The Meadow Recipes

My second book, Salt Block Cooking: 70 Recipes for Grilling, Chilling, Searing, and Serving on Himalayan Salt Blocks, will be released on May 28th everywhere books are sold! (if you want a signed copy, please buy from The Meadow's online store here>>) I want to take a moment to introduce the book to you, and share a few of the recipes it includes. My publisher Andrews McMeel did an incredible job crafting the book itself. It's a gorgeous hardback, 224 pages long and has over 100 full color photographs.

Salt Block Cooking is a comprehensive guide to the craft of cooking with Himalayan salt in its rough, primordial state--which is to say, as a rock. Salt blocks are boulders of 600 million year old rock salt that are cut into slabs or lathed into cups and bowls for use in the kitchen and at the table.

Cooking with salt blocks is emerging as a powerful but accessible technique, appearing everywhere from Iron Chef America competitions to ritzy Las Vegas steak houses to backyard family barbecues.  Everyone who sees it or tastes food made with it recognized the flavorful, flashy fun that salt blocks have to offer. But until now, the enormous potential has not been explored.  Cooking on salt blocks is indeed fun, but it is also a revolutionary cooking technique that promises serious benefits for cooks and eaters of every stripe.

'Salt Block Cooking'  provides simple, modern recipes that illustrate the principles of preparing and serving food on Himalayan salt. Beginners will benefit from helpful information on shopping for a block, maintenance, heating, cooling, handling, serving, and cooking with their blocks. More adventurous salt block cooks will find an array of new tips, techniques and recipes (salt block curing a slice of watermelon into a savory prosciutto-like "ham", anyone?).

My book is divided into seven sections, an introduction serving as an Owner's Manual, and six cooking chapters, each providing information and recipes for mastering a core technique:

Introduction to Salt Blocks: Where are Himalayan salt blocks, where do they come from, and how are they used? The introduction will answer all your questions about how to select and use your Himalayan salt block.  Think of this as the user guide or owner's manual.  It includes detailed instructions for warming, chilling, and cooking with your block, and how to clean up afterwards, with pictures to guide you every step of the way.

Serving on Salt Blocks: Learn how serving food on salt is the simplest and one of the best ways to bring a stunning visual display meal, not to mention a new dimension of flavor. These recipes reveal how food and salt interact when they meld at room temperature. Try watermelon and feta (see recipe below), salt block ceviche, or salt bowl mayonnaise.

Curing on (and Between) Salt Blocks:  In this chapter, we delve into the craft of transforming the very nature of food, with recipes for curing with salt blocks to preserve food while enhancing its flavor and texture. Unlike the crystals of granular salt, salt blocks cure in just two dimensions, drawing moisture out subtly for a dazzling effect. Recipes include quick salt cod, preserved savage mushrooms, and candied strawberries.

Warming on Salt Blocks and in Salt Bowls: Take advantage of salt's capacity for emitting warmth by creating dishes that luxuriate in the heightened flavor and succulence that comes when fats begin to melt and aromas amplify. Try molten brie with pistachio crumbs and warm salted dates, or salt-melted chocolate fondue with bacon.

Cooking on (and under) Salt Blocks: Heat cooks and so does salt. What makes cooking on salt so cool is that heat and salt each get a turn to cook in their own way. Heated salt cooks like nothing else, from caramelizing sugars, melting fats, browning proteins and evaporating moisture. Grill up salt block cheeseburger sliders, salt crust cardamom Naan, or salt roasted poultry gizzards seasoned with pastrami pepper.

Chilling on Salt Blocks: Dense salt, plunged into sub-zero temperatures, freezes food to deliciousness. Whether its dipped in liquid nitrogen or cooled in a fridge, salt blocks interact with food differently at all temperatures. Freeze yourself some mocha-panna cotta gelato or salted bitters ice cream, or make salt-candied cherries with just-cooled blocks.

Drinking from Salt Cups: This chapter shows you how to craft that beverage to be consumed from a glass made out of salt. Recipes include the Islay Scotch and Chocolate, Salacious Mint Julep, or a warm sake shot with Daikon.

I think of this book as analogous to Thomas Keller's book 'Under Pressure', which demystified and popularized the techniques of sous-vide cooking. Like sous-vide, cooking with salt blocks  may seem inaccessible to home cooks, or even to some professional chefs.  However, once you understand the basics, they are anything but.  'Salt Block Cooking' opens the door for everyone to enjoy the fun and flavor of cooking with Himalayan salt block, bricks, platters, bowls, dishes, and cups.  Personalized and autographed copies are available here>>
Recipes from 'Salt Block Cooking'
Salt Brick Grilled Chicken

Makes 4 Servings

2 (4 by 8 by 2-inch) salt blocks
1 (4-pound) chicken, preferably free-range
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 garlic cloves, halved lengthwise
½ teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
Juice of ½ lemon

1) Place the salt blocks on a grill grate of a gas grill over low heat, close the lid, and warm for 10 minutes while you prepare the chicken. Turn the heat to medium and heat the block for 10 more minutes. Its surface should be about 375°F. If you are using a charcoal fire, set up a bilevel fire with half the grill set up for low heat (one layer of coals) and the other half set up for medium heat (two layers of coals).

2) Remove and discard the neck and package of innards from the cavity of the chicken. Place the chicken, breast side down, on a cutting board. With a large knife or poultry shears, cut down the length of the spine on both sides. Remove the spine. Cut the breast side of the chicken in half lengthwise. You will now have two chicken halves.

3) Wash the halves in cold water and pat dry with paper towels. Coat with the olive oil and rub all over with the cut sides of the garlic cloves; afterward tuck the pieces of garlic under the edges of the skin. Season all over with the pepper.

4) Clean the area of the grill grate not occupied by the salt block with a wire brush. Put the chicken halves, skin side down, on the grill grate and, using grill gloves or thick oven mitts, put a hot salt block on top of each half. Close the lid and cook until the chicken skin is crisp and deeply grillmarked, about 15 minutes.
Remove the blocks using the grill gloves, flip the chicken halves with tongs, put the blocks back on top of the chicken, close the lid, and cook until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the inside of the thicker thigh registers 170°F, 10 to 15 minutes.

5) Remove the salt blocks, transfer the chicken to a clean cutting board, and let rest for 5 minutes before cutting into parts. Drizzle with the lemon juice and serve.

Watermelon and Feta on a Salt Block

Makes 2 Servings

1 (8 by 12 by 2-inch) salt block platter, or 2 smaller blocks
4 (½-inch-thick) quarter slices large watermelon, rinds removed, or 8 (½-inch-thick) quarter slices small watermelon
3 ounces feta, crumbled
6 fresh mint leaves, slivered

1) Chill the salt block platter in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

2) Arrange the melon slices on the block, slightly overlapping—the more the overlap, the less salt imparted to the melon. Scatter the feta and mint leaves over the top. Serve immediately. For added pop, allow the dish to stand 20 minutes before serving.

Cooking steak on a slab of pink Himalayan salt isn't like cooking on steel. When you cook on a Himalayan salt block, the heat of the block sears and browns proteins of the steak and melts fat, while the salt subtly dehydrates the surface and seasons to perfection. Together the heat and salt work in harmony to produce a tremendously tender and salted steak slices.

Cooking on Himalayan salt is unlike anything else, so here's a step-by-step guide for how to do it: How to Cook Steak on a Himalayan Salt Block. Every step is explained in detail, with pictures to show you how to do it:

Select the right block
Heat it slowly
Cut, apply, and cook the steak
Clean your salt block
Store for later use

We use steak as an example because its one of our favorite things to cook on Himalayan salt. But these principles can be applied to cooking on salt in general - from scallops to eggs, bell peppers to fiddleheads and duck breast.

Go read: How to Cook Steak on a Himalayan Salt Block

For more information, see: Our Guide to Pink Himalayan Salt Blocks and Meadow fan Deanna Dawson's How to Cook a Hanger Steak on a Himalayan Salt Block guide.

 This recipe is adapted from the "Salt Block Gravlax" recipe in Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes.

Serves 6

2 large Himalayan Salt Blocks (6x9x2) or The Meadow's Gravlax Starter Set (two 4x8x2)
Bunch of fresh dill sprigs
2 teaspoons freshly ground white pepper
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon dry yellow mustard
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 pound salmon fillet, skin on, pin bones removed
Melba toast or crackers for serving

Cover one block with half of the dill sprigs. Mix the dry ingredients. Place the salmon on the dill-covered salt block, skin down. Coat the fleshy parts of the salmon, and cover with the remainder of the dill sprigs. Place the second salt block on top, wrap the whole thing in plastic wrap, and place in a fridge.

Leave in the fridge until the fish becomes resilient but not firm to the touch. The top surface should be dry, the sides moist, and the flesh will be slightly opaque. Allow one to three days. Thinner and wild salmon cure faster, while thicker and farm-raised salmon take longer.

When it is ready, unwrap the gravlax, rinse off the spices, and pat dry. Serve skin side down on melba toast or crackers.

 

 

The vegetables of summer are steadily dropping off their vines and sliding back into the sun-soaked recesses of memory. Much as I look forward to fall--rain, endive, leaves, rain, a hiatus from mowing the lawn, endive, rain--I still crave the crisp, succulent, almost arrogant freshness of a veggie sandwich: all that is vegetal between the savory bookends of bread and cheese. And nothing loves a great salt like a veggie sandwich. My favorite: Amabito no Moshio (??) is an ancient type of Japanese salt, called shio.

Shios are identifiable by their fine, snow-like texture.  Their firm, intensely mineral backbone lends a delicacy and brightness to food, much as acidity supports definition and complexity in wine.  Amabito no Moshio is the granddaddy of shios, created some 2,500 years ago in what was then more or less a neolithic Japan.  Seaweed was hauled out of the water by fishermen and dried on the rocks, then sprayed with water, then dried some more, then sprayed some more, etc. etc. until a now salt-encrusted seaweed could be rinsed to make a saturated brine.  The brine, along with bits of the kelp, would then be boiled off over a wood fire, resulting in a delicately seaweed-infused salt.  Today, The Meadow's Amabito no Moshio, made with the hondawara variety of seaweed (Sargassum fulvellum) is inspired by that tradition.  If today is your day to celebrate the veggie sandwich--perhaps your last true fresh veggie sandwich of the year--do it with the proper reverence, and with a last backwards glimpse of summer's sunny sanctity.


Vegetable Sandwich with Amabito no Moshio
Makes 4 servings
8 slices black bread or pumpernickel
1 teaspoon horseradish (optional)
4 ounces (8 tablespoons) cream cheese
½ bunch watercress, large stems trimmed
8 thin slices ripe tomato
2 thin slices red onion, halved
1 cup mung bean sprouts
24 thin slices cucumber
½ avocado, cut in 8 thin wedges
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
Small grind of black peppercorns
4 three-finger pinches Amabito no Moshio sea salt
Spread the (optional) horseradish very sparingly over each slice of bread. Spread the cream cheese on one side of each slice of bread. Top four of the slices with a small fistful of watercress, two slices tomato, a half-slice red onion, ¼ cup sprouts, six cucumber slices, and two slices avocado.

Mix the olive oil and vinegar and spoon a small amount over the vegetables. Season each sandwich with a grinding of pepper and a three-finger pinch of Amabito no Moshio sea salt. Top with remaining cream cheese and bread and serve immediately.

A salmon caught high in the freshwater streams of the mountains bears within its pink flesh the flavors of faraway places in the Pacific Ocean, a rosy imprint of the long voyage back to its birthplace. These fish see a lot of things below the ocean depths. And then they eat them. Salmon deserve a suitably thoughtful and voracious treatment in the kitchen.

Iburi-Jio Cherry, a smoked sea salt from Japan, has endured a journey comparable to that of the salmon. Artisan salt makers plumb seawater off the coast of the Oga Peninsula, drawing a pristine brine up from the pure, deepwater currents. After concentrating the brine, they heat it over a wood fire over three days, stirring constantly to produce a salt that is the texture of powder snow. This salt is then gently cold smoked over cherry wood for a sweet, smoky, bacony aroma that is unrivaled in the culinary world.

The combination of deep sea minerals, cherry wood smoke, and buttery salmon takes your taste buds on peregrinations through flavor’s most unfathomed depths.

Makes 6 servings

1 side of salmon, preferably wild, about 2 pounds, bones removed
¼ cup black sesame seeds
¼ cup white sesame seeds
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Finely grated zest and juice of a lime
1 teaspoon dark toasted sesame oil
½ teaspoon Aleppo pepper, or ¼ teaspoon crushed chilies
3 big pinches Iburi-Jio Cherry smoked salt



Coat the flesh-side of the salmon with the sesame seeds and pat gently into the surface.

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until smoking. Carefully put the salmon in the pan flesh-side down and cook until browned, about 5 minutes. Turn carefully and cook until the fish is firm but still translucent in the center, 4 to 5 minutes more.

While the salmon is cooking, combine the lime zest, lime juice, sesame oil and Aleppo pepper in a small bowl.

Using a wide spatula or two spatulas, transfer the fish to a serving platter. Drizzle with the lime mixture and scatter the salt over all. Serve immediately. If you need to delay serving, wait until the last second to salt. You want the delicate crystals of the Iburi-Jio to barely dissolve at first bite.


Can't find Iburi-Jio Cherry? You can purchase it from the Meadow by clicking here.

Once in a while salting is not about harmony.  Instead it’s about a gentle but jangling discord.  Haleakala Ruby is a luscious, warm Hawaiian sea salt that takes its color from the Haleakala volcano's sacred alaea clay.  This is a salt that excels on fish and pork, where it seeks out and then embellishes the opulent undercurrents of flavors lurking in these subtler foods.  But it’s also good on fruit.  The salt shifts unexpectedly from meadows of sunny butter to coral reefs of revitalizing brine.  The less acidic the fruit, the more pronounced the oceanic freshness, as if the salt knows precisely how to respond to the needs of the food.  Start with a cantaloupe sweet as honeysuckle, trickle a little balsamic acidity for added complexity, stir in a pinch of fleur de sel to bring the flavors into crystal clarity, then serve with a sprinkle of Haleakala Ruby...  This is what it tastes like to have your heart skip a beat.

Makes 1 quart

1 pound peeled and seeded cantaloupe chunks, about 3 cups<
1 cup simple syrup (see recipe)
4 teaspoons white balsamic vinegar
1 two-finger pinch fleur de sel
4 two-finger pinched Haleakala Ruby sea salt

To make simple syrup, combine 1 cup sugar into 1 cup water in a saucepan.  Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally until the sugar is completely dissolved. (This will make a little more than 1 cup simple syrup, so measure the called-for amount.)  Allow to cool before using. Puree the melon, simple syrup, and vinegar in a blender on high speed until completely smooth.  Stir in the fleur de sel and freeze in an ice cream freezer according to manufacturer’s directions, or pour into a shallow baking dish and freeze until solid.  Cut into cubes and puree in batches in a food processor until smooth and thick.  Freeze to finish firming, about 30 minutes.

Serve scoops in chilled glasses, topping each with a thrifty pinch of Haleakala sea salt.

So this morning I set out for Chelsea Market in New York City to buy some coffee beans and I had absolutely no intention of falling in love with another berry. But I stumbled across some great-looking stracchino cheese, and then moments later bumped into some luscious strawberries, and while I was fumbling for change to pay for the strawberries, what do I do but pull out but a pile of chocolate salt that had spilled from a jar in my pockets a few days earlier.  When this sort of thing happens it makes no sense to question fate.  I strolled out to the street, found one of those odd new middle-of-the-street tables they’re putting at the voids in intersections all over the city, and sat down for a little impromptu strawberry-stracchino-chocolate-salt breakfast in the morning coolness.  This was one of the first times I’ve used my own chocolate-infused salt on cheese—other than on cottage cheese and peaches, etc.  The pairing was a natural: Bitterman’s Chocolate Fleur de Sel (it’s the only salt at The Meadow we make ourselves, a secret infusion of chocolate and our house fleur de sel) brings a rich chocolate aroma to your senses even before you bite.  And the salt’s discrete nutty-mocha flavors are like a curtain through which emerge silvery spangles of mineral-fresh salt.  The impact of the salt in your mouth is incredible as it finds its way through the rich stracchino cheese mixing with the buoyant fruitiness of the strawberry: like one of those scenes in the movies when two lovers set eyes on one another from across a crowded train platform, and struggle ardently through the all those jostling people to reunite.

I'm sitting on a black leather couch of a playwright whose West Village apartment I'm subletting, thinking about how I need to get outside to buy some more raspberries.  About to pop the last one into my mouth. But then I stop.  My last raspberry ils talking to me. (If you've ever seen those videos of the annoying talking orange, you have a pretty clear idea of what I'm talking about.)  The last raspberry was reminding me that I hadn't actually paid that much attention to the first raspberry.  It suggested I go back and retroactively experience past raspberries, though it didn't say how far past. So I sprinkled a little Cyprus Hardwood Smoked sea salt on my talking raspberry.  The salt sparked images of all the raspberries that had come before: childhood raspberries from my grandmother's Connecticut brambles, later raspberries from beach parties crashed in the Vendée, more recent from the hands of my boy in Oregon.  The flash of Cyprus Hardwood Smoked--a bright sizzle suffused in a maple warmth--makes for your own personalized version of the raspberry eating experience.

A crispy tangy spicy red snapper: flavors singing in exotic Southeast Asian voices.  Restless nights preceded this recipe.  There was hand wringing.  Soul searching.  The dilemma of which salt.  Bali Rama, with its arrowhead tips of explosive freshness, was the seductive choice, a magnificent sea salt that seems never to steer me wrong.  Maldon sea salt would have been a convenient and more predictable choice, salt’s gold standard of unflappable, balanced crispness.  But the snapper wanted something more, something both melodic and taunting, like the sound of seashells raked by summer waves across a tropical reef.  The choice of salts became clear: The Meadow Flake, with its huge pyramidal crystals that seem nearly to tremble with oceanic vitality, a sea salt with the mathematical exactitude of music.

Serves 3 to 4

For the Snapper

2 teaspoon coriander seed, ground
1 tablespoon white peppercorns, ground
1 three-finger pinch fleur de sel
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 bunch cilantro, leave, minced
4 to 5 pounds cleaned (gutted, scaled, fins trimmed, gills removed) whole red snapper
juice of 1 lime
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 three-finger pinches Meadow flake salt

For the Sauce

2 fresh lemon grass stalks, all fibrous layers removed, finely sliced
1/2 fresh chile, minced
1/4 cup Nam Pla (fish sauce)
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup lime juice, about 2 limes
8 chives, finely sliced

Combine the coriander, peppercorns, fleur de sel, garlic and cilantro into a coarse paste.  Make 3 deep slits in the sides of the fish and rub the spice paste into the slits and all over the surface of the fish. Set on a boiler pan and drizzle with lime juice and olive oil. Preheat the broiler and set the fish aside for 10 minutes while you make the sauce.

The lemon grass needs to be thoroughly trimmed so that only the tender heart is left.  (The trick to lemon grass is pealing away way more of the outer layers than you might think.)  Combine the sliced lemon grass, chile, fish sauce, water, and lime juice.

Broil the fish 4 inches away from the heat until the skin is crisp on both sides and fish flesh is opaque (but still moist) deep in the slits.  Transfer to a serving platter.

Drizzle the sauce over the fish, scatter the chive, and finish with The Meadow Flake salt over top.

Avert your eyes.  Blush.  Go ahead.  The steak salad is always a little embarrassing to look at. Nobody is to blame for this.  Like the pitterpat of a Geisha’s geta sandal across the parquet, the modesty of the salad is betrayed by its inescapable voluptuousness.  But this needs to be greeted in the spirit in which it is offered, which is to say, with deference and respect.

So often the architect of the steak salad indulges in the natural inclination to use the steak itself as the seasoning for the entire dish, salting the heck out of the steak--and in effect utilizing the steak in much the way we use bacon bits and gorgonzola on a cobb salad, or anchovies and parmesan on a Caesar salad—taking advantage of an ingredient’s natural saltiness to season for the dish.  This is a perfectly normal impulse.  After all, for millions of years we got most of the salt we ate from red meat, so if some part of our reptile mind still thinks of meat as salt, the modern steak salad maker can surely be excused for thinking of salt as meat.

But the missed opportunity to enlist a good salt with steak makes this confusion tragic nonetheless.  Shinkai Deep Sea Salt: taught, brilliant, bitter-sweet, immaculate.  Sprinkled over the steak on this Japanese steak salad, Shinkai Deep Sea Salt brings grace and definition to the meat, deliciously integrating its carnal succulence into the civilized bed of gleaming garden greens.

Makes 4 main dish servings

For Dressing/Marinade
1/4 cup soy sauce
Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon minced gingerroot
1 small fresh red chile, stemmed, seeded, and minced

For Salad
1 pound flank steak
3 tablespoons canola oil
1/4 lb oyster or shiitake mushrooms
2 baby bok choy, halved lengthwise
1 quart mixed baby greens, cleaned
3 stalks Chinese celery, or 1 stalk Pascal celery, thinly sliced
2 scallions, root end trimmed, thinly sliced
6 grape tomatoes, sliced
1/2 cucumber, thinly sliced
8 sugar snap or snow pea pods, sliced crosswise
Julienned zest of 1 lemon
4 three-finger pinches Shinkai Deep Sea Salt

Mix the ingredients for the dressing/marinade in a small bowl.

Put the steak in a zip-lock bag.  Add ¼ cup of the dressing/marinade to the bag.  Seal the bag and massage the dressing into the meat.  Refrigerate for at least 2 hours and as long as 12 hours.  Cover the remaining dressing/marinade and refrigerate.

Heat a charcoal or gas grill for high direct grilling.  Remove the steak from the bag and wipe off any excess marinade.  Coat the steak with 1 tablespoon oil, the mushrooms with 1 ½ tablespoons oil, and the bok choy with the remaining ½ tablespoon oil.

Grill the mushrooms until well marked and almost tender, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Set aside and toss with 2 tablespoons reserved dressing.

Grill the bok choy halves until grill marked on both sides, about 1 minute per side. Set aside and toss with 1 tablespoon reserved dressing.

Grill the flank steak to desired degree of doneness, about 4 minutes per side for very rare, 5 minutes per side for rare, 6 minutes per side for medium rare, 7 minutes per side for medium, turning 90 degrees halfway through the grilling of each side to create cross-hatched grill marks. Set aside to rest for at least 10 minutes before slicing.

While the steak is resting, gently toss the baby greens, celery, scallions, tomatoes, cucumber, and sliced pea pods with 1/3 cup of the remaining dressing.  Mound on 4 plates.

Slice the steak against its grain into thin slices. Arrange several slices steak, some grilled mushrooms, and grilled bok choy on the salad. Scatter the lemon zest over all.  Drizzle with the remaining dressing.  Sprinkle a pinch of Shinkai deep sea salt over each portion, rubbing fingers together gently as it falls to scatter as evenly as possible.  Serve.

Usually the thing to ask when using salt is: how can I make the most of the interplay between salt and food? There’s texture to consider, the mineral flavors of the salt itself, and the visual cues that sensuously salted food can provide to get the engines of your appetite revving.  A spinach gratin is a slightly difficult character in this regard. Gratin is incredibly delicious, easy to eat, and naturally accommodates a variety of dishes, but its nature is to avoid acting like the life of the party. Also, much of the salt comes from the cheese, and the general texture of the dish is so full and rich that it leaves little room for any but the most aggressive salt crystals to have an impact on the mouthfeel of the dish.  It takes an aggressive salt to shine against the backdrop of such a dish with sufficient luminosity to actually illuminate it without overwhelming it with saltiness.  Two salts jump to mind: Maine Coast Sea Salt and Moroccan Atlantic Sea Salt. The salts have hard, bright, faintly hot but minerally flavors and a somewhat hard crunch, so you don’t  need a lot for the salt to contribute a note of rowdiness to the spinach gratin.  A few pinches on the top of a gratin will greet your lips with something unexpected, an in-your-face attitude that awakens you to the full pleasure of the gratin’s comforting flavors.

Makes 4 servings

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
4 ounces shiitake mushrooms, stems trimmed, caps sliced about 1/4 inch thick
1 pound cleaned baby spinach leaves
3 two-finger pinches Maine Coast Sea Salt (or Moroccan Atlantic Sea Salt)
3 grindings black peppercorns
2 tablespoons dry sherry
1 cup heavy cream
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
Grating of nutmeg
2 ounces shredded Gruyere cheese

Preheat a broiler.

Heat the olive oil in a very large skillet (raw spinach occupies 50 times the space of the same spinach cooked, which means you will need a pan many times larger than you think you will need) over medium high heat.  Add the mushrooms and sauté just until tender, about 4 minutes.  Add the spinach leaves and stir until completely wilted, about 3 minutes. While the spinach is cooking season it with one pinch of Maine Coast sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Transfer to a shallow gratin dish or casserole.

Return the pan to the heat and add the sherry.  Bring to a boil.  Add the cream and boil until the volume is reduced by half.  Remove from heat and stir in the mustard and nutmeg.  Pour over the spinach and spread evenly.

Scatter the gruyere on top of the spinach mixture and run under the broiler until the cheese is fully melted and preferably a little brown.  If it begins to get oily before it browns remove it right away.  Scatter the remaining Maine coast sea salt over top and serve immediately.

Once in a while you come across a chef whose culinary acumen exceeds your wildest anticipation, whose sense of style outshines your most lurid food fantasies.  Their accomplishments are legendary, their followers legion, and their place in the pantheon of food history vouchsafed by critics and public alike.  Then there are those chefs who toil in obscurity, seeking not fortune or fame, but the more ephemeral limelight of the home cooked meal.  But when they are good, they are very good.  These are the chefs whose unstoppable energy, unflappable enthusiasm, and indefatigable zeal can recast for diners the very tapestry of cooking itself.  They make cooking more personal, dining more passionate, and reveling in the flavor of food more intimately bound up in life’s vital force.  These are the chefs that provide you with the olive oil and lemon simplicity of fresh fruit de mer pasta that you absently lick from your lips as you gaze into the glittering harbor from a Mediterranean piazza, or the tartiflette you wolf down in the fluorescent-lit kitchen of a motorcyclist you’ve picked up with somewhere on a long road trip through the heart of your incorrigible youth.  I know one such chef, a creature of cunning and instinct, a booming and uncontrollable beast whose unprovoked antics make Chef Gordon Ramsay seem like a snoozing churchmouse by comparison. But we tolerate him out of adoration for his genius in the kitchen.
Here is a chronology of the chef at work, making the eternal masterpiece that is a fried egg sandwich.
"Put some eggs in this bowl and mix them with a spoon."
"Put a little butter in the pan and melt it.
"You fry it"
"You need bread to put the egg on."
"When it's on the bread you can have some pepper. Not very much."
"To put on the fleur de sel you have to use your fingers to sprinkle it."
[French fleur de sel de l'Ile de Re is this chef's favorite sea salt for a fried egg sandwich.]
"So, this is how you do it."


fleur de sel

Sautéeing on Himalayan salt blocks creates exponentially more flavor than sautéeing in a conventional skillet.  This is because a salt block cooks your food in two ways. At a blazing 500 degrees or higher, the heavy block of salt has enormous thermal mass, sizzling away moisture to produce a thick crust of rich, concentrated flavor.  At the same time, the Himalayan pink salt itself sets to work, bursting cell membranes, intermingling juices, and breaking loose new flavors that in turn sizzle away to make for even more concentrated flavors.  Want to make the most of this miracle of cooking chemistry?  Balance out the scallop’s rich buttery flavors with a spritz of citrus and reinforce everything with the lip-tingling spice of Szechuan peppercorns. You’ll not have another scallop that’s this fun to cook, impressive to serve, or tasty to eat.

FYI We're holding a Himalayan Salt Block Class Wednesday July 14 at The Meadow!  Info here>>

Makes 4 servings

2 4x8x2 inch Himalayan salt bricks (or one 8x8x2 inch salt plate) cooking grade Himalayan salt blocks
1 1/4 pounds large wild-caught sea scallops (about 16)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon cracked red Szechuan peppercorns
Finely shredded zest and juice of 1/2 lemon and 1/2 lime

Place the salt block(s) over a low gas flame and heat for 15 minutes. Raise the flame to medium and heat another 10 minutes. Raise the flame to high and heat another 15 minutes, until it is uncomfortable to hold your hand about 2 inches from the surface of the block for longer than 3 seconds (approximately 500°F).

While the salt block is heating pat the scallops dry and pull off their white gristly tendons (located on the side of the scallop) if not already removed. Coat the scallops with the olive oil and Szechuan pepper and let stand at room temperature until the salt block is hot.

Place the scallops on the hot block.  The scallops should almost skitter across the top.  If they just plop there and sizzle modestly, the salt is  and sear until browned and springy to the touch but still a little soft in the center, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Work in batches if your salt block cannot comfortably fit all the scallops at once.

Remove to a platter or plates, or move the entire salt block to the table and set on an oven mitt or trivet to serve still sizzling to your guests. Scatter the citrus zest over top and drizzle with the juice.  Eat immediately.

Try to remember the first time you heard about the combination of truffles and eggs.  I was on an airplane, flying out for a week-long visit with my nana. Ice melted slowly into the puddle of O.J. remaining in the clear plastic cup.  My legs dangled from the chair, toes still inches from the floor, making me feel uncomfortable next to the impeccably dressed woman sitting next to me, who inexplicably took me on as a close confident, lavishing me with stories of shopping expeditions through the souqs of Cairo or scuba diving on Australia’s great barrier reef.  Breakfast was served; scrambled eggs and sausage with fruit salad.

“Oh God, what I wouldn’t do for some truffles,” moaned the woman in a tone that made my nine-year-old mind tingle in an odd new way.  “What’re truffles?” I asked. She explained to me the mysteries and seductions of the tuber, and I was at once disbelieving and flushed with anticipation; how could such a thing exist, and where could I get some? The decades since then have occasioned a long list of truffle experiences. There was the unrecoverable bliss of “first truffle,” a cirrus of black truffle over hand-cut pasta noodles.  There was the gold-miner’s delight of “truffle I found myself” pulled from moist loam in the southwest of France and stuffed into roasted guinea fowl. There was the madness of “best truffle,” an opulent scramble of white truffles and eggs served at the now-closed March Restaurant in midtown Manhattan.

Eggs are indeed a recurring and inescapable medium for savoring the truffle, and the miracle of black truffle salt is that you can concoct the living experience almost as easily as you can conjure the treasured memory.  This recipe for truffle salt and scrambled eggs includes the option for serving them somewhat fussily in cups of their own shells to give this decadent dish some visual pizzazz.

Makes 2 servings

5 large eggs
2 pinches black truffle salt
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons crème fraiche
2 chives, thinly sliced

If you want to serve the eggs in their shells remove the rounded ends of the eggs with a fine tooth serrated knife.  I know this sounds nuts—and and it is—but it isn’t that difficult.  If you want to just serve the eggs in a mound on a plate, ignore this paragraph and start the recipe with the following one. Moving on, hold an egg on a plate and gently saw across the shell until a small hole opens up.  Don’t push down hard or you’ll break the egg. Continue gently sawing until you get most of the way around.  Now remove the cap and let the egg drop from the shell onto the plate.  Pour it into a bowl and repeat with the remaining eggs.  You will only need 4 of the shells for serving, which gives you an extra for breakage. Wash the shells and pat dry.  Set cut sides up in egg cups or in a bed of coarse salt.

Beat the shelled eggs with a fork until frothy; add a small pinch of truffle salt.

Melt half the butter in a non-stick skillet over very low heat.  When the butter is melted add the egg and cook over the lowest possible heat, lufting the egg with a heat-resistant rubber spatula until it sets into a mass of moist curds, about 15 minutes.

Add the remaining butter, crème fraîche and chives and continue folding the ingredients gently until everything is incorporated. Spoon into the cleaned egg shells and serve immediately, embellished with a pinch truffle salt.

Man Ray.  Some names were just tailor made for greatness.  If my parents had thought to name me Man instead of Mark I might actually have made something of myself.  Picasso.  Nobody named Picasso could not be great, if you know what I mean.  The name, Osso bucco has that air of irrefutable deliciousness. Veal shank braised in aromatic herbs, spices, and vegetables, a bit of wine and the incredible mouth feel of veal bone marrow that dissipates slowly through the flesh, marrying everything in buttery richness, by any other name would be as glorious.  So how do you salt a Picasso?

The classic approach to seasoning osso bucco is to add sel gris up front, with the intention of letting the salt do its magic, slowly permeating the meat, helping to tenderize it and develop its flavors.  In truth, the cooking method is sufficient to tenderize the meat, and the minerals naturally present in veal are enough to flavor it, especially since braising concentrates natural flavors.  The cast of characters such as mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery) supporting the osso bucco don’t need salt to cook properly, though they can definitely use a touch for emphasis.  With these facts and thoughts in hand, we can lightly deconstruct the immaculate osso bucco and approach salting it with a fresh perspective, salting less up front and adding a noble salt (like Piran Sel Gris) to its garnish of gremolata that traditionally tops Milanese dishes, providing us with a new name for perfection

Makes 4 servings

4 pieces of veal shank, each about 2 inches thick
1/2 cup flour
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 cup finely chopped carrot
1/2 cup finely chopped celery
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup white wine
1 1/2 cups low salt veal stock or chicken broth
1 cup canned unsalted diced tomatoes
1 bay leaf
Coarsely ground black pepper to taste
Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
2 big pinches Piran Sel Gris

Tie an 18 inch piece of string around the perimeter of each piece of veal shank. Dust both sides of each piece of veal with flour.

In a large heavy deep-sided skillet heat the butter and 1 tablespoon oil until it foams. Brown the shanks in the hot fat on both sides.  Remove to a plate. Add the onion, carrot, celery and sauté until lightly browned, about 10 minutes.  Add 2/3 of the garlic and cook until aromatic, about 30 seconds. Add any remaining seasoned flour.  Add the wine and simmer until alcohol evaporates, about 1 minute. Add the stock, tomatoes and bay leaves; heat until simmering.  Season to taste with pepper.  Return the shanks to the pan along with any liquid that has accumulated on the plate. Cover and cook over low heat for 1 1/2 hours, until the shanks are tender.

Mix the lemon zest with the remaining garlic and the chopped parsley to make the gremolata; set aside.

When the shanks are fork tender remove them with a set of tongs to a platter, untying each one as you do. Skim the fat from the surface of the sauce left in the pan.  Add the lemon juice to the sauce and spoon over the shanks.  Drizzle with remaining olive oil.

Add the sel gris to the gremolata and scatter over the shanks.

Makes 4 servings.

Serve with black truffle salt risotto (Pictured here.  I'll get cracking on a recipe for that) or a simple pasta with olive oil and fried garlic.

Coarse, crunchy salts like sel gris (coarse sea salt) should be a legally required addition to roast chicken.  The real question is, should the salt go on before you tuck the bird into the oven, or after you have carved it and set it on the table?  Before you don your finest wrestling gear to settle the matter with violence, consider the possibility that both are great.  The former delivers extra-crackling skin bristling with popping brittle bits of salt.  The latter lets subtler flavors of whatever seasonings you put on the skin shine forth, and then complements them with a more unctuous crystalline crunch.

Lemon chicken shows very nicely with a touch of The Meadow's house sel gris rubbed in the poultry’s cavity, and a more generous amount of this warm, supple salt sprinkled at the end, lending a lush mineral crunch to balance the dish’s aromatic citrus zestiness and juicy sweet-sour acidity.  The Meadow's sel gris is coarser than French sea salt's such as sel gris de Guérande or sel gris de l'Ile de Noirmoutier, but it is also milder and somewhat silkier,making it a delicious alternative to these briny-minerally French classics. Free salt for anyone who sends me a photo of themselves in full wrestling attire.

1 chicken, about 4 lbs (2 kg), visible fat removed, washed and dried
3 three-finger pinches The Meadow sel gris (or coarse French sea salt) plus more for the table
4 grinds cracked black peppercorns
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 large lemon, cut in half, seeds removed

Preheat oven to 425ºF.

Sprinkle the interior cavity of the chicken with a three-finger pinch of sel gris the cracked black pepper. Coat the outside of the chicken with the olive oil and place the chicken breast-side down in a ceramic roasting pan.  Squeeze the lemon all over the chicken and put the spent lemon halves inside the chicken cavity.

Roast for 45 minutes and turn the chicken breast side up. It’s easiest to use large tongs with one arm inserted into the chicken cavity and the other gripping the back of the chicken. Roast for about 20 minutes more, until the skin is golden brown and a thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh registers 170ºF.

Remove the chicken to a carving board and let rest for 5 minutes before carving. Carve the chicken and arrange in the center of a platter. Remove the lemon halves from the cavity and squeeze any remaining juice over the carved chicken.  Scatter the remaining tree-finger pinches of sel gris over the chicken and serve with a small bowl of sel gris for the table.

When our firstborn came onto the scene he was a terror.  Not the misbehaving kind of terror, which usually does little more than wreck your sense of personal dignity and bury your life’s dreams under a three-year blanket of hard domestic labor.  For one, he rarely slept.  Entire nights might be passed watching the moonbeams glide across the deep space blue of his staring eyes, which seemed preternaturally aware of his surroundings, calling every move we made into question.

But most insidiously -- he ate.  He ate early and he ate often, with unflappable abandon.  One night, not more than a few handfuls of months into life, sitting in a baby chair clipped onto the side of the table, he watched as I put the finishing touches on a romantic meal for my honeybunny and me.  Wine chilled, candles lit, salad tossed, baby staring with evil innocence from his edge of the table, I served up filet of sole with herb butter, scattered with a luscious French fleur de sel. Honeybunny and I clinked glasses.  Her eyes twinkled.  The aroma of fish, herbs, and butter filled the air.  Then the baby lunged for the closest plate, and devoured the fish before our eyes.

Fleur de sel has no higher purpose than to grace the buttery-moist flesh of sole.  The excellent fleur de sel from Ile de Ré, France, with its mineral sheen of a full moon, underscores the perfection of each of the other elements in the dish, defining their features in the most loving light.  Sole is so delicate that the grassy pungency of fresh herbs must be suffused in butter to preserve the balance of the fish.  The fundamental soleness of the sole is truly a wonder to taste—full to bursting but hard to grasp—like insomnia that set you dreaming as you stare at a child’s moonlit face.

Sole with Fleur de Sel Recipe: Makes 4 servings

2 tablespoons unsalted butter (the best you can get), 15 minutes out of the fridge
3 tablespoons medium chopped fresh herbs, such as tarragon, parsley, dill, thyme, sage, chervil, savory, and/or rosemary
Finely grated zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
4 sole (or flounder) fillets, about 6 ounces each
Coarsely ground mixed peppercorns
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 two-finger pinches fleur de sel de I’lle de Ré

Blend the butter, herbs and lemon zest together.  Gently roll into a cylinder about the size of your thumb and cut into 4 disks, set aside.

Pat the sole fillets dry with a paper towel and season with pepper.

Put 2 large skillets over high heat until very hot.  Add a tablespoon of oil to each skillet and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan.  Put 2 fillets in each pan, whiter side down and sauté until the edges of the fillets are opaque, about 2 minutes.  Turn carefully and cook on the other side until the surface is dry but the flesh is still moist in the center, about 2 more minutes. Transfer to plates.

Remove the pans from the heat and deglaze with the lemon juice.  Pour over the fish.  Top each fish fillet with a pad of herb butter and season with a pinch or two of fleur de sel or other French fleur de sel (don't substitute sea salt!). Garnish with more herbs and lemon zest, if you want.  Serve right away.

Ever set eyes on a plume of dogwood blossoms blowing in a gust through rain-swept skies?  Me neither.  Petals on a wet black bough--indeed.  More often than not, around here, spring is a slow escalating drone of mist, drizzle, sleet, rain, hail, and deluge. Yes, there are cherry trees dropping pink petals like so many tears; yes, you see goofy maple pods helicoptering out of an cerulean sky; yes it’s fun to watch dogs and kids skidding through mud on the baseball field.  But for the most part, my yearning for spring (something warmer and a touch less… humid) goes unrequited.  The woodpile is depleted and the promise of loose clothing and bare feet stokes a new form of appetite.  I think of salad.  The tenderness of baby greens in my mouth, the citrus pop of a crescent of clementine, the bitter nip of an edible flower, all whipped into a moment of suspended perfection by a snowflake glint of Marlborough Flakey sea salt on the tongue. The spring salad clears the mind, refreshes the skies, and says through flavor what my winter weary heart yearns for.
Salad & Flake Salt Recipe: Makes 4 servings

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 garlic clove, peeled, halved and flattened with the broad side of a knife
4 ounces spring mix baby lettuce
1 Persian cucumber, quartered lengthwise, sliced thinly
1/2 clementine (peel on), cut in 4 thin slices, each slice cut into small triangles
12 small pansies (or other edible flower), stems removed
1 ounce ricotta salata cheese, crumbled
4 pinches Marlborough flake salt
1 pinch cracked black pepper

Mix the olive oil, vinegar, and garlic in a small bowl.  Set aside for 30 minutes. Remove the garlic.

Toss the lettuce, cucumber, clementine, pansies, and ricotta salata in a large bowl.  Mix the vinaigrette with a whisk and toss with the salad.

Mound the salad on each of four plates.  Sprinkle with flake salt and cracked pepper; serve immediately.

Salt notes: If you can't find Marlborough Flakey from New Zealand, or just want to explore something different, try any of the following: Maldon flake salt, Murray Darling flake, The Meadow Flake sea salt, Bali Taksu Pyramid sea salt.

My friend Michael Ruhlman has shared his thoughts on salt.  He suggests using Kosher, a fine grind of so-called fine Sea Salt, and a finishing salt of choice.

I have a thought that speaks to both of our perspectives on salt.  Ruhlman ’s book, Soul of the Chef, is a brilliant account of what’s involved in the technical mastery of cooking.  But implicit in the story (and sometimes explicit) is the importance of the ingredient.  Thomas Keller is a technical master, but he is also the consummate curator of ingredients.

The tension between technique and ingredient is age-old.  In the history of food there has always been a fight between technique and ingredient.  Cultures tend to come out on one side or the other: French, the technique; Italian, the ingredient.  This tension also plays out through trends and influences:  molecular gastronomy is about technique; Alice Waters is about ingredient.  As he describes so well, Keller is not only a master technician, he also emblematizes the age-old concept “honor the animal” and “honor the vegetable,” meaning use your ingredients fully and respectfully.

Keller also honors the mineral.

Keller’s strategic, creative, mindful use of natural, unique salts has been a major inspiration for me in my life and work.  If fact, I can think of no other person (outside Japan) who has so fully grasped the essential link between the technical perfection of cooking and the elemental imperative of good salt.  Several of the over 100 salts we carry in our store I discovered through Keller.

But, in conclusion, I will say that I totally agree three salts are enough for any household.  But they should be salts that reflect your values as a chef no less than the grade of meat or freshness of vegetable.  Coarse, moist Sel Gris for all around cooking and hearty foods like grilled and roasted meats and roots.  Delicate, irregular crystals of Fleur de Sel for subtler, moist foods like fish, sauced foods, and cooked vegetables.  Parchment fine Flake Salts for fresh vegetables and wherever you want a dramatic salty snap.  We have the Foundations Set at The Meadow to help with this.

The technical skill required for using salt masterfully is easy as pie (or easier: crust is a bear).  And finding good salts is easier now than ever.  My book will be coming out this fall in an effort to help matters along.  Honor the mineral!

Popcorn is serious food for most of us.  It’s one of those snacks--the more fun you have making it, the more serious the result.  A dance of fluffy crunch, butter, and salt, there is probably no food better suited to stuffing with child-like abandon into your mouth.  But getting back to the serious part.  Making great popcorn means using great salt.  Indulging in alternative popcorn face-stuffing experiences means exploring different salts.  The Meadow’s Popcorn Salt Set is the ultimate popcorn eater’s companion.

Papohaku Opal Sea Salt – This is the “beautiful, super fruity, buttery salt from Hawaii” we raved about in The Oregonian. This is hand harvested sea salt from Molokai Hawaii, one of the more beautiful salts you are likely to find anywhere. We recommend that you grind this salt onto your popcorn, for a flavor combination of “super-buttered movie theater popcorn, amusement park caramel corn and something you might nibble on in the plush shadows of the Ritz bar in Paris.”

Amabito No Moshio Sea Salt – Adapted from a 2,000-year-old method for salt making in Japan, this is probably the first salt ever regularly made on the island. Salt was made by dragging seaweed from the ocean onto the rocks on the shore, letting the brine dry off, and then repeatedly sprinkling water on again and letting it dry, until a thick crust of salt built up. On the seaweed.  Water was then gingerly rinsed off to make a concentrated brine that was then evaporated over fire to yield salt. The resulting superfine, almost moussey crystals have a savory flavor called Umami, which the Japanese have for centuries distinguished as a flavor category of its own. Sprinkled on popcorn, Amabito No Moshio provides a hearty, savory flavor almost like pasta speckled with Parmesan cheese minus the pasta Parmesan: it's only the intensity of the flavors that you experience.

Fleur de Sel Camargue Sea Salt -- If you ever find yourself unexpectedly hosting a cocktail party and are unprepared to receive the guests ample platters of cheese fruits and slices of bresaola and prosciutto, just whip up some popcorn, lavish it with sweet cream butter, and speckle with fleur de sel de Camargue.  Serve in your finest Waterford crystal popcorn bowl.  Fleur de sel de Camargue is made in the southwest of France, where it is hand harvested during the summer months and sold throughout Europe as a mainstay of the table. Sprinkled on popcorn, the result is both tactful and impressive, an instant, timeless elegance.

Kala Namak Fine Rock Salt -- Everybody needs adventure in their life, even in the security of their own home.  Heady and rich, Kala Namak is like pumping up the volume on a new home audio system and throwing in a new Blue-ray of Vesuvius erupting over cowering residents of Pompeii, enveloping you in the exotic sensations of faraway lands… as they are being destroyed. Kala Namak (aka Nirav Black Salt or Sanchal) is ubiquitous in the foods of Northern India, where it is ground up into fine powder and eaten as a regular condiment.  Speckled on top of popcorn, it’s like trying to eat scrambled eggs off a subwoofer.

Iburi-Jio Cherry Smoked Salt Sea Salt – Do you like crackling-juicy barbecue?  Do you like bacon?  No?  Skip this salt.  Yes?  Read on.  Iburi-Jio is a cherrywood smoked salt from Japan with warm, deep flavors that hover between meatiness and fire, between the animalian flavors of the living world and the eternal brightness of the elements.  With popcorn, butter, and some finely grated sharp cheddar cheese, you have the popcorn equivalent of bacon-bit encrusted mojo potatoes.  More simply, with popcorn and sweet cream Irish butter, you have to wait a few minutes for your eyelids to stop flapping around as you adjust to the intense hearthfire of savoriness unfurling in your mouth, sort of the way a returning hunter might feel after stepping in from the blizzard of an arctic expedition.

Black Truffle Salt – Man and beast alike have been driven mad by the aroma of truffles.  Made with black truffles and sea salt, this salt transforms popcorn into the food of the gods--who have also been driven to distraction by the galloping feast of flavors lurking within the innocuous little tuber.  In truth, the charms of the truffle are welcome additions to everything from steak to French fries to pasta (on a fried egg the term “biblical” comes to mind), so we won’t hold it against you if you divert some of your supply toward other meals.  But be sure to keep some on hand for popcorn for those times when you crave a truly primal flavor experience.

Swing by The Meadow to grab yourself a Popcorn Salt Set for a supply of artisan salts that makes pocorn an important part of your Holiday Season and a constant companion all the toasts to success that 2010 holds in store.

Poultry loves a brine.  The major advantage to brining is that it adds moisture to lean, low-moisture meats – turkey is a prime candidate.  In addition to more moisture, brined turkey has more tender flesh and a plumper texture.

A brine is a salt solution that denatures protein. This means the salt in the brine unravels the spiral formation of the protein molecules, resulting in many more places for water to bond onto the meat. For some lean turkey meat or low-moisture pork (especially ribs), brining can add up to 10% moisture.  But not all brines are created equal.

Most brine recipes call for an industrially-refined salt such as kosher or table salt.  Such salts lack the beautiful magnesium, potassium, and calcium salts that occur naturally and make for a flatter, duller salt sensation—to say nothing of the 80 other sundry minerals that are found in all natural, unrefined salt.  Many salts marketed as “sea salt" – manufactured in huge industrial salt evaporators optimized for yield and global industrial purity standards – are stripped of their natural minerals as well.  Brines are straightforward – a solution of salt, water, sugar and spices – and whatever you put in them gets absorbed into the meat, so you should take care with what you use.  Please use natural salt in your brine.  It makes a huge difference.

I recommend any natural sel gris (aka gray salt, or gros sel) for brining.  A 2 pound 8 ounce bag of excellent sel gris costs $18, and it will leave you with plenty left over for sprinkling on candied yams as a finishing salt, not to mention on buttered crusty Thanksgiving dinner rolls.  In fact, the bag will easily take you through the holidays and into the new year.  Sel gris is just about as old-school beautiful as any salt made.  Plus, all sels gris are especially rich in trace minerals, insuring a flavor that is balanced and full. Actually, there’s another plus: minerals in the salt are absorbed into the turkey along with the water, so you get more of all the good things salt has to offer.

Ingredients and recipe for a 16 lb bird.

1 1/2 cup sel gris (gray salt) or natural traditional sea salt
2 gallons of cold water. Like the salt, the water should be good. (I err on the safe side and avoid tap water, which contains lots of chlorine. Instead, buy a few jugs of spring water of some sort, and your turkey will not smell like a swimming pool.)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 bay leaf
2 medium-sized branches rosemary
6 sprigs thyme
6 leaves sage
6 cloves garlic, peeled and gently crushed
9 fat peppercorns, preferably, Parameswaran's pepper, with it's succulent lemon-zesty-eucalyptusy-cardamom spice flavors

Bring 2 cups of the water to a boil, mixing in all the above ingredients to dissolve the salt as much as possible. Let the water cool for half an hour, then combine back with remaining water to make your brine. Put turkey in double layer food grade plastic bag breast down, pour cold brine solution over bird, get all excess air out of bag and tie off. Place bagged brined bird in fridge and let soak for 24 hours.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Remove bird from fridge, pat dry very thoroughly, and rub with a thin film of olive oil.  Stuff with the stuffing of your choice, truss to hold stuffing in place, and roast. Cook until the internal temperature of the bird (at the inner thick part of the thigh) is 165°F, about 2 1/2 hours. I know this doneness temperature might be lower than what you are used to.  Many older cookbooks call for roasting turkey to 180°F.  This is excessive.  Bacteria (including salmonella bacteria) is killed at 145°F and roasting poultry much beyond 165°F dries it out.  In the case of a brined bird roasting to too high a temperature can drain out all the moisture you took so much time to get in there.  You’ll get much better results by stopping roasting at 165°F.

Allow the roasted turkey to sit for 20 minutes before carving (you can cover it loosely with foil or a clean towel if you want); a rest period will help the bird retain its juices and firm the meat for easier carving.

Scoop the stuffing into a serving bowl; carve and serve.

Nothing pleases children like asparagus. They just can’t get enough of it. So when you bring a few dozen pounds of asparagus to a school cafeteria, you expect to be inundated with boisterous, hungry faces, jockeying for position, beseeching you for more of the stuff.  Kids, there’s nothing like 'em to remind you of the simple pleasures of the farm.

Such was our experience when Jennifer Turner Bitterman, co-founder of The Meadow, organized Farm Awareness Day, bringing together Corey Schreiber, James Beard Award winning chef and Farm-to-School food coordinator with the Oregon Department of Agriculture, Nikole Williams, Program Manager of Nutritious Services for Portland Public Schools, and Paul Folkestad, an instructor and chef with the Western Culinary Institute.  The event was held in conjuction with PPS's Local Lunch and Harvest of the Month program, tasting and playing with asparagus with the students of Laurelhurst Elementary School.

And amazingly, the kids, insofar as is possible within the rather bewilderingly frenetic 20 to 30 minutes that they were allotted for lunch, really did eat asparagus.

Jennifer, Corey, and Paul pursued a three stranded strategy in their campaign to a) feed children, b) wake them up to the unexpected pleasures lurking within a stalk of astringent green vegetable, and c) make the entire thing thought provoking and memorable enough to hopefully percolate down to conversation with the parents over dinner table back home.

Strand 1 of the strategy: grill some asparagus and serve it from a platter.  400 kids, lunching in three seatings, can motor through a substantial amount of asparagus, even if there only a minority cared to partake. Minority status notwithstanding, there were a surprising number who were more than willing to wolf down a stalk or two. In fact, in addition to what was served them, I spied dozens of kids skulking away from their seats to grab a stalk, shoving it down their gullets as they returned to their tables, often realizing just as they were about to retake their seats that they had, alas, finished their asparagus, and so would have to skulk away again to get more, and so repeated the circle of seeking, eating, returning, realizing, and re-seeking again and again, transformed by hunger into a sort of asparagus-inhaling perpetual motion machines. (Skulking’s sort of a figurative term, as they really just bounded up from their tables and ran across the cafeteria to Chef Folkestad, who was dispensing piles of thick, remarkably nicely-cooked stalks of asparagus as fast as he could.)

Strand 2 of the strategy: give them the opportunity to personalize their vegetables with salt.  Jennifer thought it would help stimulate things if we played off the natural interest in things that are salty, cool, colorful, unique, and salty.  In other words, we allowed the kids to partake of the joys of finishing salt, which they did with gusto.  We brought three suitably dramatic artisan salts from The Meadow: warm and meaty Kauai Guava smoked sea salt, a rich red Alaea Volcanic sea salt, and a snappy charcoal gray Turkish Black Pyramid sea salt from Cyprus.  Hard to know what was the most popular, as the cafeteria was more or less engulfed in a white cloud of aerosolized Himalayan Pink rock salt that I was grating onto kids asparagus, hands, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and upturned smiling faces.

Strand 3 of the strategy: this was the most ingenious part of the entire event.  The only thing more effective than the age old trickery known as bait-and-switch is even older trickery of baiting and not switching.  We contacted Rudy Speerschneider, the maestro of hand-churned ice cream at Junior Ambassador's ice cream, which operates out of a “Mostlandian” food cart on Albina Avenue not far from our shop (though if you follow the website, its actually “a fanatasical psychogeographical destination happening anyplace, anytime, anyhow,” which is a difficult place to navigate to using Google maps and conventional ground transportation).  The ice cream is indeed almost supernaturally delicious, despite leanings toward the bizarre side. What is funny is that people are as eager to rave about the smoked salmon-cream cheese sundae complete with capers and pickled onions as they are about the vanilla.  The kids agreed, and went after the asparagus ice cream with very close to universal enthusiasm.

There was a sort of strand 3 and a half: I stood around with a giant rock of Himalayan pink salt and shaved it onto the little cups of asparagus ice cream.  The dusting of salt brought out a hidden sweetness in the asparagus, and as well as fresh glimmers of its trademark vibrant, green, springiness.  Plus, the children seemed to find it refreshingly cool and to suddenly find themselves in the proximity of a group of adults crazy enough to hybridize ice cream, rocks, and asparagus into a singularly yummy and theatrical experience.

Below are some simple asparagus recipes provided by Chef Paul to inspire parents and kids take the asparagus experience back home.

Farm-to-School Asparagus Recipes:

These are three easy recipes below, but even easier is to trim your asparagus, plunge it in boiling water for 3 minutes, then plunge in ice water. Serve cold with kosher salt and a squeeze of lemon.

Asparagus Parmigiano

2 pounds asparagus stalks, washed and trimmed
Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
Extra-virgin olive oil
Coarsely ground black pepper
Coarse salt or sea salt
Selmelier's recommendation (coarse, moist salt such as Sel Gris de l'Ile de Noirmoutier, or a hearty fleur de sel like Peruvian Warm Spring will give the teeth and the tongue something wonderful to toy with against the juicy/salty aparagus/Parmigiano combination.

Use a vegetable peeler, shave curls off the Parmigian-Reggiano cheese. Snap or cut off the tough ends of the asparagus. Arrange asparagus in a single layer in a shallow baking pan. Blanch the asparagus in lightly salted boiling water for approximately 3 minutes or until crisp-tender; do not overcook. Remove from heat and refresh under cold water; drain well. Toss asparagus with just enough olive oil to lightly coat. Arrange asparagus on a serving platter or individual serving plates. Sprinkle coarse salt, pepper, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese curls over the top of the asparagus.
Makes 4-6 servings.
Simple Roasted Asparagus


1 bunch fresh asparagus
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
Selmelier's recommendation: Turkish Black Pyramid, hands down, a beautiful salt with a touch of earthiness to balance out the asparagus

Preheat oven to 425. Trim tough bottoms of asparagus stalks up to ½ inch. Liberally coat the asparagus with the other ingredients. Roast asparagus on high rack in oven until tender, usually 4-6min depending on thickness of asparagus. Serve hot or cold. Makes 4 portions.
Asparagus with Orange Dressing & Toasted Hazelnuts (from Gourmet Magazine)


2 tablespoons finely chopped hazelnuts
1 1/2 to 2 pounds asparagus stalks, washed and trimmed
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated orange zest
2 teaspoons fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
[salt]
Selmelier's recommendation: Ack, had to edit/eradicate an ingredient!  Good sweet lord, why wreck all those fresh ingredients in such a beautiful recipe by introducing industrially refined sodium chloride into it? No offense Gourmet, which we read religiously, but a simple flake salt like Maldon will set the entire dish about five rungs farther up the stairway to heaven.    

Preheat oven to 375°F. Toast hazelnuts in a small shallow baking pan until golden, 4 to 5 minutes. Cook asparagus in a large frying pan of boiling salted water until crisp-tender, about 3 to 4 minutes, and drain well in a colander. Transfer hot asparagus to serving platter or individual serving plates. In a small bowl, whisk together orange zest, orange juice, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Spoon orange dressing over top or asparagus and sprinkle with nuts.
Makes 4 servings.

The only thing better, or at least more interesting, than a chocolate chip cookie  is an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie.  The only thing better than that is the same cookie with a spectacular and intriguing finishing salt on top.  Topping your cookies with a beautiful artisan salt brings out the cow in the butter, hills in the oats, and the jungle in the chocolate.  Also, by topping your cookies with the salt rather than just mixing a small amount up inside the batter, you set the salt free to do it's own thing, work its mojo with each of the ingredients as they combine in your mouth while you chew.

I used Bali Rama sea salt, which has really cool hollow pyramidal crystals and a great, snappy saltiness for the cookies pictured here.  The advantage of using a flake salt is that it remains delicate even after baking.  This salt is not yet on our website (it will be by the end of the week), but you could order it over the phone by calling The Meadow.  It did a spectacular job bringing just barely enough drama to the cookies to make them sparkle, but keeping everything mellow enough to assure they remain the ultimate comfort food.  The oven will dry out a fleur de sel, or sel gris, leaving you with a hard crunch and a slightly more ostentatious saltiness.

Note (Aug 31 '09): Based on some feedback from readers here, and from my baker friend Allie, I have tweaked the recipe just a touch to insure more uniform success, adding 1/4t of salt to the dough, and shifting the oat/flour ratio. 

In terms of chocolate chip cookie recipes, I'm not sure there's anywhere to go--other than getting some oatmeal in there.  My recipe is adapted from the classic toll house cookie recipe, with three notable exceptions.

1. Use just a pinch of salt in the dough; saving a place for good salt on top
2. Use unconventional chocolate.  If you can get it, use 60% or darker chocolate chips and you will be amazed
3. Add oats, and as a consequence, remove some of the flour

Ingredients:

* 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 2 1/2 cups regular or quick oats (not instant)
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/4 teaspoon bali salt, crunched up with your fingers
* 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
* 1/2 cup granulated sugar
* 1 cup packed brown sugar
* 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 2 eggs
* 1 3/4 cups dark chocolate chips (2 cups if using traditional semi-sweet chips)
* Finishing salt: Bali Rama, Cyprus Silver, Halen Mon Silver, or if no alternative, any good fleur de sel

Preheat Oven to 350.  Combine flour, baking soda and oats in small bowl.  The rest is the classic Nestle's Toll House cookie recipe: Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto un-greased baking sheets.

Sprinkle the artisan salt of choice salt atop each cookie, and then toss them in the oven.  I like my salted chocolate chip cookies on the chewy side, so 8 to 9 minutes max is good.  10 minutes for crispy cookies.

These cookies stay fresh for nigh upon a week if stored in a cookie jar shaped like Winnie the Pooh.

Himalayan Salt Block Recipe - Seared Flank Steak
Flank steak has to be pretty much the best thing short of a foot rub while drinking a root beer float.  But it's tough.  It's ornery.  There is a common strategy to making the flank steak supple enough to eat without popping your jaw out of joint: marinating.  I've made coffee and ginger marinades, lime and tequila marinades, smoked salt and chili pepper marinades, vinegar and sugar marinades... you name it.  Every time, great steak.  But think of the poor steak.  A wonderful, flavor-packed piece of meat forced to suffer quietly the insult of subjugation to intense acids and sugars and salts.  When we see a flank steak, we see a quandary.  How do we get that elemental flavor out of a meat that resists the teeth?  There is a solution, a way honor the humble yet noble flank steak in its naked beauty, a way that takes virtually no preparation ahead of time, a way results in a fun, incredibly juicy and savory dish.

I've covered this dish before here and elsewhere, including at the Himalayan salt block cooking classes at The Meadow, but I don't think it has ever actually been hammered into a simple recipe.

There are two simple tricks to this dish (if you can call steak seared on a giant block of salt a dish): cutting the meat against the grain, and cooking it at a high temperature.  Oh, and cooking it NOT on steel, but on a block of ancient, super dense, mineral rich Himalayan pink salt.

Ingredients:
1 2lb piece of flank steak
1 9x9x2 inch Himalayan Salt Block or Plate

Place the block of Himalayan rock salt on the stove and set to low heat, gradually, over the course of 30 minutes, bringing it to high heat, until the block reaches a cooking temperature of 475 to 500 degrees F.  Cut the piece of flank steak length wise along the grain of the meat, creating two long strips.  Then, turning the piece perpendicular to the blade of your knife cut the strips across the fiber of the meat into 1/4 inch thick strips, each about 2 to 3 inches long.

When the Himalayan pink salt plate is hot, which you can tell by when a sample piece of meat sizzles vigorously (or however it is that a piece of meat sizzles when it is REALLY sizzling), or by moving your hand closer and closer to the hot Himalayan salt block until your hand definitely doesn't want to get any closer at about 2 or 3 inches away, or by gunning it with one of those very cool infra-red thermometers and noting that it is 475 to 500 degrees F, you are ready to cook.

Place about 12 pieces of steak onto the block.  After 15 to 20 seconds, flip and cook for another 15 to 20 seconds.  Serve immediately.

The major drawback to this dish is that no matter how fast you cook, you can generally eat faster.  I've noticed that when diners are hungry enough, it is possible to actually eat the entire pieces without chewing--sort of iguana style.  To avoid giving the impression that we are savages, we have conferred upon this dish a sophisticated name that distracts those we are trying to impress.  We call it bifsteak à l'iguanne.

Hence the name, steak a l'iguana.  A good way avoid just hovering over the stove wolfing down the hot, juicy, rare-on-the-inside, seared-golden-on-the-outside pieces of steak, is to bring the cooking to the table, where children can be controlled and adults are obligated to be civil.

Place the hot brick on a trivet and place the piping hot Himalayan salt brick on the table.  The block of Himalayan salt stores enough heat to allow for 3 to 5 courses.  (As the block cools, subsequent batches of steak will be saltier.)  And voilà, all the civility of a good fondue Bourguignonne with even better, more indubitably seasoned cooking.

A variety of sizes are available, and the cost-conscious, or restaurants looking to serve many, can use Cookware 4 x 8 x 2 bricks as well.  A selection available here>>

I am pretty sure we used either Toulouse sausage or duck confit in our petit salé aux lentilles when I was living at Le Montagnet, a chateau in the Southwest of France.  The official recipe, which probably hails from somewhere in the region of Castelnaudary, is usually made with pork shoulder and bits of lardons (fatback, more or less, though Pancetta rdoes the trick).  We leaned toward confit of duck because there was always some on hand.  We raised our own ducks there for foie gras, and the duck confit was the best I ever had.  And also, we used confit because we were cheap.  "We" at the time usually consisted of myself and Nadir, a Kabyle who had inveigled his way into permanent residency in France by flying low, under the radar.  Duck was our chicken.  Plentiful, and a source of inspiration for countless recipes.




Nadir never spoke French half way as well as I did, to be honest, but he always knew about the crazy little dishes eaten by the farmers and laborers inhabiting the rugged, forested terrain surrounding the chateau, stretching from Les Montagnes Noires (The Black Mountains, which amble from the Pyrannees to the Massive Central) up through Perigord.  When "we" were together as a “we,” and making food, it was usually because we had been abandoned, told to fend for ourselves for the night, when the family that resided at the chateaux had plans.  So as evening was creeping in long lazy purple shadows across the sheep pastures, I would be somewhere sanding oak planks out in the outlying farm buildings, or at some distant and unheated reach of the house fitting tongue into groove of the ancient oak slats covering the ground floor (everything there was made out of ancient coeur de chêne (heart of oak), the incomparably hard timber harvested from the mountains when the land was first settled some hundreds of years ago).

Nadir, an Arab, had no compunction about various displays that might strike a Western man as a bit unnerving.  Holding hands was usual when on a walk together.  He would sit down beside you and put his arm around you, and just smile.  But the apron was always especially odd on him.  Left alone for a moment, he would don an apron and set about to cook.  And petit salé was a favorite.  So from far away through the deepening dusk I would hear him call: "Mark, à table!  Cauchemar, viens-ici!"  Mark, dinnertime.  Nightmare, come!  (I had named the family dog, a hoary old bag of scruff that wheezed horribly as it padded through the gloomy halls, Cauchemar--French for nightmare--in response to the irrational and unstinting adoration piled inexplicably on the miserrable beast by the children of the house.)  Then Nadir would round the corner, floral print apron tied jauntily around his waist, heavy wooden spoon in his hand, giant perpetual grin on his face.  And we would return to the kitchen to take supper together, two men from opposite ends of the universe bonded by work, a reverence for our time on this land, and meals together.

Lentils are among the most basic of foods, but you need some technique to make them taste right.  My technique consists of this: do not salt the water while you cook them, as salt makes them tough; and use plenty of duck fat to finish them off.  Sure, you can use a nice duck stock to help out, but the chief thing is no salt while cooking.  Everything comes to life with the sprinkle of fleur de sel de Guerande or fleur de sel de l'Ile de Noirmoutier French sea salt that finishes it.

Recipe for Petit Sale aux Lentille Style Nadir

Preparation time: about 90 minutes.

1lb lentils
2 or 3 pieces confit of duck leg and thigh
1oz of backfat or pancetta, finely cubed
1/4 cup duck fat (this can be obtained by scraping the fat from the top of the confit container)
Water, duck stock, or lamb stock to cover (about 2 or 3 cups)
Fleur de sel

In an stove top-proof, oven-proof, heavy pot such as a Le Creuset, blanch the backfat for 10 minutes in simmering water.  Drain water, heat the pan, and sautee the back fat until golden.  Set aside.

Cook your lentils as follows in the heavy pot: Pick through the beans, removing any rocks or misshapen lentils.  Rinse and drain.  Cover with cold water or unsalted duck or (my favorite) lamb stock.  Cover and boil for 2 minutes.  Then simmer until tender, usually about 30 to 45 minutes.  Check frequently to avoid over-cooking.

Preheat oven to 300 F.  Add the duck fat to the lentils. With your fingers, pull the meat off the bones into nice small bits and stir into the duck fattened lentils, gently, so as to not mush the lentils.  Add the browned backfat.  If the water/stock has boiled off, add another cup.  Place in oven for 45 minutes to a hour, allowing a light duck-fat crust to form on the surface.  It may be a good idea to check on it once about 30 minutes to make sure there is still some liquid in the lentils.  Dish it onto plates alongside a nice vinegary green salad, thick crusts of bread, plenty of hearty red wine (preferrably from the Rhone, Corbiere, Minervois, or my favorite, Fitou).  Sprinkle lightly with feur de sel. Serve.

Hats of Nadir, my old friend.

I don't intend to spill an inordinate amount of ink on Himalayan salt blocks at the expense of other fine saline subjects, but there are enough inquiries from customers these days that a short series on the practical side of working with plates of Himalayan salt seems warranted.

There are dozens of ways to use Himalayan salt blocks, as plates, platters, skillets, curing bricks, freezing slabs, and more.  Cooking, however, is an important one to get under your belt as soon as possible.

And by the way, I personally like to use one Himalayan salt block for cooking, and keep a separate Himalayan salt block/plate for room temperature uses such as curing, serving, and otherwise presenting food.  That way, your cooking salt block benefits from the patina and structural changes inherent to cooking, much as a cast iron skillet benefits from careful use and cleaning. At the same time, the purity and simplicity of the unheated Himalayan salt block can be emphasized when used for presentation at the table.

Heating, Using, Cleaning, and Storing Tips for Himalayan Salt Blocks: see the complete article.

There was Iburi Jio cherry smoked sea salt from Japan in the cupboard. There was a lone, single, solitary pork loin in the refrigerator.
The Iburi-Jio cherry roasted sea salt in our household needs no explanation (think popcorn, think steak, think summer squash, think sashimi, think buttered toast, think sole, think salmon flatbread, think eye of newt—Iburi Jio is the omniscient presence that weighs in on all the mind’s internal arguments over whether ‘tis nobler to sprinkle a given gourmet sea salt or a prized smoked sea salt).
The pork loin, however, was a bit of a rogue foodstuff for this time of the year. For some reason, it had been bought the very morning of Thanksgiving, and, inevitably for a pork loin bought on the day of gustatory debauchery, it had thereafter lingered. This evening I pulled it out, and after noting with the nose that it was none the worse the wear after the week it had spent in the fridge, I fried it in coconut oil.
Coconut oil, for those of you not in the know, is a strange substance which, in addition to culinary application, has “recommended uses” as a dietary supplement (1 to 4 tablespoons coconut oil daily), for skin care (massage into skin as needed), and for hair care (liquefy, then apply 2 teaspoons cocoanut oil to hair and scalp 1 to 2 hours before washing!). Hmm…
Strutting around the house, chopping wood in the side yard and chatting over the fence with the new neighbor, ducking into The Meadow for a salt consultation with the executive chef of an about-to-open restaurant, picking up the kids from school — all with a slathering of cocoanut oil on my scalp; I’m not sure how that would work for me.
But cocoanut fried pork loin? I would be honored to be caught feasting on such a repast whilst wearing only undergarments on the West 4th Street platform of the rush hour A Train. To be honest, I touched it up with a little chili-infused sesame oil, but it was the coconut that made it. Crunchy crusty outside, moist, pale, ineffable pink/white inside.
I then sliced it thin, and served it with Iburi-Jio Cherry smoked Japanese sea salt. The delicate, mild, slightly sweet flavors of the pork, provoked into purring rebellion by the coconut oil aroma, crunching at the edges with roasty Maillard caramel flavors. All very debonair. Then in steps the Iburi-Jio cherrywood, inspired by the Akita Prefecture's famed iburi-gakko, a smoked and pickled daikon radish. Cherrywood roasted under sea salt that was freshly crystallized over a wood burning fire for three days after being culled from deep sea water from off the shore of the Oga Peninsula in Akita Prefecture in northern Japan.
Easygoing American locally-raised pork censored by the subtle violence of one off Japan’s most formidable salt. Try it. Even a small jar will do for at least several meals.

Brining your turkey, or salt brining any bird for that matter, is a no brainer. Preparing the brine takes minutes and a brined turkey (or brined chicken or brined game hen or brined pigeon or brined pheasant) has more flavor that is better balanced, and has a firmer, plumper texture. Also, salt brining your turkey makes for a juicier bird, every time, meaning it is better when you cook it right, and if the gods are not smiling on your oven today, it is more forgiving when you over-cook.

How does brining work? Simple: a brine is a salt solution, and salt subtly denatures the proteins in the turkey, allowing them to hold more water, making for a juicier bird. Since you are bringing brine into the bird, make the brine of the finest stuff: sea salt and spring water.

So, rather than squeak around the kitchen like a church mouse, I just say it: This is the best turkey brining recipe in the world, bar none. Though there may be fancier brines, more complicated brines, or in the parlance of pun-insensitive management consultants, “more sophisticated brining solutions,” there is not a better way to brine than the old fashioned way. Use other turkey brining recipes as inspiration for elaboration on this recipe, but show your bird your love by sticking to the fundamentals.

My logic is simple: if salt is the key agent in a brine, a better salt will yield a better salt brine. Use the right salt for your turkey brining and you are vouchsafed something I once read (for real) on a fortune cookie: “eternal fun smart joy.” The right salt will contribute mineral complexity to the flavor of your bird, which in this day and age of large-scale farming, is possibly already mineral-deficient to begin with. From a flavor standpoint, this is not subtle.

Rule one to brining your turkey–and there is only one real rule. Never, NEVER use Kosher salt in your turkey brine. Kosher salt is 100% pure sodium chloride, though at times a touch of sodium ferrocyanide is added for good times. Pure sodium chloride in the form of kosher salt is a calamity that has befallen man far more grave than any wrought by Pandora or Eve. Kosher salt, whether dissolved in a brine or, worse yet, added directly to the food you put in your body, is the equivalent of using Velveeta in you fondue, or cream of mushroom soup in your beef Bourguignon. The refined sodium chloride that is Kosher salt has no correlative in your body or on your palate. That is why it tastes harsh, biting, and painfully sharp. Do NOT use Kosher salt. Lots of recipes call for Diamond brand Kosher salt, or Morton’s Kosher salt, and lots of people like to preach earnestly about the superiority of Diamond over Morton’s, or vice versa. To me, both Kosher salts are fine, if, and only if, you are koshering your meat--which is to say, extracting as much fluid from it as possible. If you are not koshering something, do not, ever, use Kosher salt.

So, back to brining your bird...

Step one: Buy good sea salt. Any relatively mineral rich sea salt will do. You will need about 2 cups, so there is no point in using expensive fleur de sel. A gros sel such as Sel Gris de l’Ile de Noirmoutier, or Sel Gris de Guerande, or any self-styled Celtic sea salt, or Grey Salt which seems to be spelled Gray Salt as well will work well. Many people ask about Himalayan salts. They are fine, and contain about 3 percent trace minerals, which is far less than a good Sel Gris--but still quite good.
Step two: buy a good bird. I just met the Andy Westlund of Harmony J.A.C.K. Farms. He is into dirt. Turkey's to him, are part of a system based on grasses fed by nutritive, beautiful, healthy soil. Those grasses, and the bugs they accommodate, are are large portion of the all-organic feed of the free-range lifestyle of his birds. Additionally, he raises only Heritage breeds, meaning birds that have not suffered from industrialized genetic selection that favors breast size over all else, including flavor, texture, and healthiness. Buy one of Any's birds, or find some such equivalent.

Ingredients and recipe for a 16 lb bird


1 ¾ cups salt
2 ½ gallons of cold water. Like the salt, the water should be good. Do not every use tap water, which contains lots of chlorine. Instead, buy a bottle spring water of some sort, and your turkey will not taste like a freshly exercised Mark Spitze when you are done with it.
½ cup maple sugar (my New England Grandma’s touch, and she read Yeats and Keats and Byron)
6 juniper berries, crushed
1 bay leaf
2-3 crushed allspice
6 fat fresh peppercorns


Bring 2 cups of the water to a boil, mixing in all the above ingredients, mixing to dissolve the salt as much as possible. Let the water cool for half an hour, then combine back with remaining 2 ½ gallons to make your brine. Put turkey in double layer plastic garbage bag breast down, pour cold brine solution over bird, get all excess air of out of bag and tie off. Place bagged brined bird in fridge and let soak for 24 hours.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Remove bird from fridge, pat dry, stuff with the stuffing of your choice, sew cavity shut, and roast in the oven. Cook until the internal temperature of the bird (at the inner thick part of the thigh) is 165 degrees (for the love of Pete (or is it peat?). 165 degrees kills salmonella, yet leaves the Turkey moist on the inside and crackly on the outside. Do not cook until it is 180 degrees as called for in some cookbooks, my lyrically inclined grandma’s included. For more detailed brined turkey cooking instructions use the San Francisco Chronicle's recommendations, which are the best around. Mind you, while the Chez Panisse salt brine recipe referenced by the Chronicle has good points (as does possibly everything else from Alice Waters), Alice has totally missed the boat on the salt--so ignore her and most other chefs who, one can only imagine due to animal reflex and unexamined habit, insist on perpetuating the Kosher salt mantra.
Carve and serve, and when guests melt into smiling lozenges of eternal fun smart joy, sing the praises of your rich natural salt, fresh crispy water, and gregarious clucking turkey.

Today I learned something: A large block of pink Himalayan salt used as a skillet makes a heavy cast iron frying pan seem like tin foil. Himalayan salt blocks cook with astonishingly, almost magically perfect heat distribution.

I cooked eggs this morning for The Missus. In a futile attempt to temporarily sooth her implacable appetite for eggs, I cooked two "dishes":

Salt Skillet Fried Egg
Buttered Salt Skillet Fried Egg


Every morning for the last ten years or so, I have been greeted with the same refrain:

"Mmmm... (whuh?) I'm in the mood... (uh?) A nice... (a nice?...) fried egg."

So, these are the mystical rhythms of the female mind. An eternity of the soporific/invigorating smell of eggs sizzling on butter on a skillet downstairs, salted delicately with Pangasinan Star or Fleur de Sel de l'Ile de Re, or, on an occasion of rare deviation, truffle salt.

But not today.

"Mmmm... (whuh?) I'm in the mood... (uh?) A nice... (a nice?...) salt brick."

Today, Jennifer, with at least 85% of her brain still sleeping, decided that she wanted her Saturday Morning Egg cooked on a large block of Himalayan Salt. I don't know if it is because she has caught on the midnight vibe of Himalayan Pink Salt Block writing that pervades the house like the surly ghost of Ezra Pound, or whether it was some creative impulse of her own, but the request was there.

Pursuant to Jennifer's request, I cooked up two fried eggs on a thick but smallish-sized Himalayan salt block. The first egg I fried straight up, with no butter or other oil. Just me, the egg, and a 600 million year old plate of salt quarried from the ancient haunches of Pakistan's Himalayas mountain range.

Step one, heat salt block. This particular block is of a salmon hue, but striated with blood-red veins of denser minerals. A few customers at The Meadow have given me somewhat suspicious looks when I suggest cooking eggs, pancakes, and other gooey substances on rocks of Himalayan salt. I chose one from our embarrassingly large collection because it was smaller than many of the others, measuring 6 by 6 by 1.75 inches.

Still, it took about 20 minutes to get it hot. (After about fifteen minutes on medium heat on the medium-sized burner of our gas range, I turned it up to full for another 2-3 minutes.)

I cracked the egg and tested whether the salt block was hot enough by letting a small amount of egg white drip onto the surface. Noting that it immediately sizzled and turned white, I then plopped the entire egg, yolks unbroken, in the middle of the brick and partially covered with a saucepan lid.

In one minute I had THE WORLDS MOST PERFECT FRIED EGG. Just-crispy whites, luscious liquid/gelatinous yolk, and get this: it was delicately salty on the down side of the egg! Imagine what your palat experiences when it gets the salt-singed bit of the egg first, and THEN the egg itself! The tongue is stimulated, the mouth awakens, the higher sensory faculties of anticipation and sunny delight engaged, for in one happy second the world is salty eggyness. But then, rather than have that drift into salt-laden overkill, that delicate unfleshly avian endoplasm comes through in an a moment of delicate triumph. Suffice it to say, Jennifer was pleased.

For the second, I buttered the slab of Himalayan salt thoroughly. A nice bulky brick of buttered salt block: springboard for the wildest of rampages through the culinary unknown. Anticipation in the kitchen was palpable. First, the butter, strangely, did not burn at all, but rather just spread like pale honey across the surface of the very hot salt Himalayan block. I fried the egg, partially covered again.

Amazingly enough, given the relative exoticness of the tools at hand, the egg's glory was in its simplicity. Perfect texture, and above all, perfectly evenly cooked. I said it above and I'll say it again, the heat distribution when cooking on salt blocks, whether on an open fire or over a gas burner or on top of an electric range (more on that another time) or in an oven or under a broiler is unsurpassed. I have a very heavy, very old cast iron skillet that nonetheless could never get delicate foods like eggs to cook to thoroughly. I have a brand new, state of the art calphalon pan that cost about $75,000 that can't hold a candle to it.

Jennifer's observation was this: "I have never had an egg so hot!"

One other note: the buttered Himialayan pink salt block did not impart more than a trace hint of saltiness. Rather, the result was a very subtly salted egg that could then be tuned up with a pinch of Maldon or a fleur de sel.

You can buy Himalayan salt plates at The Meadow at www.atthemeadow.com/salt/himalayan-pink-salt-blocks.html

Barbecue. The word, when it is the first thing that pops out of your mouth as you lie in bed and your wife greets you with a sleepy pillow-eclipsed smile and the cats claw outside your bedroom door, can sound a little ridiculous. What does Bar B Q mean anyway? What are its origins?

Actually, nobody cares, because once you say the word “barbeque” the mind abandons frilly thoughts of etymology and ontology, and moves on to halibut and kebabs and corn and tri-tip and sausage and short ribs and salmon and burgers and leg of lamb and turducken and scampi and kangaroo and scrod and fennel root and game hen and all the good things that have accreted in our collective unconscious since the discovery of fire by some axe-wielding Persian king back at the wee dawn of time.

Barbecue. What shall we grill? How shall we grill it? With what shall we eat it? What are our beverage options? A floral yet crisp rosé from the south of France? Those assorted bottles of weissebier idling in the basement from last years trip to Bavaria? A fine, slender-bodied Pinot Noir from Oregon’s Willamette Valley? Your intrepid neighbor’s latest experiment with home-made root beer?

Once these questions have had an opportunity to percolate, the mind drifts inexorably toward that fateful consideration: what to do about salt? Hickory smoked Maine sea salt, fleur de sel de Guérande, Halen Mon Silver Welsh sea salt, Pangasinan Star Philippine sea salt, Iburi-Jio cherry smoked salt from Japan—all glittering like gemstones in the treasure chest in the shadowy motes of your minds eye.

The morning mind’s idle delectations.

Waking up with “barbecue” bobulating off the tongue is admittedly not an indication of some rich inner life. Rather, it is the redeeming effervescence of the beaming boy or bouncing girl at the core of you. Barbecue. The utterance contains something of the thing itself, the germ from which fine blades of grass sprout and a gentle breeze lifts us. The word “barbecue” springs us loose to net butterflies in the quite meadow before good and evil.

Generally speaking, whatever we do in the course of our food preparation indoors, we finish with salt. This strategy of finishing with salt bears implicit within it the supreme importance having respect for your food—no, more, having trust in it. If you trust deeply that your food is worthy of you, and you of it, then do not corrupt its very nature by shellacking it in salt before it even makes it to your plate. When you trust that the food you eat is not just calories and minerals, but rather the fresh and crispy ephemera reflecting your earthly existence today, you are unafraid, you are respectful, you wait, and then with a lover’s touch, join salt to the occasion.

That said, we embrace the urge to barbecue as a rogue moment in modern life. With our primitive faculties at play, can see ourselves as we really are, absurd under the glowering incandescent light of our antiseptic indoor kitchens, decked like Victorian monkeys in frills and corsets and codpieces, starched with propriety and unexamined conventions. At the barbecue grill we stand immutable, burning and licking our fingers, grunting and humming, flicking a leaf from our hair, listening to the chirp of sparrows we will never catch. If the ancient Greeks were correct that society needs Dionysian abandon to balance Apollonian order, the barbecue is more than just fun in the sun, it is the spit in the handshake of our contract with society.

The sun is lapping at the windowsill by the nightstand. Your darling rolls, over mumbling something unintelligible, and tries to gather a few moments more of sleep. The cats have begun to fight, thumping the door and yowling at each other’s disconcerting knack for remorselessness. You have pondered long enough; it is time to get up, brew coffee, and decide what you are going to grill today.

I am fully aware that every single person on our small planet feels in the marrow of their bones that they are the world’s leading expert at barbecuing. So it is with deep humility and a scalpel fear that I offer up three foods that may serve both as general illustrations of how to use salt at the grill and as actual recipes for the basics: salmon, beef, and chicken--surf, turf, and sun. Today, we will cover chicken, which I am the world’s leading expert at barbecuing.

Chihuahua Chopped Tehachapi Chicken. This recipe was adapted at our remote mountain house in Tehachapi California from a game hen dish we often prepared while living in Paris (life is long, and strange). For all its uncanny simplicity, it never ceases to regale family and guests alike. Perhaps it is the exceedingly toothsome flesh that results from the special manner of chopping and salting the bird, perhaps it the herbs that combine to a special and inescapable tonic. Whatever the reason, this recipe gives satisfaction to rugged and delicate palates alike. The key to this recipe is how you cut the chicken. The goal is crispy, gold colored skin infused with herbaceous fragrance, and super tender juicy flesh that practically falls off the bone.

Ingredients: one 4 to 7 pound chicken, whole; ¼ cup coarse gray salt (more on that below); 2 tablespoons finely chopped thyme; 2 tablespoons finely chopped sage; 1 tablespoon finely chopped rosemary; 2 teaspoons freshly ground vine ripened black pepper such as Parameswaran’s, 2 tablespoons coarse Brittany sel gris such as Sel Gris de l’Ile de Re (aka gros sel, gray salt, or Celtic salt).

Fat and bone are the key flavor enhancers of meat, and cutting chicken in the fashion described below (which I learned watching Mexican street in Chihuahua) guarantees you will get the most out of both.

First, light your briquettes--unless you are one of those politically correct but culinarily adrift owners of a gas grill (I have barbecued on every imaginable surface, and like everyone else who believes they know it all, I know it all: coal is king, perhaps with a wedge of apple wood or a twig of mesquite tossed in to boot).

Next, remove and discard any neck and gizzards from the cavity of the chicken. Place the whole chicken breast side down on a cutting board. With a large knife, cut through the skin vertically along the spine. It sounds gruesome, but if you don’t have a massive cleaver and good aim to just hack longitudinally through the spine, you will need to take the pointy end of the knife and stab, sewing machine style, several times down the middle of the length the spine. After that, you can press the length of the knife blade through, cutting the spine in two (aka cleaving in twain, rendering asunder, etc.), leaving you with two symmetrical chicken halves--each with portions of the difficult-to-eat but very flavorsome back bones and meat.

Next, wash the halves in cold water, and pat dry with paper towels. Combine the salt, pepper, and herbs in a bowl. Taking up the salt-herb mixture in the palm of your hand, press firmly onto all sides of the chicken pieces.

When coals are hot, put the chicken halves skin side down and cover grill. After about five minutes (before the skin starts to burn), flip over with spatula, careful not to scuff or tear skin. Thereafter, flip the pieces every three to five minutes until cooked, about thirty to forty minutes. The skin should change from cornflower yellow to gold to rich hazelnut brown, becoming increasingly crackly crisp, and the bone bits on the flip side should become lightly burnt. Remove, place on platter skin side up, and let sit for five minutes. Save the juices that collect in the platter.

To serve, cut leg from back portion, and cut drumstick from thigh, careful leave intact skin on each piece. With your trust heavy knife (washed after prepping the chicken), give a Chihuahua chop to free the breast portion free from the back, and then Chihuahua chop the breast in two. Arrange on a serving platter, and pour juices over top. Serve. No finishing salt required.

Mark Bitterman
Selmelier
The Meadow / gourmet salt - chocolate - wine - flowers

Sel gris has become the largest gourmet salt import in the U.S., and its popularity is growing.  Sel gris is a manner of preparation, a geography, and a cultural artifact, not simply a description of salt that is gray. However, these days just about any coarse, moist, grey-colored sea salt is likely to be lassoed, hog tied, and emblazoned with semi-prestigious brand of sel gris. This harms sel gris no more and no less than it would to copy a painting and call it the original; if you don’t notice the difference, or don't care, it does not matter.
Sel gris has the enviable insouciance inherent to the true warrior, a gentleness that comes from unbridled power and, at least to the outsider, a kind of moral turpitude.  Over 15% of the material in sel gris de Guérande are trace minerals—possibly the highest of any salt anywhere. 100 grams of sel gris contains about 100 minerals, including 34g of sodium, 287mg calcium, 109mg potassium, 34mg magnesium, 11mg iron, 1mg manganese, and 0.35mg zinc, plus a host of trace minerals like from antimony, copper, germanium, and gold to iodine, to palladium, yttrium, and zirconium. The earth contains 92 natural minerals. Our body arguably needs all of them. Sell gris delivers. The affect of this high mineral on the palate can best be understood by looking deep into the past.
How the Celtic Galls, who originated around 3,000 BCE on the isthmus of between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean (where today we have Turkey) eventually came to settle in France is a long, extremely fascinating story no doubt, but the only salient detail to keep in mind was that they did not do so through indolence and lack of appetite. While historians may squabble over details of the centuries of pillaging, feasting, interbreeding, and practicing of Druidism that got them where they are today, the collective love for turmoil that propelled them for centuries not in debate.
Yet the Galls’ thirst for blood, conquest, and riches was also symptomatic of a deeper yearning. These warring like tides of jerky-eating nomads were by nature not entirely enthralled with either being nomadic or smoking jerky. Tribes within the Gallic population continually tried to settle down, only to be chopped up (possibly for jerking) or carried off (invariably for interbreeding) by their more hot-blooded kin. For centuries this went on, the calmer Galls, like kernels of popcorn popped up into the air, would back shake down through the popcorn until they hit the hot plate again, only to be popped up again, over and over, leaving fewer and fewer unpopped kernels, until one quite Tuesday all the Galls had popping themselves out. Rome had fallen. A continent smoldered, cooled, and eventually took to making canapés and celery rood remoulade.
Having finally broken their swords, snuggled in, exchanged foot rubs, the Galls wasted no time either developing their own some of the world’s most evolved, revered, and ostentatious culinary arts. Salt, being important too health, preserving food, trade, and dining well, was not overlooked, and early on enjoyed great celebrity.
One of the earliest traditions is the method of harvesting salt from the swift, pure ocean currents seeking respite in the estuaries off the town of Guérande, Brittany. As the tide comes in, seawater is first allowed to settle in a silt pond before continuing its course to the shallow salt-fields dug in the native clay. After the combined effect of sun and wind evaporates the seawater to a dense brine, it is then flowed into saltpans to crystallize. As in the days of the earliest Celtic settlers, wood rakes are still used today to recover the salt from the bottom of the pan. (Sel Gris’ wealthy uncle, Fleur de Sel, forms on warm, windy afternoons as a pale crust at the surface of these pans.) The French government, which smiles on all things traditional, has even granted all sel gris de Guérande (and Noirmoutier and Ré) that I know of its Nature et Progrès certificate, which is the equivalent of organic.
Nothing less that this combination of swift sea, settling, natural clay, sun, wind, and Gallic raking from a bronzed and muscled paludier (salt raker) descended from nomadic warriors is responsible for the abundant graces of an authentic sel gris de Guérande.