Salted_ A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes - Mark Bitterman [52]
However, the flavor of the salt does not live up to the example set by the crystals. Alongside the Brittany salts, it comes off as astringent and metallic, sometimes intensely so. Eaten with food, these faults take on a moral tone: a warm smile greeting you at the door followed by recrimination and bitterness.
The flavor could be an indication of the salt’s meroir, some twist of fate that turns the sea’s Janus face from mirth to doubt, perhaps brought about by the unusual style of harvest practiced by many salt makers in the region. Fleur de sel is typically harvested in the afternoon right after the crystals have a chance to form, or in the case of a night-blooming fleur de sel, first thing in the morning when they’ve formed under the cooling air of night. However, it is possible in Algarve to wait. The fleur de sel that forms in the afternoon is allowed to grow, to thicken, and to continue to crystallize from the afternoon through the night and into the next morning. This permits the formation of a much thicker layer of fleur de sel—one with its own characteristic mineral profile and flavor.
When your meal is devoutly Portuguese—pastéis de nata, the classic Portuguese egg custard tarts; or the crazy-sweet angel hair pasta dessert aletria doce; or any of the super-saucy grilled or sautéed fish, oyster, octopus, or eel dishes, where bitter herbs, bold spices, and lots of wine and butter are all brought into play in a wonderful steaming sugar-steamy-herby salt-rush—then please, do use flor de sal do Algarve. Any salt with a death grip on the moment should not be forsaken, lest the dream escape.
Flor de Sal do Aveiro, Eduardo Oliveira
ALTERNATE NAME(S): none MAKER(S): Eduardo Oliveira TYPE: fleur de sel CRYSTAL: fine; highly irregular COLOR: gemstone of silvery oxide and milk FLAVOR: balanced mineral; briny MOISTURE: moderate ORIGIN: Portugal SUBSTITUTE(S): Flos Salis; fleur de sel de Guérande BEST WITH: grilled and fried fish; fruit; the only salt worth flying to Europe for if you are making fire-grilled octopus; life-changing on a salad of edible flowers
This salt compares to the finest fleur de sel: luscious, lean, eternally youthful. Yet through diamond-like crystals that shine and shift, a road drifts into the distance of time, rippling in the summer heat. Aveiro’s fleur de sel is the only example of its kind, and, oddly, it is not a relic of times past, but a figment of its own possible future. Talk of Aveiro’s fleur de sel requires fortification. First, a light, slightly fruity white wine to accompany all dishes. I’d start with something Brazilian-inspired, like grilled baby octopus with papaya, lime, and just a few grains of fleur de sel; then a white fish such as cod crowned with sautéed banana, lemon juice, and fleur de sel. Follow it with a green salad with strawberries and fresh goat cheese topped with fleur de sel, and finish off with a cool cup of port-infused Portuguese flan, a pinch of fleur de sel served on the side to spark a little extra flavor from the last few bites.
Yet ask the salt about itself and it chooses not to answer. Instead, it bristles with light and invites you into its crystals. Trapped there you might be blinded by their brilliance, but sprinkle them on food and you taste the salt maker’s subtle appreciation for the salt’s origins and a suggestion of its purpose.
Eduardo Oliveira has a strange way of looking at salt. More poet than artisan, more naturalist than businessman, his every word suggests his bafflement by the process he practices every day—yet he brings twenty-eight years of experience as a chemical engineer in the French cosmetics industry to his fleur de sel. He is the only man in memory to have made fleur de sel in Aveiro.
Oliveira is generous with his knowledge, but hesitant to support any conclusions you might draw. For example, it’s his observation that a convergence of two freshwater streams is necessary for the formation