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.

A Few of Our Favorite Things

For the past 5 years, my friends and I have spent the last weekend in March having a grand time at a monastery (an odd combination considering only two of my friends are practicing Catholics and more than that are staunch atheists). The Monastery of St. Gertrude’s in Cottonwood, Idaho is set on a hill overlooking the Camas Prairie and is home to about 50 Benedictine nuns. They are “committed to fostering Healing Hospitality, Grateful Simplicity and Creative Peacemaking in the world”. The nuns I have met are kind and seem genuinely happy to welcome us to their home. I’m sure in their own way they, too, are having a grand time, we’re just not having them together.
Instead, our fun happens across the street from the imposing main brick building in an old farm house that sleeps fifteen. This year there were thirteen of us. We are all handspinners and we all used to live in Moscow (two of us are no longer Moscow residents). We call ourselves The Hog Heaven Handspinners. The group that is still in Moscow meets once a week to spin, knit, chat, eat, and drink. Some iteration of the group has been doing that every week for the last twenty years.
Five years ago we decided that once a week was not quite enough time to get our fill of those activities, so once a year we head down to the monastery to spend a weekend together. We arrive with armloads of fiber, spinning wheels, snacks, booze, and knitting projects.
We each claim a spot in the big living room, with glorious views of the prairie and the mountain ranges beyond, and get down to the business of making stuff. While we create, we talk, eat, and drink. The kitchen counter is covered with tempting treats ranging from a healthy bowl of fresh fruit to a not so healthy bowl of candy. Part of the counter looks like a wine store and the refrigerator is packed with beer, cheese, veggies and other delicacies.
Time has little meaning; we graze all day and start drinking with a dash of homemade Irish Cream in our morning coffee. Some of us will join the nuns in their dining hall for a meal or two, which is always homey and satisfying (and with some of the best homemade pickles I’ve ever eaten), but most of the time we can’t be torn away from our work and our talk.
There is no topic of conversation that hasn’t been touched on at one of our retreats. But besides fiber, the one topic we can always count on discussing is food. We discuss what we’ll snack on next, how delicious everything we made is, and how we really shouldn’t be eating so much of it, but oh well, it’s only for one weekend. I counted on this topic being brought up this year because I knew I’d have to come home from the retreat and write this article. I was hoping to get some good input from my friends.
As I drove down to Cottonwood, I came up with a few questions that might spur an idea for an article. What is your definition of good food? What’s your favorite food? What’s your favorite comfort food? None of them seemed quite right so when I broke out my laptop and begged everyone to help me with my article I wasn’t really sure where I was going to lead them. I started with “What’s your favorite food?” I got a few immediate responses. Sarah S. said “toast” right away and Jane followed with “fish soup.” Everyone else just stared at their spinning wheels or knitting needles. Then Rochelle came to my rescue.
Now before I tell you what she said, I have to explain something about Rochelle. She likes to think about stuff (a lot). She looks at her choices from every angle before she makes a decision. She contemplates every possible outcome, both the possible and the seemingly impossible. She frets about things I’ve never even thought about. Oh yeah, and she reads lots of fairytales.
So it was completely in keeping with her personality when, instead of answering my question, she said she had thought deeply about what she would choose if an evil genie told her she could only taste five flavors for the rest of her life. She had narrowed it down to “avocados, bacon, blackberries, milk chocolate, and garlic.”
I tried to come up with just 5 flavors that I could live with for the rest of my life and my list consisted of cheese, bread, wine, chocolate, and huckleberries. Then I started going around the room. Sarah S. said “toast, rice, apples, cheese and lettuce.” Jane said “chocolate, coconut, mango, blue cheese, and fish soup.” I paused in my typing. How could I have forgotten coconut from my list? It’s one of my favorites. I added it. Nancie said “roasted almonds, dark chocolate, red wine, toast, and curry.” Andrea said “coffee, wine, chocolates, greens, and cheese.” Robin insisted on corn, chocolate, wine, olives, watercress. Oh corn, I thought, I love corn. I can’t live without that? It went on the list.
Nicole said “bagettes, brie, Sungold cherry tomatoes, and green beans.” Sarah W’s list was black beans, garlic, tomatoes, avocado, and corn. Ivy piped in with “arugula, peaches, bread, coffee, chocolate.” Arugula is one of my favorites; it had to be on my list, too.
Amy started off her list definitively with sourdough waffles then added cheese, oranges, crab, and Caprese salad (she said this knowing full well that Caprese salad was composed of tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and basil, but I gave it to her and admired the way she got those extra flavors into one item). Laura said she had to have salt, garlic, olives, bread, and coffee with cream and sugar (she could live without black coffee). Then finally Sandy came up with chocolate, coffee, eggs, pork, pasta. At the mention of eggs, Nancie wanted to add poached eggs to her list and then Laura started weighing whether it was bread or pasta that she wanted to keep on her list. Meanwhile I had added beer to my list which was now well over five items long.The conversation devolved into blissful descriptions of all the foods and flavors we love. Our lists got longer and we gloried in the fact that we could eat all of our favorite foods without fear and came to the moral of our story: everyone should be happy that there are no evil genies.

Irish Cream
makes about 1 liter
I originally got this recipe from Robin (of corn, chocolate, wine, olive and watercress fame). I’ve brought it to retreat for the last two years. This year it was only thanks to Rochelle that I remembered. It’s great straight and it’s really wonderful in coffee on weekend mornings.

1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 c. Irish whiskey
2 raw eggs (I always use fresh local eggs and haven’t died from it yet)
1 c. heavy cream
2 T. chocolate syrup
2 t. coconut extract
1 t. vanilla extract

Place all ingredients in a blender. Blend until well combined. Pour into bottles and keep refrigerated. Keeps for at least a month.