Salted_ A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes - Mark Bitterman [59]
Sel Gris de l’Ile de Noirmoutier
ALTERNATE NAME(S): none MAKER(S): cooperative; independent TYPE: sel gris CRYSTAL: chunky jumbles of agglomerated nuggets COLOR: silvery gray to gray-silver FLAVOR: bold mineral; moderate brine; reminiscent of Mai Tai MOISTURE: very high ORIGIN: France SUBSTITUTE(S): sel gris de Guérande; other sels gris BEST WITH: roasted and grilled game of the winged and hoofed varieties
Noirmoutier’s sel gris tastes different depending on what music you are listening to—it’s racy and voluptuous under a live recording of Led Zeppelin; playful but a bit vacuous with the Steve Miller band; slightly bored by Jimmy Buffet. I won’t even tell you what it tastes like when you listen to John Denver. The salt recoils at the often perky instrumentalism of Frédéric Chopin. Give it hip-hop and it behaves like a superstar in a nightclub: at ease, hip, radiant.
Two millennia of history undergird the porcelain clay salt pans where Noirmoutier sel gris crystallizes. It is harvested from warm brine by paludiers who work barefoot, sensing the formation of the crystals in the pans from the warmth of the dry clay at the sides. History, tradition, and artisanship lend the salt a profound sense of culinary identity, allowing it to posture without affectation and to contribute to the spirit of the moment with a diplomatic spark of genius. Sel gris de l’Ile de Noirmoutier tastes like what it is: a salt keenly connected to its ecology, intimately attuned to its circumstances, and yet sure of itself—a salt for the ages.
TRADITIONAL SALT
Alaea Hawaiian (coarse)
ALTERNATE NAME(S): alaea volcanic, alaea salt, Hawaiian red salt (see sidebar, opposite) MAKER(S): various TYPE: traditional and/or industrial CRYSTAL: coarse; masonry cut imperfectly by crickets COLOR: brick to coral FLAVOR: ocean with note of wet pavement MOISTURE: very low to none ORIGIN: United States SUBSTITUTE(S): Alaea traditional BEST WITH: fish; pork; hearty Mexican dishes like tamales; it is the soulmate of fresh fruits
Flex your jaw and feel the crystals punch into the flesh of ripe cantaloupe, sweetness blossoming steadily until a sudden hard crunch of salt bursts through. There are dozens of alaea Hawaiian salts on the market, each with crystals of varying size and hardness. The uncertainty of when (or, God forbid, if) the hardest of these salts succumbs to the effort of your mastication lends a degree of terror to eating. As with a rock salt such as Himalayan pink or Bolivian Rose, pitting your teeth against a minute slab of alaea Hawaiian is an impressively unpleasant experience—except when it isn’t. Then it’s really quite nice. The trick is to be mindful of the challenge of marrying hard granules to yielding foods. If the food is sumptuous enough, with enough substance to occupy the mouth fully (think chiles rellenos), then the salt actually provides a point of textural reference for your palate, like spotting a dot of dry land on the horizon of a vast sea.
Alaea is a red, iron-rich volcanic clay native to the Hawaiian Islands. It is held to be sacred, and is used both on its own and combined with salt for various religious and healing practices. Alaea Hawaiian salts are traditionally made from pa’akai, the crude white salt made on the islands. Some pa’akai made in traditional pans dug in the deep ochre-red, iron rich clay take on a pale salmon color from particulate stirred up in the harvest—much as French sel gris takes its pale gray color from the silver porcelain clay bottoms of the salt pans there. Many alaea salts today are made by mixing pa’akai or industrially-produced California sea salt with premium alaea clay sourced elsewhere—mainly from secret locations along river banks on Kaua’i.
Traditional Hawaiian dishes that call for alaea salt include Kalua pork and poke (“cut pieces” in Hawaiian), a salad of raw or partially cured fish mixed with chiles,