Salt News

My first experience of moshio, or Amabito No Moshio, Japanese seaweed salt.  It was like cliff-diving some off some north pacific archipelago during a summer tempest–a rush of warmth braced by brine and wind, a comforting rush cloaked in a sense of danger. My mind raced across time, scenes of lighting stabbing through dark clouds, sunshine seeping through moist fields of safflower, canyons opening through ancient layers of chert, breccia, and limestone, oceans swelling with the breath of the moon and the wind. I was eating shrimp. Not sure whether it was the lightly carbonized shell of the shrimp, the caramelized flavors of the flesh, or something in the marinade, I asked what was in the dish.

This was at the sushi counter of a Japanese restaurant in Boulder, Colorado of all places, and the chef was not inclined to indulge his clientèle of mostly an improbably mishmash of IBM executives, rock climbers, and ranchers. “Shrimp,” he replied.

“But how do you cook it?”

“It’s grilled,” mumbled, and turned his back on me to skin a salmon.

Not knowing what else to do, I asked the waitress for another Sapporo. “That sure was good shrimp,” I added lamely. “Ah. Yes!” she replied, masking her boredom with some effort behind cool dark eyes. “What is in it?” “It’s special grilled shrimp,” she said, repeating verbatim what I had just relayed to her. “Yes, but what makes it special?”

A light went on behind her eyes, but her dignity apparently demanded that she extinguish it as soon as possible. “It is traditional Japanese,” she said, apparently not recognizing that the terms “traditional” and “special” present a certain contradiction. I persisted, asking pointedly what exactly the chef does to make it. She stared at me, then dissappeared without further explanation.

And that was that. No go.

A week later I returned. Facing the same waitress, the same chef, I again ordered the special shrimp, which was no longer on the menu. No matter; ten minutes later I was tasting a full, round intensity of flavor that I could not place, but which pervaded my senses. The waitress arrived unbidden, pouring me another Sapporo. “I had a talk with the chef. He says the shimp is just grilled, then sprinkled with moshio.”

Aha! Yes! Salt, but with a feeling in the mouth like no other salt.

But what is moshio? “Moshio is ancient Japanese sea salt. My grandfather made it by evaporating sweater on kelp.”

It has been years since then. But finally! I have found Moshio again, and now am eating it on EVERYTHING. The moshio we are selling in our store, The Meadow, is called Amabito No Moshio (also called Ancient Sea Salt). The finishing salt’s round, rich flavors are due in part to the presence of ample trace minerals (calcium, potassium, magnesium, iron, iodine etc.), plus the extraordinary quality of umami that comes from the unique techniques used in its production. The salt is very dry, with small but complexly articulated crystals of a luxurious beige color that complement its flavor beautifully.

I have used Amabito No Moshio as a finishing salt to great effect on fish, rice, roasted potatoes, pasta, red meat, pork. Then there was our dinner party where we dusted this sea salt dusted across the surface of a chocolate soufflé. I was dazzled. The savory, unctuous salt actually brought out sweetness and lurking fruit flavor in the bitter dark chocolate souffle.

Amabito No Moshio is also great as a cooking salt, in light soups and sauces where the delicate sea salt contributes to both aromas and flavors. Moshio is the earliest known sea salt produced by the Japanese, dating back to nearly 2,500 years ago. Although Japan is surrounded by sea water, the country’s humid, rainy climate has never been well suited for large-scale production of dry salt. It takes 10 tons of seaweed infused water to make just 200kg of this ancient sea salt.

In the good old days, many Japanese made do with salt-ash, which they produced by spreading seaweed on the beach to dry between storms, rinsing the plants in an isolated saltwater pool, and then boiling the brine with bits of remaining seaweed in a clay pot over a wood fire to evaporate the water, crystallize the salt and reducing the seaweed pieces to ash. This salt-ash mixture, Moshio became the staple salt of the region.

Today the production of ancient Moshio continues. Our Amabito No Moshio ancient sea salt is a finishing salt that is somewhat refined by modern production methods. Unpolluted salt water collected from the Seto-uchi Inland Sea is left in a large pool to stand for a while, evaporating some of the water and saturating the salt solution. Hon’dawara seaweed is then added to the salt water for infusion of its flavor and color.

After some time the seaweed is removed and the salt water is transferred to and cooked in a large iron pot until it gradually begins to crystallize becoming a mass resembling a chunky sherbet. This is then put into a centrifuge to extract more water. The last step in the process is to cook the salt mass in a large pot over an open fire stirring continuously with a large wooden paddle. This removes almost all moisture and the salt becomes tiny, free-flowing granules.

Our Amabito No Moshio is made on the tiny island of Kami- Kamagari in the Seto-uchi Inland Sea of Hiroshima Prefecture in Western Japan. It is one of 3,000 such small islands in Japan. The population is also tiny–a mere 2,777 according to the latest census. In 1984 archeological digging revealed an ancient (3rd to 4th century AD) salt-making pot. This find encouraged the locals to re-produce the historic ancient gray sea salt in 1998.

Mark Bitterman
Selmelier
The Meadow / gourmet salt - chocolate - wine - flowers

Mark Bitterman :: Mar.02.2007 :: Finishing Salts, Sea Salt :: No Comments »

Our first multi-media tasting event, “Chocolate & Salt,” brought some great new discoveries for all of us. Thank you all, including our fascinating and passionate guest, Pamela Hinckley from Theo Chocolate, for braving the forecasted freezing rain and crowding into The Meadow for the event. For those of you who could not make it, we will venture to summarize the outstanding moments of the evening.

A Washington State of Mind
Red Alder Smoked Pacific Sea Salt and Theo’s Ivory Coast Single Origin Chocolate. The trick was to use no more than one or two grains of the salt on a brick of chocolate. The result was a merging of worlds and times, with flavors from beneath the rainforest canopy melding with the aroma of Pacific Northwest forest.

Getting Nibby with It
Goat Cheese sprinkled with Cocoa Nibs and Turkish Black Finishing Salt. Wow. We tried this again at the Art Opening for Roger Hallin we held on Sunday, and won literally dozens of converts. The strange thing about the combination of unsweetened, pungent, crunchy cocoa nibs combined with crusty, flakey Turkish Black salt on the rich, creamy-crumbly curds of a nice soft goat cheese is that it seems so utterly classical! People from all walks of life and of all ages just stood there, drinking wine and munching away, eyebrows raised in smiley happiness, looking at the art. A definite holiday must. If you need help with the nibs or the salt, we could be able to accommodate you at the store, and we have also put Theo’s Panamanian cocoa nibs up for sale at the online store.

The New Kid?
Theo’s New Madagascar Single Origin Dark Chocolate Bar. Single origin chocolates are a special passion for us at the Meadow, and the new 65% cocoa Madagascar bar from Theo reminds us of why. This chocolate strikes quickly, with intense, sharp fruits; lemon-lime, over-ripe pomegranate, then sharp wine flavors and even desert fruits such as dates and cactus. The chocolate gives you an extraordinary insight into the potent powers of seduction offered by Madagascar’s cocoa beans.

This coming Thursday (Dec 14) we will be doing a favorite of ours: Ice Cream and Welsh Sea Salt. Our tour will include the rollicking Halen Mon Gold (smoked with an 800 year old oak tree), our Taha’a Vanilla infused Welsh sea salt, and from across the channel, the ever lusty Barrique Chardonnay Smoked Fleur de Sel.

Hope to see you there!
Mark Bitterman
Selmelier
The Meadow / gourmet salt - chocolate - wine - flowers

Mark Bitterman :: Dec.11.2006 :: Salt and Chocolate, Sea Salt :: No Comments »

Just as the tattooing craze can be interpreted as a yearning to compensate for our human imperfections in reaction to mass media’s images of human perfection, so too is the organic food craze symptomatic of a yearning to compensate for our failure to live closer to nature. The only difference is that no amount of pigment, surgery, or exercise will make us as perfect (or its metaphysical counterpart, “individual”) as the girl or boy in the magazine. On the other hand, improving our relationship with food is a very effective way to achieve a closer connection to ourselves, our communities, and our planet.

And so, driven more by psychological motives than intellectual ones, organic food sales have risen 20% year over year since 1990. (Organic salt is among them, though the trend began much more recently, and detailed research on the subject is not available.) During this period, sales of conventional foods have increased 2% to 4% per year.

Great! The Holy Light of pesticide free agriculture has entered our lives, shown us the way, and the now world is on the path to a better place.

But not really.

More than two decades after the organic movement first took root, the term organic seems hackneyed and is failing to satisfy our deeper desires. Eating organic has become politicized, status-ized, fetishized, and sanitized. We often purchase organic food now simply because we are liberals, or because we tell ourselves we are not cheap (organic foods cost anywhere from 40% to 400% more than non-organic), or because organic foods are now sold via tidier, cuter merchandizing tactics — and we do all this despite the fact that we often don’t even know precisely what organic signifies.

To make matters, worse much of the time the taste of organic tomatoes is only marginally better, if at all, than sprayed tomatoes. Organic bread is made in massive automated factories, not warm yeasty kitchens. Organic meat can still come from fetid stockyards, after which it is handled by uninspired butchers. In fact, there is little indication that we are eating better or feeling more connected as a nation or a species, and we are certainly not spending less on palliatives such as drugs or diets.

Conclusion: the organic movement has failed to assuage our yearning to plunge our fingers into the chocolate-dense loam of a radish field. As individuals and as a society, we are seeking anew some way to enfold ourselves in the furry fertile flesh of earthly life.

Who or what can bring us closer to our unrequited hankering for “the way things should be?”

To the best of my knowledge, the answer arrived first in France, which is not surprising, as my knowledge is limited almost exclusively to France.

Back in the 90s, French bakers were getting upset at the inroads made by supermarkets into the baguette market. The result of this upset was typically French: legislation. The government essentially decreed that there were two kinds of baguette: the “baguette,” and the more austere “baguette de tradition,” which also applies to the baguette’s hefty brother, the flûte, and lean sister, the ficelle. Unlike the baguette, which the great American Bread Historian Stephen Kaplan described as a “tasteless, odorless monstrosity,” and which a personal friend more recently described as “assy,” the baguette de tradition is a pungent, crispy-light, tactfully chewy confabulation. Try my favorite truck stop special: ham and butter sprinkled with Fleur de Sel from Ile de Re on a baguette de tradition, and learn first-hand the Chesire cat’s craft, smiling and smiling as you chew, until, at last, all as vanished but your grin.

Anyway, the baguette de tradition is baked by what is called a “Boulangerie Artisanale,” or Artisan Bakery, or Craft Bakery. The point is, people bake the bread, not machines. More to the point, the people who do the baking are bakers, not unskilled laborers and technicians. In the artisan’s baguette de tradition you can taste pride, passion, and, yes, tradition.

The artisan is the connection between us and the earth.

Salt that was invented, practiced, perfected, produced, packaged, and purveyed by people who have an inherent respect and love for their way of life is a magical thing. The crystals are formed by nature, but fussed over and protected by a person who has either been trained extensively or has grown up fussing over and protecting salt crystals. You feel this obsession when you see, smell, touch, and taste the salt, and you know this in your heart when you pay a little more money than you would for bulldozer-and-refinery produced sea salt or dynomite-and-dumptruck produced mined salt.

Unlike with organic, where you begrudgingly pay good money to have something bad not added to your food, with artisan, you pay for the essential connection between man and earth. (You go one step further when you purchase the salt from small companies that have personal relationships with the salt-makers and importers, but that is another matter.)

Salt is perhaps the most important ingredient in the development of our culture. Salt-preserved foods permitted commerce that fed geographically dispersed communities into burgeoning cities, city-states, and nations. It is only appropriate that we turn to the artisan’s salt to connect us again to our history and our natural origins.

Mark Bitterman :: Sep.16.2006 :: Sea Salt :: No Comments »

Salt sates the Alchemist’s desire, transmuting food to fantasy. Thinking up a new way to deploy finishing salts to the uninitiated masses requires all the acumen and patience of a basking shark. So it is strange to me how rarely you see finishing salt out in public. The mute mineral eloquence of finishing salts make them the substance of choice for any event, bearing the potential to surpass even Champaign and Bellinis with caviar in their ability to surprise, excite, and sustain—all without pretense, pomp, or effort.

The selmelier humbly offers a suggestion: Celebrate Life with Salt. Kid having a birthday party? Grind applewood smoked sea salt on popcorn and watch the little critters play like cherubs in the boughs of Eden. Girlfriend pissed off about because you shaved with her leg-razor and then left whiskers in her sink? Offer her Japanese deep sea salt on water crackers with ginger butter and admire the quickened pulse that thrums her neck just above the clavicle. Dad buying racing leathers and setting off on a two year motorcycle trek to Argentina? Get the man a 1-pound tin of artisan-crafted organic Portuguese coarse salt to sprinkle on the long-anticipated meals of possum mole, pan-fried quetzal, and vole fritters.

Eating happens in virtually all our social activities, so the occasions for using salt are limitless.

Below is a table-talker I put together for two superb individuals who brought modest, elegant distinction to their wedding by offering as gifts to their wedding guests little jars of Spanish glass filled with a variety of finishing salts. The table talker was arranged on tables at the reception dinner on the evening before wedding, kindling a curiosity that would not be satisfied until after the gifts were given out. While I was not in attendance, I hear the salt was a hit.

The following was printed on stiff, gilt paper, and nestled amongst chubby ramekins of select finishing salts:

Gourmet Finishing Salts from The Meadow
Salt is the prism through which the ingredients, dishes, meals, people, and cultures of the world can be experienced in all their fullness and variety. For millennia, salt has been a driving force for economic and social advancement, and an anchor upon which ancient and modern civilizations alike have been founded. The selection of salts here today represents a slice of the great diversity in taste, beauty, texture, and cultural history that gourmet finishing salt provides. We hope you will enjoy them.

Bali Reef
These gray-pinkish crystals are ideal for the Mini Quiches, Vegetable Platter, Fennel Slaw, and Veggie Kebabs being served here today. This gourmet finishing salt plays important roles in Balinese ceremonies and purification rituals, with the power to both purify and sanctify. Bali Reef Flower is made during the dry summer months, when artisan saltmakers wade into the calm blue waters of Bali’s early morning twilight, gather sea water in buckets made from the Lontar Palm, and pour it into saltpans dug in black coastal sands. After an elaborate process of solar evaporation, transferring, and sifting, a moist and complex salt emerges. The complex crystal structure, high moisture content, nuanced color, and rich mineral diversity make this an exceptionally elegant multi-purpose salt, from broiled fish to grilled poultry to roasted pork.

Maldon
These large white flakes will find the fullest expression of flavor on vetables dishes such as salad, so try some on your tomato or lettuce! Maldon also provide a beauty and sharp mineral complexity to any of the grilled dishes. Maldon is made from seawater collected from England’s Blackwater river estuary, and evaporated in stainless steel saltpans mounted on an intricate system of brick flues that give the specific heating pattern required for the formation of Maldon’s massive yet parchment-fine flake crystals. This is the penultimate salt for daily use in salads, with a texture equivalent to fireworks and a crisp, balanced flavor. Crunching Maldon between the finger and thumb, letting fall the shards, and watching them assail the surface of a well crafted dish like a storm of crystal shields, is almost as satisfying as eating it.

Barrique Oak Smoked Fleur de Sel
These toasty golden grains will bring news depths of rich, warm flavors to any of the grilled the meats being served here today. Fleur de Sel is produced by ancient Celtic methods from the France’s Atlantic shore, and has long been held at the most-esteemed salt of European fine dining. After drying, the Fleur de Sel is cold smoked with oak chips made from French Oak wine casks (called barrique) that have completed their five to seven year task of aging fine Chardonnay. The result is a rich, complex flavor combination of mineral-rich French sea salt, seasoned French oak, aged Chardonnay, and tantalizing accents of tart wine vinegar and complex sugars. This is a superb compliment to all meat, seafood, pastas, potatoes, and anything you put on your table for breakfast.

Mark Bitterman :: Sep.09.2006 :: Finishing Salts, Sea Salt :: No Comments »