Salted_ A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes - Mark Bitterman [121]
A 3 percent concentration of salt in blanching water shifts the osmotic pressure between the liquid in the pot and the intercellular liquid in the vegetables more to the vegetables’ favor. In other words, well-salted water keeps everything locked up in the vegetables where it belongs.
SALT YOUR EGG-BOILING WATER
No task confounds the home chef more surely and more thoroughly than peeling a hard-boiled egg. To make peeling easier, add three of four three-finger pinches of salt per quart of cold water, then boil the egg. Salt penetrates the shell and causes the proteins in the egg white to congeal and pull back from the inside wall of the egg shell. Cool the cooked egg quickly under cold running water, wet your hands, crack the egg, and enjoy the feeling of peeling with the experts.
SALT YOUR PASTA WATER
Salting your pasta water is like rearing children: generosity doesn’t spoil them, neglect does. Tradition, which is a great guide for pasta, says to salt your water to the taste of the sea, which is 3.5 percent salt in the great oceans. A gallon of water weighs 8.35 pounds (the United Kingdom’s imperial gallon weighs 10 pounds), so bringing a gallon of fresh water to 3.5 percent salinity takes about 4.5 ounces of salt. But the Italians live on the Mediterranean Sea, which at about 3.8 percent is even saltier than the ocean. So figure an easy 4 to 5 ounces of salt for pasta water. This is two handfuls (about ½ cup) of salt per gallon of water! It’s a lot, but salt your pasta heavily and the dish will behave itself wonderfully, and oftentimes there will be no need to salt the sauce at all.
Take pasta, well-seasoned from salted pasta water and cooked al dente, and add fresh vegetables and herbs or some lightly sautéed garlic, cream, and white wine. The flavors are left free in their childlike innocence to pursue butterflies across a blond pasture of fresh noodles.
However, salting the water for boiling starchy vegetables, especially large pieces of potato, will cause the outsides of the vegetables to become mushy before the insides are done. So for potatoes it is best to salt the vegetable after cooking.
It pays to salt water for boiling pasta with a heavy hand. Salt not only helps to flavor the noodles, but it limits the gelation of starch, reducing the amount of water-soluble nutrients lost during cooking and keeping the stickiness to a minimum. Heavily salted pasta water allows more salt to be absorbed into the pasta as it cooks. This gives the pasta more flavor, sure, but it also sets up the pasta to play the role that Italian tradition has defined for it as the foundation for fresh ingredients or a sauce. A classic Italian pasta dish is a case study in simplicity, so the quality of the ingredients is directly proportional to the quality of the dish. Use good salt in your pasta water.
Although it is true that salted water boils at a higher temperature than unsalted water—so theoretically food cooked in salted water should cook faster—at 3 percent concentration, the boiling point of water rises by only 1° or 2°F—hardly a significant change, and not enough to affect the cooking time of most ingredients.
When cooking dried legumes, you can reduce boiling times by adding salt to the soaking liquid. At a concentration of about 1 percent (8 three-finger pinches or 2 teaspoons per quart of water), salt hastens the softening of hard bean fibers by displacing magnesium from pectins in the cell walls, thereby making them easier to dissolve.
PASTA MARGHERITA WITH FIORE DI CERVIA
SERVES 4
Behind the jubilant liquid tomato smile of pasta margherita lies an intellect of herbs and garlic. The one covering for the other is a seduction of sorts, an invitation that propriety prevents you from accepting too eagerly. Sprinkle your margherita with the crystalline sweetness