarser than French sea salt’s such as sel gris de Guérande or sel gris de l’Ile de Noirmoutier, but it is also milder and somewhat silkier,making it a delicious alternative to these briny-minerally French classics. Free salt for anyone who sends me a photo of themselves in full wrestling attire.

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Mark Bitterman :: Apr.30.2010 :: Gourmet Salt, Recipes :: 2 Comments »

Ever set eyes on a plume of dogwood blossoms blowing in a gust through rain-swept skies?  Me neither.  Petals on a wet black bough–indeed.  More often than not, around here, spring is a slow escalating drone of mist, drizzle, sleet, rain, hail, and deluge. Yes, there are cherry trees dropping pink petals like so many tears; yes, you see goofy maple pods helicoptering out of an cerulean sky; yes it’s fun to watch dogs and kids skidding through mud on the baseball field.  But for the most part, my yearning for spring (something warmer and a touch less… humid) goes unrequited.  The woodpile is depleted and the promise of loose clothing and bare feet stokes a new form of appetite.  I think of salad.  The tenderness of baby greens in my mouth, the citrus pop of a crescent of clementine, the bitter nip of an edible flower, all whipped into a moment of suspended perfection by a snowflake glint of Marlborough Flakey sea salt on the tongue. The spring salad clears the mind, refreshes the skies, and says through flavor what my winter weary heart yearns for.

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Mark Bitterman :: Apr.09.2010 :: Gourmet Salt, Recipes :: No Comments »

My friend Michael Ruhlman has shared his thoughts on salt.  He suggests using Kosher, a fine grind of so-called fine Sea Salt, and a finishing salt of choice.

I have a thought that speaks to both of our perspectives on salt.  Ruhlman ’s book, Soul of the Chef, is a brilliant account of what’s involved in the technical mastery of cooking.  But implicit in the story (and sometimes explicit) is the importance of the ingredient.  Thomas Keller is a technical master, but he is also the consummate curator of ingredients.

The tension between technique and ingredient is age-old.  In the history of food there has always been a fight between technique and ingredient.  Cultures tend to come out on one side or the other: French, the technique; Italian, the ingredient.  This tension also plays out through trends and influences:  molecular gastronomy is about technique; Alice Waters is about ingredient.  As he describes so well, Keller is not only a master technician, he also emblematizes the age-old concept “honor the animal” and “honor the vegetable,” meaning use your ingredients fully and respectfully.

Keller also honors the mineral.

Keller’s strategic, creative, mindful use of natural, unique salts has been a major inspiration for me in my life and work.  If fact, I can think of no other person (outside Japan) who has so fully grasped the essential link between the technical perfection of cooking and the elemental imperative of good salt.  Several of the over 100 salts we carry in our store I discovered through Keller.

But, in conclusion, I will say that I totally agree three salts are enough for any household.  But they should be salts that reflect your values as a chef no less than the grade of meat or freshness of vegetable.  Coarse, moist Sel Gris for all around cooking and hearty foods like grilled and roasted meats and roots.  Delicate, irregular crystals of Fleur de Sel for subtler, moist foods like fish, sauced foods, and cooked vegetables.  Parchment fine Flake Salts for fresh vegetables and wherever you want a dramatic salty snap.  We have the Foundations Set at The Meadow to help with this.

The technical skill required for using salt masterfully is easy as pie (or easier: crust is a bear).  And finding good salts is easier now than ever.  My book will be coming out this fall in an effort to help matters along.  Honor the mineral!

Mark Bitterman :: Feb.02.2010 :: Gourmet Salt, News & Musings, Recipes :: No Comments »

Popcorn is serious food for most of us.  It’s one of those snacks–the more fun you have making it, the more serious the result.  A dance of fluffy crunch, butter, and salt, there is probably no food better suited to stuffing with child-like abandon into your mouth.  But getting back to the serious part.  Making great popcorn means using great salt.  Indulging in alternative popcorn face-stuffing experiences means exploring different salts.  The Meadow’s Popcorn Salt Set is the ultimate popcorn eater’s companion.

Papohaku Opal Sea Salt – This is the “beautiful, super fruity, buttery salt from Hawaii” we raved about in The Oregonian. This is hand harvested sea salt from Molokai Hawaii, one of the more beautiful salts you are likely to find anywhere. We recommend that you grind this salt onto your popcorn, for a flavor combination of “super-buttered movie theater popcorn, amusement park caramel corn and something you might nibble on in the plush shadows of the Ritz bar in Paris.”

Amabito No Moshio Sea Salt – Adapted from a 2,000-year-old method for salt making in Japan, this is probably the first salt ever regularly made on the island. Salt was made by dragging seaweed from the ocean onto the rocks on the shore, letting the brine dry off, and then repeatedly sprinkling water on again and letting it dry, until a thick crust of salt built up. On the seaweed.  Water was then gingerly rinsed off to make a concentrated brine that was then evaporated over fire to yield salt. The resulting superfine, almost moussey crystals have a savory flavor called Umami, which the Japanese have for centuries distinguished as a flavor category of its own. Sprinkled on popcorn, Amabito No Moshio provides a hearty, savory flavor almost like pasta speckled with Parmesan cheese minus the pasta Parmesan: it’s only the intensity of the flavors that you experience.

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Mark Bitterman :: Dec.17.2009 :: Gourmet Salt, Recipes :: 1 Comment »