Spiced salts

I have been reading and enjoying a book called Salt — A World History, written by Mark Kurlanksy. The book looks at salt so closely that I am now a bit of an expert on the subject myself. I learnt that Homer called it a ‘divine substance’, and Plato insisted that it was especially dear to the gods.

In Calcutta, giving the salt an exalted position is chef Chiranjib Chatterjee of Afraa. I have noticed that some master chefs get all excited about salts. To most people, a pinch of salt is a pinch of salt. Some gourmets, on the other hand, like to experiment with different kinds of salts by mixing them with flavours.

Chef Chatterjee is among them. And he uses his salts — enhanced with herbs such as rosemary or oregano, or with basil and sweet peppers — to flavour and season an array of exotic dishes such as an amaranthus risotto with mascarpone and gandharaj lemon. This dish tastes best when prepared with a Mediterranean spiced sea salt. To prepare this, take 3tbs each of sea salt, dried basil, dried garlic granules and dried oregano, 2tbs of dried lemon zest, 1tbs sun-dried sweet peppers, half of a cayenne pepper and ½ tsp crushed hot red pepper. Mix this well, store in an airtight container and use according to taste.

It’s ironic, as Kurlanksy points out, how after thousands of years of efforts to ensure that salt was white and evenly powdered, the salts that are the most sought after (and therefore expensive) today are those that are of odd shapes and colours. I had written earlier how my friend Vikram Marett, a French chef by passion, went ecstatic about a flaky sea salt called the fleur de sel, or the flower of salt, which had a faint aroma of violets.

Furikake salmon cooked with Dragon salt

But that — especially the fleur de sel de Guérande (salt of the town of Guérande in Brittany) — is on top of the A list of salts. Closer home, we have a wide variety of salts that are easy to prepare and have a great flavour. These seasoned salts are those to which you add different kinds of herbs. Garlic salts and celery salts are popular and easily available, and I remember I had great fun with a huge jar of lemon pepper salt that a friend had got me.

One such salt is the dragon salt. According to the chef’s recipe, you have to combine 1/3rd cup of grainy sea salt with 1/3rd cup coarsely ground black pepper, ¼ cup ground red pepper, ¼ cup dried dill, 2tbs paprika and 1tbs dried basil. He uses this for his furikake spiced Norwegian salmon with ginger wine sauce. Furikake is a Japanese spice usually prepared with dried and ground fish.

Linguini cooked with south of france salt

On the other hand, for his pasta with white chocolate shavings, he uses something called south of France salt — a combination of sea salt, grated lemon zest, sage, rosemary and parsley leaves and lemon juice. And for his pan- fried chicken breast with a blueberry-ginger relish, he rubs the chicken with black salt.

A book that came out in the 1920s — on 101 uses of salt — talks about how it is used to make ice creams freeze, remove rust, retain the colours in boiled vegetables and clean bamboo furniture. But the modern salt industry says there are some 14,000 uses of salt — it is, for instance, used in manufacturing pharmaceuticals, making soap, softening water, dying textile and melting snow on roads.

The most important use — as far as I am concerned — is that it makes food not just palatable, but exotic as well. That’s why I call it the salt of the earth.

Amaranthus risotto with mascarpone and gandharaj lemon (with Mediterranean spiced sea salt) (serves 4)

Ingredients

• 4tbs butter • 450g Arborio rice • 60g Parmesan cheese • 2tsp crushed black pepper • Medi-terranean spiced salt to taste • 100ml white wine • 100g chopped onion • 800ml vegetable stock • 400g shredded spinach • 150g amaranthus or red leaves • 150g mascarpone cheese • juice of 4 gandharaj lemons • 1/3rd tsp gandharaj lemon zest • 5tbs olive oil

Method

Heat the vegetable stock. In a separate pan over moderate heat add olive oil, chopped onions, spiced salt, the leaves and the rice. Turn up the heat. Now fry the rice, but keep stirring so that it doesn’t change colour. After two or three minutes the rice will begin to look translucent. Now add the wine, but keep on stirring as it hits the pan. Turn down the heat to a high simmer. Keep adding ladlefuls of stock, stirring and allowing each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next. This will take about 15 minutes. Add the lemon zest. Remove from the heat and add the butter, the mascarpone cheese and lemon juice. Check the seasonings. Serve in a bowl and decorate with roasted lemon slices and Parmesan flakes.