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By Root 846 0

to tame these two rampaging monsters as they battle with indifferent ferocity across the broken land? As the commissioner strains to hear another dire report crackling from his walkie-talkie, little Chihiro emerges from the chaos of the crowded shelter, takes the commissioner’s hand, and pours into it a fine, moist substance, radiant white against his unwashed skin. Could this be the answer? A flash of joy crosses the commissioner’s face; he barks orders, starts to rush off, but suddenly remembers the young girl, little Chihiro. Kneeling down, he touches her chin, nods gravely to her: “Young one, you have saved us all.”

CHIHIRO’S GIFT

Oyakodon and katsudon, two of Japan’s most popular foods, are among a diverse family of foods called donburi—basically a protein piled on top of a bowl of rice, served with a few strips of nori seaweed. They are fast food in every sense of the term: batches of premade stew and rice, shoveled unceremoniously into the mouth. What salt do we dare dispense with such blithely consumed food? Now you know the answer.

Okunoto Endenmura

ALTERNATE NAMES: not disclosed MAKER: not disclosed TYPE: shio CRYSTAL: fragments of dynamited abacus COLOR: x-rays of chrome FLAVOR: giant breaking waves over rocks, storm breeze, kelp, abandoned ship MOISTURE: moderate ORIGIN: Japan SUBSTITUTES: Shinkai deep sea salt, Aguni No Shio BEST WITH: shellfish, raw fish, beef carpaccio, rice and noodle dishes, eggs

Showering before dawn, lights flipped off, water cascading invisibly as you unconsciously lather and rinse your body, the rush of thoughts that courses through your mind can resemble the REM sleep you emerged from just minutes earlier. Okunoto Endenmura has the intensity of a dream’s nocturnal rampage, but turns the mind toward action: cooking breakfast, diving into work, making love, rotating your tires. The salt is so brawny and reckless and at the same time so solicitous and cadenced that food reveals to it the unconscious purpose of its existence with simple clarity and perspective.

Okunoto Endenmura is a bear to make, and the fact that it exists at all is a testament to the intensity of Japan’s cultural ties to salt. The shio hama or “salt beaches” of the Noto peninsula are the unassuming artifacts of the earliest salt making traditions, the only place where you can see in action Japan’s once-dominant Agehama-shiki method. Seawater is repeatedly sprayed over sand-covered salt fields (enden), causing the crystallization of salt over the sand. More seawater is poured onto the salt-crusted beach to create a concentrated brine (kansui) that is then evaporated over a wood fire in a large pot (kama).

Practiced nowhere else in Japan today, Agehama-shiki was a major industry by 1627 when salt was monopolized by the Kaga clan. The method continued until 1905 when techniques such as Ryuka-shiki, employing the wind to evaporate sea water, were increasingly substituted. In 1959 salt production laws passed signaling the demise of the Agehama methods. But the death blow didn’t come until 1971, when the Japanese government abolished all artisan methods and mandated ion-exchange membrane electro-dialysis salt production nationally.

In 2008, a simmering popular interest in posterity (and the tourism that could be spurred by it) led the government to give the Kakuhana household in Suzu special permission to make salt using the region’s traditional methods. Production is as limited.

Sara-shio

ALTERNATE NAME(S): none MAKER(S): n/a TYPE: shio CRYSTAL: powdered milk COLOR: fried egg whites FLAVOR: fruit; aspartame; candy wrapper MOISTURE: very low ORIGIN: Japan SUBSTITUTE(S): Uminosei Yakishio Syokutakubin BEST WITH: rice; noodles; rice candy

Sara-shio is crystallized over fire in open pans from seawater collected off of Oshima Island. Its fine crystals stop just short of the texture of talc, and with no moisture to alter the course of things, they vanish instantly on contact with food or tongue. As with the great Japanese sea salts, like Shinkai deep sea salt, sara-shio offers near-microscopic fronts