Salted_ A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes - Mark Bitterman [97]
There are other ways that salt enlists the mind and the senses. Aesthetics contribute as much to the quality of an experience as anything, and salt is often visually stunning. The glinting geometry of a choice salt perched on an enticing dish provides another facet of beauty to the food. And, of course, there is romance. Every salt partakes of culinary and cultural associations and is born of varied terrain and seas and climates. Handmade salts bring realms of places and people to your cooking, joining their geographies and cultures to yours.
Almost any food prepared with fire or spices or oils or acids or any combination of these will taste good on its own—and then radically more nuanced with a sprinkle of artisan finishing salt. Case in point: tomato, basil, olive oil: sliced, drizzled, and served. Top with flake salt (crackling sparkles). Now, shio (invisible umami or sweetness). Now, fleur de sel (briny mildness). Now, sel gris (mineral crunch).
Making the most of every opportunity to use finishing salt is a matter of understanding the behaviors of different types of salts and then picking a salt that you think will fulfill the mission you set for it. For example, finish with a fleur de sel when you want delicacy and balance hiding in every bite, or a flake salt when you want sparkle and contrast that says hello then leaves you alone. Finish with sel gris when you want a powerful intonation that endures well after the fork has left your mouth, or finish with a smoked salt when you want the natural aromas of cooking to greet you from the plate.
GETTING IN TOUCH WITH YOUR SALT
Never eat more than you can lift —Miss Piggy
Many of the recipes in this book call for salt by the pinch. A two-finger pinch is the amount of salt that can be gently grasped between the thumb and forefinger. A three-finger pinch is the amount of salt that can be gently grasped between the thumb, forefinger, and middle finger. (The chart, Salt Pinch Equivalencies Chart, provides conversions from pinches to grams and teaspoons for those who would prefer to measure salt by weight or volume even after reading the following paragraphs.)
Measuring salt using the fingers provides several advantages over relying on more fixed measures. Because of differences in weight, volume, and consistency, the amount of salt in a teaspoon varies enormously from salt to salt. And teaspoons themselves vary in shape: a shallow teaspoon will hold less of a coarse granular salt than a deep one will. Furthermore, so much of a salt’s character stems from its crystal structure and moisture that it’s difficult to understand fully what it will do on your food without touching it. Pinches will obviously vary from hand to hand, but once you begin handling salts, you’ll find you quickly learn how the feel of various salts translates to their impact on foods. (My pinch-tester for this book was selected for her persnickety food sensibilities and her medium-size hands.)
For most of history, recipes didn’t call for salt by the teaspoon or tablespoon, but used less precise language: a pinch, a dash (sometimes understood as two pinches), or a smidgeon (sometimes understood as half a pinch). The point of such measurements is their inexactness. How could you know how much salt to call for in a tomato sauce recipe if you don’t know how big the tomatoes were, how sweet, or how flavorful? Every garden in the world produces different tomatoes, and the differences only increase among different terrains, climates, and tomato varieties. Culinary salts are as distinctive as any tomato. Seventy-five milligrams of intense, dry Tunisian traditional salt will have a radically different