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other excellent Hawaiian salts. Kilauea black is made by combining Papohaku white with activated charcoal, resulting in an impossibly lush black salt reminiscent of the jungle at midnight, replete with all the sounds and smells of a savage yet ultimately harmonious place. Haleakala red is made by combining Papohaku white with a premium-grade variety of sacred alaea volcanic clay. With its bright, deep, meaty red color, Haleakala Red is the most scrupulously made and probably the finest quality Hawaiian alaea-style salt available.

But the proof is, as they say, in the pudding. Use Haleakala red on virtually any seafood or pork dish, and to spectacular effect on fruit salsas and ceviches. Kilauea black is great on fish, but also brings great visual impact and full flavor to mild, pale-colored foods from roast potatoes with sour cream and chives to steamed cauliflower to pasta. It’s good on bread and butter, too. Use Papohaku white not just on grilled red meats and hearty fish dishes and soups, but also on … pudding. Butterscotch pudding, in particular, finds a new place in the pantheon of old-fashioned dishes gone wild, with Papohaku white spangling through its normally unrelenting richness.

Trapani

ALTERNATE NAME(S): sale marino di Trapani; Trapani e Marsala salt; Sicilian salt MAKER(S): various TYPE: traditional CRYSTAL: micro to chunky shards COLOR: dehydrated white FLAVOR: neutral—the Switzerland of salt MOISTURE: none ORIGIN: Italy SUBSTITUTE(S): any finely ground traditional salt (fine); any sel gris (coarse) BEST WITH: olive oil and garlic pasta; sea snail bruschetta; fried sardines; delicate sauces; pasta water; pickling olives and mushrooms

“Master,” said Sancho Panza. “Everything that gleams is not a giant.” Don Quixote, roared, “Coward!” and spurred his Rocinante. Together they charged the windmill at a steady stroll. The wind picked up, Rocinante broke into a liesurely trot, and the windmill’s blade struck Don Quixote a blow to the head, knocking him from his steed.

While the windmills of Trapani cannot count the valiant Don Quixote among their conquests, the salt they grind touches any food it seasons with a similar inanimate wallop. Trapani salt unapologetically dominates the compact piece of terrain it occupies in the flavor landscape. It is bright and blunt—the essence of salinity. That is the sum total of its virtues. The color of Trapani salts ranges from an opaque, indeterminate white to a more translucent, glittery indeterminate white. The fine grind—more or less a bunch of shattered specks—is basically a small version of the large, hard, rockier crystals from which it was ground. If none of this sounds particularly beautiful, it is because beauty is not what Trapani salts are about. They’re mashed up, smashed up, dry, brittle crystals that hit hard and fast and then take their leave without further ado. They should count themselves fortunate to have the full majesty of Italian cuisine as their sidekick. Most of the natural salt consumed in Italy is now from Trapani.

There can be no better match for Trapani salt than a simple meal of grilled lamb rubbed with garlic, olive oil, and salt and drizzled with lemon juice—if only to lighten Sicily’s load of sheep. (There are about 1.5 million sheep and 5 million people on the island, yet, especially in the countryside, it seems the opposite is true.) Sheep provide milk for most of Sicily’s famed cheeses, which underscore the island’s close relationship with salt. There are the heady pecorinos (pecora means “sheep”) and ricotta salata, an aged sheep’s milk cheese with a heavily salted rind and an unctuous, mild interior. Vastedda cheese starts its life as a delicate sheep’s milk tuma, eaten right out of the mold, then evolves into primo sale after it is lightly salted, and finally becomes vastedda when fully matured.

Trapani salt is harvested twice a year, allowing sufficient crystallization time for magnesium and other salts to contribute a 2 percent trace-mineral content to the finished product. Salt has been made in the lagoons between Trapani