Salted_ A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes - Mark Bitterman [61]
The salt is coarse and often has pronounced inflections of gray color from the rich alluvial soils of the Tagus River. The flavor is mild, slightly warm, and without the subtle bitterness found in many Portuguese salts. Whether this is a testament to the centuries of masterful technique behind its production or to the temperate weather or to some quirk of the local geography is anybody’s guess.
Salt has been in more or less continuous production in the area for nearly a thousand years. It was once a pillar of the Portuguese economy and a strategic resource for the fishing and shipping trade of Lisbon. For centuries, Alcochete’s salt was among the most prized salts in the world for preserving cod, and was even exported to the New World for use in preserving meat and tanning hides from the burgeoning cattle industry. But when the domestic and export markets turned to cheap industrial salts, the local salt fields were almost entirely abandoned.
My favorite experience with this salt was in the town of Alcochete itself, in a family-owned restaurant. By luck, the waiter, whose mother was the chef, was earning his degree as an English language translator. We spoke about how during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the nobility of Lisbon had crossed the Tagus River to live in Alcochete to escape the black plague, which was ravaging the capital. A bowl of the local sel gris appeared unannounced at the table. Sprinkling the large, slightly pungent crystals over crusty whole grain bread slathered with sweet cream butter, we ooh-ed and ahh-ed until the waiter couldn’t restrain himself and accepted a piece of his own bread, butter, and salt from us to taste for himself.
Alcochete sal grosso could be worth eating just for the pleasure of seeking it out. I could only find two ways to buy the local salt: either from the salt museum, where it cost five euros for a few ounces of the stuff, or by stumbling across a storage shed inhabited by old men puttering on machinery and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. I paid ten euros for an eighty-eight pound sack of salt that we lugged around for the rest of the trip, giving it away to whomever showed interest, and cooking as many meals in salt crusts as possible along the way to lighten the load before our return flight home.
Ittica d’Or (Fine)
ALTERNATE NAME(S): none MAKER(S): Meliora s.r.l. TYPE: traditional CRYSTAL: fine; moderately irregular COLOR: silver oxide FLAVOR: clean fresh air from a still life painting MOISTURE: light, but adequate ORIGIN: Italy SUBSTITUTE(S): Ravida BEST WITH: raw sheep’s milk cheeses; sheep’s milk cheese in olive oil; olive oil
Crumpled, delicate, firm crystals offer an exceptionally fresh oceanic sensation to the mouth, like licking the shoulder of a mermaid. The salt also bears within it faintly acrid notes, which simultaneously diminish its perfection and add to it a certain humanity—like discovering that the mermaid wears sunblock. The provenance of the salt, however, is entirely respectable. Along the western Sicilian coast from Marsala up to Trapani lie famous salt pans located in natural reserves. The salt is extracted by the natural evaporation of seawater. Passing through a series of huge basins formed on the natural basalt of the bay, the seawater evaporates and leaves only the salt behind. The salt is harvested by hand with rakes and shovels, then dried under the Sicilian sun. This finishing salt is billed as a natural complement to fresh raw vegetables, salads, and fish, but I think its fine crystal structure and very full flavor make it better suited to gently sautéed vegetables, pasta tossed simply with olive oil and garlic, and the