At Le Bernardin, it turns
up in delicate chocolate preparations; at Beacon, it offers support and heat
to oysters; at I Coppi, it does not mix with flour; at Barça 18, it makes a
faint appearance in cocktails; while at Courtright’s in Chicago, it marries
with vanilla or fennel pollen to then adorn savory and sweet dishes. The
name of this versatile ingredient? Salt---but of course not just any salt.
Maldon, fleur, rock are some of its monikers, black, gray, and pink some of
its tints, Hawaii, the Himalayas, and Wales some of its birthplaces.
By experimenting with various salts, which have different crystal sizes and
thus dissolving speed for example, some chefs are transforming the condiment
into a lead actor in their kitchens.
“ Four out 10 desserts on the menu feature salt overtly,” said Michael
Laiskonis, pastry chef at Le Bernardin, whose Mille Feuille includes Alaea
sea salt, a pink salt from Hawaii. “I do a chocolate cashew and caramel tart
for example, where I use salted cashews that are coarsely ground up with
caramel.”
At Courtright’s, Chef Jonathan Harootunian uses Maldon sea salt from England
as a basis for a large variety of flavored salts, which he uses to “augment
other flavors in dishes,” he said. Because Maldon salt consists of large
flakes, it retains a crunchy texture when placed upon other foods, and has a
light taste that combines well with other flavors. Harootunian adds
ingredients such as dried and ground violets, homemade curry powder, or
black cardamom to the salt, and then uses these flavored salts to garnish
dishes like butternut squash, chocolate cakes, or lobster medallions.
“ It’s exciting for the customers, and it gives me a little bit of a
different element, an edge,” Harootunian explained. “We all have to find our
niche, to be a little bit different, a little bit off the beaten path. Salt
is something I’m kind of working on. My niche is taking very simple
ingredients and elevating them.”
All salts are either mined or collected from the sea. In his opus On Food
and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, Harold McGee wrote that
worldwide, salt provenance is evenly divided between both kinds, while in
the United States, 95 percent of the national production comes from salt
mines. Salt found in mines comes from deposits left after oceans retreated
in prehistoric times, while sea salt is the product of water evaporation in
(mostly) manmade salt fields.
In his BLT restaurants, Chef Laurent Tourondel smokes a crystalline salt and
uses it to season steak both before and after cooking it. He also uses fleur
de sel to finish dishes, and flavors salt with anise, lemon, and black
pepper for a salt-baked fish preparation. At 610 Magnolia in Louisville,
Kentucky, Chef Edward Lee favors Alder smoked sea salt, which comes from
Maine.
“ I’m very attracted to its smoky flavor,” Lee said. “It’s very natural. A
lot of smoked sea salts are flavored artificially, with color added in.
Alder tastes like a camp fire. They smoke it over a very long period of
time, very slowly, and the color is more like charcoal. It almost makes you
feel you’re eating something that’s been roasted over camp fire.”
Chefs are not the only ones interested in experimenting with salts. The
consumer market for specialty salts is booming, and home cooks are buying.
“Over the last three years we’ve seen an explosion of salt,” said Mary Lou
Heiss, owner of the Massachusetts’ based specialty food store Cooks Shop
Here. “I think part of it is that everybody kind of has an idea of what to
do with salt, a sense of how to use it. It becomes a way to add good flavors
without adding too much fat. People also like ingredients that are really
visual, and some salts are larger, some look like crystal. There’s also a
real mystique about salt, it’s such an ancient ingredient.”
Most specialty salts come with a price that greatly surpasses the dollar or
so per pound that regular table salt commands. At Cooks Shop Here, Himalayan
pink salt retails for $16 a pound, for example, while half a pound of
Maestrale, a fine sea salt from Sicily, costs $7.49 at Garden of Eden.
“ When salt is very expensive and special, I try not to use it as flavoring
agent where it would get lost,” Lee said. “For that I use regular table salt
or kosher salt. When I need saltiness I use regular salt.”
Heiss concurred: “I try to get my customers to use these as a finishing salt
instead of in cooking, because of the price. It also allows you to really
taste the salt. Use it like you would a really good olive oil.”