bout de papier, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2015), pp. 39–40
Food is arguably one of the world’s most important and ubiquitous diplomatic tools.
Many items we eat and drink have a storied past, political importance or trade significance. This column explores one food, drink or ingredient at a time.
SALT: When I was a kid, my family would travel by station wagon each summer from small-town New Brunswick to Montreal for a week to visit my grandparents. Although they did many things a little bit differently than we did at home, one of the first things that struck me each trip was that their butter tasted different than ours. When you spread it on a piece of rye bread (and boy, did we ever look forward to that Montreal rye!), you got the nice waxy buttery feeling in your mouth, but without the familiar salty flavour. It took me a few years to understand that some butter had salt in it and some butter didn’t.
Salt. It is both historic and trendy. It is important. It has sparked defiance and revolution. And it tastes damned good.
Salt is one of the world’s oldest seasonings, first recorded as far back as 6000 BC. It’s also long been used as a way to preserve meat. There are two ways to get it: harvest the residue of ancient sea beds (called halite) or use seawater and evaporate the liquid off, which is what Gandhi did in 1930, violating the British salt tax law and sparking the revolution of millions in India. You have probably noticed the grocery store is peppered with an ever-expanding variety of salt for your dining pleasure. In addition to the familiar free-running table salt, you can easily find kosher salt and the very trendy sea salt. Table salt is out of favour with many chefs, as the added iodine is blamed for adding a sour taste.
Iodine is needed to produce hormones that affect growth and development. The problem is that there used to be a real lack of it in certain parts of the country. Canada took note of the possibilities of enriching certain foods in the 1920s and made the addition of iodine mandatory for kitchen salt in 1949.
Salt enhances other flavours (sea salt caramel, anyone?) and makes things taste ever so much better, like your burger and fries. Without salt, you’ll very quickly notice the difference… and it won’t be a good one. You can also use it as a non-toxic cleaner in your home, as it has scrubbing power and easily dissolves away. You will, however, need to make known to the dishwasher in your house the appropriate salt to use. When my significant other used my beloved flaked sea salt instead of the cheap and easily-procured
Easy Salt Brine Recipe for Chicken
This recipe comes courtesy of Chefx, an Ottawa-area service providing recipes and ingredients, run by FS colleague Jeff Heaton (check it out at www.Chefx.ca).
Ingredients: I cup sugar, ½ cup kosher salt
Directions: Dissolve sugar and salt in 2 litres of cold water in a large container or non-aluminum pot. Add chicken, ensuring it is fully covered, and refrigerate 30 minutes to 2 hours. When ready, remove meat from brine and pat dry before cooking. Drying it first will help ensure the meat will brown nicely, which will give it great flavour.
coarse kosher salt I use for that purpose, we had a “diplomatic incident”. Now he has a cup of kosher salt at the ready beside the sink to avoid future tragedy.
Admittedly, I’ve become a bit of a salt collector. In addition to grocery store varieties, I’ve been adding to a small collection as I discovered pink Himalayan salt at Farm Boy and reddish Alae’a salt in Hawaii, which is used to prepare the famous Kalua pork at luaus. The red colour comes from the high iron content in the soil; Hawaiian warriors used to drink the soil, mixed with water, before going into battle believing it gave them strength. Hawaii also produces green and black salts (that’s for my next trip.) I’m also working on a bag of the big daddy of all fancy salts: Fleur de Sel de Guérande, made only in Brittany, France and only when the tide and winds are right. Oh yes. Fancy pants salt. Not to mention the solid rock of blue Persian salt my significant other brought back for me from Pakistan.
What makes certain salts special and others not so much? At its core, all edible salt is simple sodium chloride. Two things can make it “different”: the shape and the extra minerals. Flakes of salt have a larger surface, making them taste saltier on your tongue, while minerals can affect both the colour and flavour.
Salt is the ultimate undepletable resource, as the ocean will always have more to give. Speaking of resources, the word “salary” comes from the Latin word salarium, which referred to the money given to Roman soldiers to buy salt. Hopefully they were each given a fair shake.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2015), pp. 39–40. Read the rest of this issue →
