Salted_ A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes - Mark Bitterman [51]
Flor de sal d’Es Trenc compares easily with fleur de sel de Camargue, which makes sense since its creation was inspired by Camargue salt makers. After becoming enamored of the meditative art of raking salt in southern France, Katja Woehr, the founder of Gusto Mundial Balearides, moved to Mallorca to make fleur de sel, and obtained a license in 2003 to farm salt in the traditional salt fields of Es Trenc, located on the island’s southern shore, about 150 miles off the east cost of Spain. The salt is made by passing seawater from Es Trenc Bay along a nearly two-mile route to the crystallizing pans. On a good year, Woehr’s company harvests as much as twenty-eight tons of fleur de sel.
Flor de Sal de Manzanillo
ALTERNATE NAME(S): Flor Blanca MAKER(S): cooperative; independent TYPE: fleur de sel CRYSTAL: medium-fine; obliqued cubes COLOR: silvery white to whitish silver FLAVOR: clear mineral flavor; light brine; evanescent Mai Tai MOISTURE: medium to slightly drier than medium, but balanced ORIGIN: Mexico SUBSTITUTE(S): any Brittany fleur de sel BEST WITH: anything you have been eating with free-flowing iodized salt—eggs Benedict to watermelon, garlic shrimp to alligator steak
Rollicking edgy Mexico, where in my childhood I would sneak sips off the rusted lip of a Tecate can until, puckering and smacking, blinded by lime and acrid iodized salt, my eyes rolling backward toward the egg-yellow sun, I would run off to a dusty lot in search of huge iguanas that would bloat themselves into balls in the dark safety of galvanized irrigation pipes as a defense against my poking. Such a wild, snarly place has no right to make a balanced nuanced artisan salt, and yet in Manzanillo, on the West coast of Mexico, they do.
Mexico makes loads of salt, most on an industrial scale, but some on a very small human scale. With lots of coastal wetlands and lots of sun, it does both very well. Flor de sal de Manzanillo is a solar evaporated sea salt on a par with the fine artisan fleurs de sel of France. It looks virtually identical to many of the Brittany fleurs de sel, but it brings its own slant on fleur de sel to the table. The crunch is as vibrant and confident as any salt—violent almost—the myriad chasms and pinnacles of its minute crystal clusters exploding between the teeth. Yet the explosion is polite and pleasant—very French. The flavor is super-balanced, though a tendril of sweetness licks at the back of the palate from time to time—fresh spring water emerging at the shore of an ocean.
Flor de Sal do Algarve
ALTERNATE NAME(S): Portuguese flor de sal MAKER(S): Necton S.A.; Marisol; others TYPE: fleur de sel CRYSTAL: medium-fine; highly irregular flecks and grains COLOR: lush to calcareous white FLAVOR: sharp front; metallic finish MOISTURE: moderate ORIGIN: Portugal SUBSTITUTE(S): fleur de sel de Guérande; fleur de sel de Camargue BEST WITH: Dover sole, skate, or other rich, mild white fish swimming in white wine, butter, and an abundance of garlic
Crystals seem to take delight in variation, and never more so than when they take shape in the form of flor de sal do Algarve. The occasional hefty pyramid of salt presides over smaller crystals: grains the size of pinpricks, lethal-looking microscopic spines, shards of tattered parchment, and plain old fleur de sel clusters. The diverse crystal composition of the Algarve’s flor de sal celebrates the extraordinary merits of fleur de sel as a class of salt: a prodigal crystalline inventiveness. Flor de sal do Algarve is crafted by skilled artisans such