from behind the stove

Salt...know it, use it, live it

About 8100 years ago people began using the most important ingredient in any kitchen; salt.  Salt has a rich and varied history.  It has been used as a seasoning, a preservative, a currency, and reasons to go to war.  In most Slavic countries offering someone salt and bread when they come into your home is a sign of hospitality; in some cultures salt is used in funeral rites. Fun fact: Salt is the only rock we eat.  Getting enough salt in our diet is very important for staying healthy, as long as we don't over due it.  But, it is the culinary use of salt I am interested in today, more specifically, the use of salt to season our food.

Recently I had lunch at a local eatery and, as is usually the case with most restaurants I go to, the food was bland, which is the reason for today's post.  I cannot overemphasise the important role salt plays in making a dish taste good.  I heard one chef say that cooking without salt is like eating in black and white; whereas cooking with salt is like eating in color. 

The 5 primary tastes of the tongue are: 1) Sweet, 2) Bitter, 3) Sour, 4) Umami, and 5) Salty.  Every dish the cooks makes must find the right balance of all of these tastes in order for the dish to be made well.  Since this is a post on salt I'll just stick to that.  I don't how many times I have heard cooks, both professional and amateur, proudly proclaim to me that their food is so good that they don't need to add any additional salt; that the natural amounts of salt present is just enough.  Wrong, wrong, wrong, and bullshit!  You can make a masterpiece of a dish.  You can make the best dish the cooking world has ever known, but if you don't salt it properly, the world will never know.  The dish will be bland and boring.  I would guess that 90% of flavor problems can be solved with proper salting.  Salting is the first problem to be solved when adjusting the seasoning in a finished dish.  You simply cannot move onto the other problems if the salt issue has not been dealt with. 

So, how do we know when there is enough salt in the dish?  This is one of the most difficult techinques to learn in all of cooking.  It takes 1000's of dishes and years of practice to master.  It helps to learn it from someone who has mastered it, but I'll try to give you the basics here.

First there is the matter of what kind of salt to use.  I am partial to the bigger flakes of kosher salt.  I like the grain size, the taste, and the versatility.  The bigger grains don't dissolve as quickly and so form sort of a nice crusty-crunch on the outside of meats.  If I want smaller grains I just have to grind the salt gently between my fingers as I sprinkle it on whatever I'm salting.  Kosher salt also has a nice clean taste.  Some people prefer sea salt and I can't argue with them on this.  I actually prefer grey salt, which is a salt that comes from the north of France that is made by evaporating the water out of the Atlantic Ocean, for seasoning fish as the natural brininess of the salt pairs well with the fish.  But I do not like, and strongly council you against using, iodized salt. 

Second, salt throughout the entire process, not just at the end.  All you want to do at the end of the process is adjust the seasoning to it's final state.  By seasoning throughout you are ensuring a more rounded seasoning because the salt is allowed time to cook out it's sharpness.  Sometimes a salty sharpness is welcomed in the finished dish, which is a different problem, but not every time.

Third, when it comes time to adjust the final seasoning here is what you do:  As you taste the dish you are looking for a lack of flatness.  This might sound a bit strange, but I think of it as licking cardboard.  When something is flat, cardboard is the first thing I think of.  I know it's no longer flat when that imagery is gone.  For you it might be something different, but that's what works for me. Lack of flatness is the best way to describe it because sharpness is a completely different problem to be tackled once the dish has been salted correctly.  Look for this lack of flatness towards the back sides of your tongue; if it needs more salt you will feel it there.  You will know that it is salted correctly when you no longer taste the flatness there.  A word of warning, however.  You don't want to taste the dish more that 5 or 6 times in the final seasoning process.  After 6 or so tastes the palate begins to go numb and if you are not careful you can over season without realizing it.  Try to keep it under 5 tastes if possible. 

Under salting is a problem that a vast, vast majority of cooks out there do not tackle, but it is the most important problem if you want you food to taste amazing.  Proper seasoning is one of those characteristics that separates great cooks from mediocre cooks.  Learn to adjust the salt correctly and you will automatically be cooking better than most.

I'm Back

The philosopher Thomas Nagel once wrote, "Most people feel on occasion that life is absurd, and some feel it vividly and continually".  I am one of these people who feel it vividly and continually, and I have felt it for more years than I can remember.  To say that I spend time thinking about what all this means would be an understatement.  The fact is, I have spent the better part of 20 years trying to figure out what life is all about and what it all means, and believe me when I say that I have ran the gamut in trying to pin point what it is that I feel in such a profound degree.  Almost every book I read touches on it in some way; almost everything I do feels the effects of this central theme of my life.

I've been quiet here lately but that doesn't mean I don't have anything to say, on the contrary.  It's just I don't know how to say it.  I've been writing this post in my head for a couple months now, and have started it more than a couple times, each time deleting it because it just wasn't what I wanted to say.  I'm hoping today I get finally get it down.

The above quote from Thomas Nagel sums it up nicely for me.  Albert Camus pointed out that once a person confronts the absurd, he/she can never just let it go again; once confronted, the absurd will remain forever at the forefront of life.  Over the past few months I have finally understood what has been plaguing me for all these years.  It's not that I didn't know it intellectually, this part I've know for many years now, but not until somewhat recently did I know it deep down inside.  I finally get it, you could say.   Now, since the kitchen is the one place where I can confront life on terms I can understand, it is within these walls I try to answer the big questions of life.  My food and my approach to cooking sheds light on the overarching themes in my life, and that is why I started this blog, to explore why I cook, and in extension, why I live.

In a nut shell, the absurd is the conflict we feel when we desire inherent meaning in life and our inability to find it.  You can say I have tried so hard looking for meaning in my food in the attempt to understand meaning in my own life.  If I can find meaning in a saute pan, then perhaps I can find meaning in waking every morning.  But alas, I can't find meaning in my food, and this is the reason I have been silent on the blog for a couple months.  I've been trying to figure out, what now? 

My realization that cooking has no inherent meaning leaves me with two choices: 1) Quit cooking, 2) Cook anyway.  The first choice isn't really an option.  It might have the appearances of an option but at closer examination it is easy to see it is merely a mirage.  What would quiting cooking actually solve?  It doesn't get rid of the problem.  In fact, quiting cooking actually means I accept defeat, and this isn't something I do easily. The only thing quiting cooking would accomplish would be to put the problem off a little longer.  Eventually I would have to face it.

So, I cook.  The question before me then is how do I cook?  And I'm not talking about technique here.  I mean, how do I approach the kitchen now that I understand there is no real meaning there?  For me this is the crux of the issue.  Everything hangs on the balance of it's answer.  There is always the danger of nihilism setting in when a person is confronted with this question, but I am not a nihilistic person, nor am I a fatalist; much to my surprise, I discovered the opposite.  It is on this edge I have been perching for these past few months;  what now?  This what now in the kitchen will answer the what now of my life.  If I can understand what the absurd means to me as a cook, then I am sure I can understand what the absurd means to me as a person.

 Even now as I type I am still unsure what this means to me and my cooking.  I've been working on this version of the post for 29 days, and when I re-read it I don't seem to have said much as far as resolution is concerned.  But I want to post this anyway, even in it's unfinished form, because I need to move on to other things.  I do, however, feel a very profound sense of freedom; the freedom to be authentic.  I hope to flesh out some consequences of my past few months musings in the next couple posts, but for now this is going to have to due.