Salt: The Only Rock We Eat

Four years ago, my mom took me to Italy for my 40th birthday present. It was an incredible trip. We saw famous art up close and personal and ate pasta and pizza like I’d never experienced. We had gelato everyday (and sometimes twice a day when it was hot). The tour took us to Rome, Florence and Venice; each of which I’d gladly go back to and spend a month exploring. We also spent a day in Siena.

Siena is a city frozen in the Middle Ages. The center of the city, the Piazza del Campo, still hosts a horse race that has been run since medieval times.

The Campo

The Palazzo Pubblico, at the base of the shell-shaped plaza, has a tower that beckons tourists to climb it. Well, it beckoned this tourist. Mom and the rest of our tour group stayed below and had lunch while I climbed over 500 stairs to be rewarded with a heart-stopping view.

The Stairwell

The View

All of Tuscany was laid out before me. I wanted to stay for hours, but the climb up had made me hungry, and being on a tour meant I had to be back to the bus on time.
When I finally got down, there wasn’t much time to eat. We slipped into what I would call a deli but what the Italians probably call by a much sexier name. I’d noticed it on our way to the Campo because of the colorful cords hanging in the doorway. It was a very simple shop with a giant display case across the back wall. Two men stood behind the case; one fat, one tall and skinny, while an older man stood in the corner washing greens.

The men behind the counter were friendly and flirtatious. They listed off all the different kinds of cured meats and cheeses they had to offer. I was overwhelmed and just asked that they make me a sandwich with whatever they liked best.
Oh my god! It was the best sandwich I have ever eaten. I have no idea what was in it or what made it so amazing. To the naked eye, it looked like a salami and cheese sandwich on good crusty bread. In my mouth, it turned into a magnificent combination of flavors and textures that I’m afraid will never be repeated.
Since then, I’ve tried and failed to find cured meat of the caliber I had in Italy. I haven’t found cheese with the same intense flavor, and I haven’t found bread with the same crusty bite. But recently I realized there is one common ingredient in all of those sandwich components, which was probably in perfect proportion in each of them, to make the whole thing come together for that consummate experience. That ingredient is salt.
Yes, lowly salt.
We take salt for granted. Sure, you know it enhances the flavor of foods, but when was the last time you thought about the fact that without salt we would all die. Salt (sodium chloride) is essential to the human body. Without it, our muscles wouldn’t work and our cells would cease to get nutrients. Of course, in our culture of highly processed foods, which are loaded with salt to make them taste slightly better than cardboard, we’re not in much danger of dying from salt deprivation.
Because our bodies need salt, we’ve developed quite a taste for it. Salt is the only one of our five tastes that only comes from one source, so we tend to add it to most of our food to round out and intensify the flavor.
But salt does more than just make food taste better. In the case of my perfect sandwich, each ingredient wouldn’t exist without it.
Bread without salt isn’t really worth eating. Besides being flavorless (with the possible exception, ironically enough, of some traditional breads from Tuscany), bread without salt lacks strength. Salt tightens up the gluten or protein matrix that is the backbone of bread. Without it, bread does not hold its shape as well or rise as high.
And that Sienese sandwich bread was stout and flavorful.
Cheese needs salt for similar reasons. It’s a flavor enhancer and it firms up the protein structure. It also helps draw whey out of the curd and regulate the ripening process. Most importantly, it destroys or inhibits the growth of bacteria and other microbes that might spoil the cheese.
I can assure you the cheese on my sandwich was perfectly ripe and flavorful without a hint of spoilage.
When it comes to cured meats, like salami, most wouldn’t exist without salt. Salt regulates the fluid exchange in cells. A concentration of salt outside the cell wall draws water out of the cell and draws salt, and any flavors added to the salt, in. It dehydrates cells and flavors them at the same time.
Salt also changes the structure of the protein molecules, unbunching them and making them firm but tender. While it’s working on the muscle cells of the meat, it’s also dehydrating and disabling any spoilage microbes, thereby preserving the meat.
And dry-cured aged meat like my salami undergoes more changes as it ages. Because the salt preserves it for months, the protein in the meat has a chance to break down into flavor molecules and the fat cells get to break apart into volatile compounds, both of which greatly enhance the flavor.
And, boy, was my sandwich meat flavorful, tender, and well preserved.
Salt has made our civilization what it is. It allowed us to explore far-off places because we could keep food fresh longer. It has been used as currency (the word salary derives from the word salt) and caused revolutions. And it made my perfect sandwich possible. I just wish there was a way to use in to get back to Siena for another one.


Gravlax (Salt and Sugar Cured Salmon)
serves 10-12

2-3 lbs center-cut fresh wild salmon fillet of fairly uniform thickness, with skin on (preferably from our local Alaska fisherman, Chris White)
4 oz. sugar
6 oz. kosher salt
2 tbs. crushed black pepper
3 tbs. Aquavit
4 oz. fresh dill sprigs

Mix the sugar, salt and crushed pepper together. Sprinkle half of it onto the bottom of a non-reactive baking dish that’s just slightly larger than the filet. Place the salmon skin-side down on the salt-sugar mixture. Pour the Aquavit over the fish. Cover the fish with the remaining salt-sugar mixture. Cover all of it with sprigs of dill. Cover with plastic wrap.
Place a flat plate or pan on top of the fish and weight it down evenly with cans or a brick (about 4-8 lbs) to compress the salmon. Refrigerate for 1-3 days, until the thickest part of the fish is firm to the touch. If it feels raw and swishy, let it cure for another day. Redistribute the cure ingredients as needed halfway through the cure.
When the salmon is firm, remove it from the cure and wash it off well. Slice it paper thin and serve on salad, bagels, or toast points with crème fraiche.
The gravlox will keep for 3 weeks in the refrigerator, wrapped in parchment paper. Change the paper if it becomes wet.