Salted_ A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes - Mark Bitterman [85]
Halen Môn’s exciting texture in the mouth pairs with the moody smokiness of Welsh oak to create a salt that is exceptionally deft at coaxing nuance from virtually any dish it finds. This is the salt for winged creatures such as roasted pegasus, or, more practically, pigeon or guinea fowl, or sea creatures such as rockfish, abalone, and mussels. Chicken or salmon are good matches, too. The flakes also perform miracles on ice cream and crème brûlée, where they blink on and off across your mental radar screen, blips the color of salted caramel. Asked at the age of five what his favorite dessert was, my son, Austin, replied: “Flambéed bananas with chocolate syrup and smoked salt.”
Iburi-Jio Cherry
ALTERNATE NAME(S): none MAKER(S): Namahage no Shio Company TYPE: shio; smoked CRYSTAL: silken fabric granules and flecks COLOR: burnt caramel FLAVOR: cherry smoke; sweet hardwoods; bacon MOISTURE: moderate ORIGIN: Japan SUBSTITUTE(S): Kauai guava smoked BEST WITH: beef filet; raw salmon; ice cream sandwich; toast
Few things provoke blind carnal hunger like bacon. But imagine bacon on the big screen—bacon on IMAX, in 3-D, with digital THX Audio surround sound shaking the seats, and maybe a wind machine tossed in for good measure. Iburi-Jio Cherry has the supple, moist body and rich caramel color suggestive of something delicious, but it is nonetheless impossible to anticipate its sensory impact. The rush of Iburi-Jio Cherry is so big and true that you momentarily forget your hunger and lose yourself in the story. But then the curtain falls, the lights go on, you snap back, and dreams of the foods you want to eat come flooding forth.
The trick to this salt is that there are no tricks. It is the product of an unscrupulous pursuit of quality. It starts with the harvest of deep sea water from the Oga Peninsula in northern Japan. After naturally condensing, the brine is simmered over a wood fire for three days to crystallize the salt. The salt is then smoked with cherry wood, using a highly controlled cold-smoking technique that preserves the salt’s essential, magnesium-rich moisture. The resulting amber crystals might be extracted from the piggy squeal of all that is good.
Meat dishes are the obvious destination for Iburi-Jio, where it elegantly lends a multitude of new flavor dimensions. But there really are few foods that do not fairly hum with happiness under its influence: apples, beer, cabbage, donuts, eggnog, fajitas, gravy, hoagies, iguana, jambalaya, kale, lobster, melon, nuts, oatmeal, plantains, quiche, romaine, souvlaki, turtle, umeboshi, vichyssoise, wontons, xigua, yams, and zucchini. Few things in life taste as good as grill-toasted ciabatta with butter and Iburi-Jio.
Kauai Guava Smoked
ALTERNATE NAME(S): Guava wood smoked Hawaiian sea salt MAKER(S): Tiki Spice TYPE: traditional; smoked CRYSTAL: cracked gravel COLOR: weathered teak FLAVOR: caramel-vinegar woodsy smoke MOISTURE: low to moderate ORIGIN: United States SUBSTITUTE(S): Iburi-Jio Cherry BEST WITH: seafood omelet
The aura of a salt might come from the sea that originates it, the climate that shapes its birth, the culture of the people who rely on it, the individuals who make it, or any combination thereof. Kauai guava smoked radiates with an easy confidence and a cheerful spirit, born from the harmonic convergence of all elements of a beautiful place.
Kauai guava smoked salt is solar evaporated from twice-filtered seawater and smoked with guava wood harvested from the Kauai mountains. Full, sweet, faintly bacony, Kauai guava smoked can be used on anything that would benefit from the rich flavors of tropical woods, from hearty soups to toasted cheese sandwiches, from grilled fish with mango to a tangy ginger-infused flan.
WHAT SALT ARE YOU SMOKING?
If you are a home smoker, try smoking your own salt. While it can be difficult to rival the most masterfully