salt Archives - attheitaliantable.com

April 19, 2016 by Gina Stipo 3 Comments

Why does every food writer and recipe I read in the US call for kosher salt? It’s so prevalent I find myself wondering who is behind the big push for Americans to be better cooks by using kosher salt? I was reading the recent NYTimes article “The Single Most Important Ingredient” by Samin Nosrat who wrote “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat”, and was super excited to see what she said about salt! Because it truly IS the single most important ingredient you can use. And there it was – she advocated kosher salt. I was crushed.

Allow me to clarify a few things:

Kosher salt, used exclusively in the US, does not equal whole sea salt. Sea salt is made up of sodium choride (about 85%), as well as dozens of naturally-occurring minerals that help to temper and balance the sodium, both on the palate and in the body. Kosher salt goes through a process that strips all these minerals, leaving 99% sodium to which a chemical is added as an anti-caking agent. It’s called “kosher” because when koshering meat you needed to use a large kernel of salt, not the fine stuff that would melt. So, kosher salt has large kernels, what they call “grosso” in Italian or “gros” in French.

I lived in Italy for 13 years, long enough for my palate to change. After a few years, when I would return to the US for a visit, I was struck by how the addition of kosher salt adds acrid and bitter notes to any dish. The Culinary Institute of America did a study that reflected this surprising development in their quest for taste differences in various whole sea salts; I’m on the hunt for that study and will post it as soon as I can get my hands on it.

This denatured salt is then chemically laced to reduce clumping. It renders a product far inferior to natural, whole sea salt. I call it a “dead salt”. Kosher salt certainly should not be used in trying to reproduce authentic world cuisine, such as the Saveur magazine article on arab influences on the Italian island of Sicily. Here is a recipe from the city of Trapani on the west coast of Sicily, where they’ve been farming salt since the ancient Phoenicians 5000 years ago, and yet the Saveur recipe calls for kosher salt! Why? Salt from Trapani is a main export from Sicily and it’s available in the US – in grocery stores (Alessi brand), at TJMAXX, Home Goods and Italian specialty shops near you!

There is farmed whole sea salt available in the US from around the world: France, Spain, Brazil. But even salt mined from a mountain, such as beautiful Himalayan pink salt from the mountains of Pakistan, was once a sea 10-100 million years ago.

Well I for one have had enough and am on a crusade to fight kosher salt and help whole sea salt find its place in America’s kitchen. Join me! Buon Appetito!

https://www.attheitaliantable.com/kosher-salt-us/

November 18, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Salt and Pepper get a Divorce

Salt and Pepper are breaking up. They’ve been together in our kitchens for too long. They have become such partners at the table that you would think they’d been officially married by some Higher Power. And although salt and pepper are essentially two separate ingredients with different roles to play on the plate and palate, somewhere along the line they got fused into one, with pepper as salt’s inevitable sidekick.

No matter what other seasoning goes into a dish, most recipes invariably finish with “salt & pepper”. Salt and pepper are eternally paired in matching shakers on the table. Chefs in restaurants mix pepper with salt together in a bowl and use it to flavor every dish that walks out the kitchen door. Waiters attempt to indiscriminately garnish everyone’s plate with fresh grinds of black pepper. We season by rote.

Well it’s time for Salt and Pepper to get a divorce!

After 12 years spent cooking in Tuscany, I found myself reaching for the pepper mill less and less until I stopped using it altogether. I began to notice this when my students started asking me why we weren’t putting pepper in anything. My answer was always “because it isn’t necessary.” I had learned to season food differently, relying on strong flavors like Tuscan olive oil, sage and rosemary.

Tuscan cuisine utilizes intense flavors like rosemary, sage, capers, wild fennel and garlic, all of which are free for the picking in gardens and fields. In addition, Tuscan extra virgin olive oil is peppery, adding a heat to the dish that renders black pepper unnecessary.

When we season with other strong spices like cumin, cinnamon, clove or cayenne, it’s because we want a particular flavor to stand out. We don’t put those spices indiscriminately in everything we eat, but use them to add sweetness, complexity or heat to a dish. Black pepper is the only spice we use without thinking. Putting black pepper in everything we cook results in both a failure to truly appreciate it as well as a sameness of flavor.

So think before grabbing the pepper mill the next time you’re in the kitchen. Set salt and pepper free from each other and see what it does for your cooking!

May 19, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Whole food vs. kosher salt

You can’t open a magazine or newspaper these days without seeing an article about natural and organic foods. The focus on eating wholesome food runs the gamut from shopping at farmers markets to keeping chickens in the yard for eggs. It’s all about wholesome ingredients.

Yet when we get all that beautiful, expensive, organic food in the kitchen we are told that our best option for seasoning it is industrially processed kosher salt. For years, kosher salt was considered purer than iodized table salt, but in fact, kosher salt is just as processed. A better choice, one that honors our desire for wholesome food, is natural sea salt. It has better flavor and it is better for you.

Recently two on-line articles comparing kosher salt to sea salt were brought to my attention, one in the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/03/kosher-salt_n_1471099.html , the other on the Food Network site http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes-and-cooking/kosher-vs-table-vs-sea-salts/index.html. Making a pretense of discussing the issue, both articles concluded the same: salt is salt so the choices of sodium chloride are equal, and as sea salt is more expensive and its flavor qualities are lost in cooking, cheaper kosher salt is the better alternative. This is an important discussion that we must help to a different conclusion.

Salt is the most important ingredient we cook with and we can’t survive without it. Salt helps our taste buds to experience all the nuances of flavor. All salt is originally from the sea, whether harvested today on the coast or mined from a mountain with a 10 million year old sea at its heart; the difference is what we do to it before it hits our plate.

Kosher salt is made by processing out all the naturally occurring minerals and moisture that is inherent in sea salt, and then fabricating it into flakes. Usually an anti-caking chemical is added. More than 99% sodium chloride, it is a dead white color with an acrid and bitter taste.

Natural, unprocessed sea salt has been harvested and used by mankind for thousands of years. As a whole food it contains all the minerals of the sea; not just sodium but also potassium, magnesium and calcium, as well as dozens of trace minerals such as boron, selenium and iodide, all of which the body needs to survive. Its balance of minerals helps the human body to maintain its own balance when it is ingested.

Whole, unprocessed and unrefined sea salt is easy to find in health and natural food stores. I don’t mean the artisan sea salts available on the market that are used to accent cooked foods, though they are endlessly beautiful and evocative and important in their own right. I’m proposing the use of whole, natural sea salt that is affordable to use in bulk to salt pasta water, soups or stews, one that costs little more than the processed salt we use now but is infinitely healthier to eat.

When we choose an artificial, processed salt, we let go of everything we’ve embraced about natural and healthy food. As Mark Bitterman states in his book Salted, “When we cook with kosher salt we sanctify the artificial.”

Frankly, it astounds me that so many educated and experienced food professionals, who spend their days thinking about and making food, still extol the virtues of kosher salt. It is not a natural product, it is not healthy and it’s definitely not gourmet.

Why do chefs and professionals like to use kosher salt? Because it’s easier to handle and it costs less. True, sea salt costs a little more. But since when in this whole national discussion of eating natural vs. processed, organic vs. chemical, harvested locally vs. shipped from China, have the words “it costs less” been the most important factor?

Health benefits and cost aside, the gentle taste of natural sea salt and the sweet, soft, complex flavor it imparts to your food is the biggest reason to stop using kosher and start using whole sea salt. After many years of eating and cooking in a country where kosher salt doesn’t exist, my palate has become accustomed to the pleasantly rounded saltiness that sea salt imparts to a dish. I notice the acridity of kosher when I return to America and eat in restaurants, even great ones. That is what has convinced me.

Saying you choose kosher is like saying you’d rather eat fruit roll ups than an apple. Whole natural sea salt is a fitting and respectful companion for the fresh food we pursue, healthier for you and better tasting.

August 1, 2011 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Ancient Salt Flats of Italy

I recently went to visit the oldest remaining salt flat on the mainland of Italy, Cervia in Emilia Romagna. Up on the east coast, sandwiched between the ancient town of Ravenna with its amazing Byzantine mosaics and the chic beach town of Rimini with its discos and crowded beaches, Cervia is a quiet marsh that has been used for salt production since the Etruscan times.

Less than 800 yards inland, the salt flats produce a beautiful, sweet white salt (sale dolce) that is hand raked and evaporated in the full sun of the summer. From June to September, water from the sea is fed by canals into large, shallow flats, and allowed to concentrate until it is more than 75% saltier than seawater. Only one of the original 150 salt flats holds to the traditional methods, but it is still possible to see the locals raking and drying the salt in the sun. You can purchase sacks of this moist, sweet salt at the visitors center or by ordering online from Salina di Cervia.

Salt is getting a bad rap these days, and unjustly so. It is the only mineral that we eat and it’s the one ingredient that is common among all the cuisines of the world. Salt is crucial to our survival and has been the source of unrest and wars throughout our history.
Sea salt is a whole food made not of just sodium chloride but of a myriad of minerals such as calcium, magnesium and potassium, and trace minerals like selenium, boron and iodine. When salt is processed (kosher, table salt) all the other minerals are taken out and just sodium chloride remains. An anti-caking agent is then added. Industrially processed salt can lead to a state of imbalance in the body, which in turns leads to disease.
If you’re as interested in salt as I am, check out the salt guru, Mark Bitterman, on his salt blog: www.saltnews.com. He also has a fabulous book called “Salted: A Manifesto on the World’s Most Essential Mineral”. Another good read on the history of salt is Mark Kurlansky’s “SALT”.
For your own visit to the salt flats, contact the visitors center below:
Parco della Salina di Cervia
Via Salara, 6
Cervia (Ravenna)
Tel. +39 0544.971765
www.salinadicervia.it