Salted_ A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes - Mark Bitterman [134]
CONFECTIONERY
With water purify their hands, and take
The sacred offering of the salted cake —Homer
Black and white, hot and cold, loud and quiet—put them together and what do you get? Gray, tepid, and subdued. But try the same thing with flavors and watch out. Instead of uniting, they fight, and in the clash of ax on shield, sparks start to fly.
Take sweet and salt, so closely identified in our minds as opposites that they practically bark at each other from across the table. Thrown into the same arena, they battle spectacularly on behalf of more flavor. Chocolate-covered pretzels, salted caramels, honey-roasted peanuts, prosciutto and melon, crème brulée with bacon bits. As is often the case, it pays to respect salt and sweet alike, letting the ingredients speak their piece as autonomous ingredients. Each should be granted its own role. This is because rather than meshing into a new and phonetically improbable flavor (“swalt”?), the pair refuse to combine. Instead they vibrate—sweet/salt/sweet/salt/sweet/salt. As soon as our palates try to commit to one of them, the other appears, and your mouth is left with the amusing if inexplicable flavor equivalent of a dog chasing its tail.
FLEUR DE SEL AND SMOKED SALT CARAMELS
MAKES ABOUT 64 CARAMELS
Like the inventor of the airplane, the creator of fleur de sel caramels is contested. Was it George Cayley, father of aerodynamics, who invented it in 1799; or Jean-Marie Le Bris in his horse-drawn “albatros artificiel”; or John J. Montgomery in his glider; or Otto Lilienthal, Octave Chanute, or Percy Pilcher? Some say it was the Wright brothers. The arguments tend to get political and technical. The French have been making fleur de sel caramels for some time. Some say salted caramel came from the New World, where salt water was used in confectionary. But it’s all but certain they never made use of great salt. However, the Americans, prone to exaggeration, have succeeded in burning the sugar to the point where the caramel treads somewhere between a dessert topping and a meal. Blend burnt caramel with good salt and little stars of flavor glimmer from within the impenetrable vastness of the caramel. Look skyward. Machines for soaring among the stars might never have been invented had the salted burnt caramel come first.
1 cup heavy cream
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1½ cups sugar
¼ cup agave syrup or invert sugar (see sidebar)
¼ cup water
2 three-finger pinches fleur de sel
2 three-finger pinches smoked salt, such as Halen Môn oak smoked
Line the bottom and sides of an 8-inch-square baking pan with parchment paper or foil and spray with oil; set aside.
Bring the cream and butter to a simmer in a small saucepan; remove from the heat and set aside.
In a medium-sized heavy saucepan over medium heat, heat the sugar, agave syrup, and water, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Boil, gently swirling the pan, until the sugar turns a dark golden color (350°F on a candy thermometer).
Carefully stir in the cream mixture (the mixture will bubble vigorously) and boil, stirring often, until the liquid reaches 248°F, about 12 minutes. At that point, a drop of the mixture dribbled into a glass of cold water will form a ball that will be firm enough to lift up but flexible enough to flatten between your fingers (soft-ball stage).
Remove the sugar from the heat and quickly stir in the fleur de sel. Immediately pour into the prepared baking pan. Sprinkle with the smoked salt. Allow to cool at room temperature until firm, about 1½ hours more.
Invert onto a cutting board and peel off the paper. Cut into 1-inch squares and wrap each piece in a 4-inch square of wax paper or cellophane, twisting the ends to close.
INVERT SUGAR: If you can’t find agave syrup, you can use invert sugar instead. It’s very easy to make, and assures your