Salted_ A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes - Mark Bitterman [86]
Spread the salt one inch deep in a large baking pan. Set your smoker to low and smoke the salt for at least twelve hours; ideally, for twenty-four hours. Every three or four hours, stir it to allow the smoke to reach all of the crystals, or skim the surface of the pan to remove the smoke-infused top layer, and then recombine everything at the end. Store in a sealed glass container.
Just as important as the smoking technique is the choice of salt. A number of factors influence how effectively smoke penetrates a particular salt, as well as how full and complex the finished flavors will be. The salt should be coarse enough to give sufficient aeration between crystals, so the smoke can penetrate all the crystals of salt in the smoking pan. The salt crystals should be irregular enough that salt grains overlaying one another produce lots of nooks and crannies. The salt should be as moist as possible to encourage the uptake of smoke. In this vein, a moist traditional salt or sel gris provides an excellent choice for smoking.
Maboroshi plum
ALTERNATE NAME(S): maboroshi no ume shio MAKER(S): n/a TYPE: shio; infused CRYSTAL: laser-printer toner COLOR: scarlet magnolia FLAVOR: lick from salt-dusted persimmons and green apples MOISTURE: low ORIGIN: Japan SUBSTITUTE(S): none BEST WITH: rice noodle salad; soft boiled eggs
The Japanese obsession with the pickled plum borders on pathology. Fortunately, they are similarly keen on salt, soy, fish, rice, fresh vegetables, miso, sake, and other foods. Japanese eaters tend to balance their obsessions against one another, which gives their passions a semblance of modesty and well-roundedness. Maboroshi plum salt takes this common food a step beyond polite conventions, like a muddy-cleated geta on a bamboo mat.
A homemade tradition since the eighth-century Nara period, the pickled plum condiment, umeboshi, is made by packing plums in a jar with high-quality sea salt until 20 to 30 percent of the plum liquid has been extracted. This plum juice is referred to as plum vinegar. The plum and the plum vinegar are common condiments—the ketchup of Japan. Maboroshi plum salt is crystallized from the plum vinegar. It includes crystallized citric acid from the plum vinegar, sugars, complex flavor compounds, and a beautiful plum-pink color from the plum.
Use maboroshi plum salt with broiled white fish, sashimi, and sushi. Bakagai (orange clam) is great. I once just stir-fried baby bok choy, napa cabbage, snow peas, or broccoli and seasoned it with maboroshi. Young Hugo, an unrepentant antivegetarian, silently polished off first his own, then the rest of our plates.
Maine Apple Smoked
ALTERNATE NAME(S): Apple Smoked Maine Sea Salt MAKER(S): Maine Sea Salt Company TYPE: traditional; smoked CRYSTAL: potatoes the size of aquarium gravel COLOR: coffee FLAVOR: campfire on the Atlantic seaboard MOISTURE: very low ORIGIN: United States SUBSTITUTE(S): other Maine smoked salts; Danish Viking smoked salt BEST WITH: grilled cheese sandwich
Salt crystals fresh and briny as an Atlantic oyster offer a contoured seascape of sharp smoky aromas, like a life raft on fire. Each grain of salt is hard, irregularly oval as a lizard egg, with colors ranging from coffee bean husk to the grinds scooped from an espresso maker—shades that betray distinctive personalities. A chief charm of Maine apple smoked is that it is painstakingly hand-smoked (often in the twenty-degree cold of winter, which is physically tough and presents a variety of technical challenges); and it is the imperfections, the variations in smokiness among grains, that gives this salt its distinction.
The vigorous, slightly harsh, medium-bodied smoky flavors of Maine apple smoked are perfect for hearty meats like goat, lamb, and