Johannesburg -The medical establishment has long warned us that salt is bad for us – on a par with smoking, too much liquor and nowadays, even sugar.
Yet, we simply cannot live without it. Salt, a chemical compound composed primarily of sodium chloride, preserves our food, purifies, flavours, and restores balance. In our bodies, sodium is required to perform a variety of essential functions, by helping maintain fluid in our blood cells and transmitting information in our nerves and muscles. It also helps our bodies absorb certain nutrients from our small intestines.
Since our bodies cannot produce salt, we require it from our diet – salt, as much as water, is the essence of life.
We take it for granted – this wonderful mineral that adds so much flavour. Yet the humble granule of salt should command more respect.
Craig Cormack is on a mission to change our perceptions by pairing wine with salt.
It’s not as bad as it sounds. Pairing wine with salt can be problematic because salt dominates wine. He admits: “As far as I am aware, I am the first chef in the world to pair food with different salts; dishes which have been designed for a specific flavour and taste, not only to fit a flavour profile, but also to pair a wine.
“I have been pairing wine and salts for the past six years, and my salt collection now numbers 100 (of about 150 different types globally).
“Salt can improve or destroy the taste of a wine. It also cuts through foods – sometimes giving the wine a flat taste, losing the flavours of the wine and making it taste insipid. It also tends to accentuate tannins and alcohol.
“Generally speaking, sweet wines pair very well with salt, while moderately sweet wines really step up to complement salt.
“A cabernet sauvignon will stand up well to salt, as will young and acidic wines, and those with a bit of wood.
“Salt generally breaks down wine, so to understand how a chemical like salt works with the compounds in a wine to bring out the best flavour in each one is hugely exciting.”
The challenge is to complement rather than dominate the wine.
It’s a passion for Cormack, who is a partner in the award-winning Stellenbosch restaurant Overture, with Bertus Basson. Cormack heads up their catering business, The Goose Roasters, and he offers salt and wine pairings exclusively with Fleur du Cap.
With Basson involved in filming the third season of Ultimate Braai Master, Cormack has his sights set on his own TV show – with the star of the show being salt, naturally.
Cormack envisages preparing dishes in exotic locations using the salt theme.
Salt, considered to be nature’s fifth element (after water, fire, earth and air), is an ancient natural product and an essential ingredient in food.
At a recent dinner hosted by Fleur du Cap winemaker Jaco van der Walt at the Angela Day kitchens in Randpark Ridge, Cormack made the introductions with biltong and popcorn, which he tossed into a pungent Pakistani salt known as kala namak and paired with FDC’s Bergkelder sauvignon blanc.
If you recall school experiments with yellow powdered sulphur, this black salt (actually a dirty brown) is all sulphur. It is pongy – and tastes sharply of hard-boiled eggs.
Another salt, Khoi San, is rolled by strong winds in the Kalahari into tiny balls that are too fragile for transportation – yet crumble into a tiny dust of the ocean between your fingertips. This was paired with a caperberry and anchovy pizzadaliere and the FDC Bergkelder chardonnay.
The rainbow trout, served with a fresh salad tossed with preserved lemons, was paired with Himalayan salt – readily available, the salt is 250 million years old and the colour variation is due to water leaching iron from the salt – and a smoky black lava salt, from Hawaii, which is blended with activated charcoal.
Dessert – roasted bananas with peanut brittle – was sprinkled with soft pink Murray River salt and served with the Fleur du Cap noble late harvest.
Cormack is evangelical about salt, saying the “good stuff” is pure, natural and good for us. While the bad stuff was created due to consumer demands – in particular, the addition of anticaking agents so the salt doesn’t get moist, and the bleach, to keep it white.
Possibly, we have ourselves to blame. Producers give us what we want. And, the more consumers demand natural, quality produce, the more we’ll get it.
l Cormack’s Amoleh range of salt is available at Yuppiechef. For more on his products, which include salt blocks, see thegooseroasters.co.za.
The history of salt
* In ancient times, Roman soldiers were paid “salarium argentum” – salt money – from which the word “salary” was derived. They fought wars over the control of salt trading routes.
* More than 4 700 years ago, the Chinese recorded about 40 different types of salt.
* The ancient Egyptians preserved food – and their mummies – using various salts.
* Salt was valued so highly in some societies that it was traded as a currency – in Ethiopia, the salt slab currency was known as Amoleh.
* In Columbia, the Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá is an underground Roman Catholic church built within the tunnels of a salt mine 200m underground in a halite mountain. It is a popular tourist destination and place of pilgrimage.
* In Poland, construction on the Wieliczka salt mine in southern Poland started in the 13th century, ending in 2007. One of the world’s oldest salt mines still in operation, the mine houses dozens of statues, three chapels and a cathedral carved out of the rock salt. It’s one of Poland’s official national historic monuments.
* Mahatma Gandhi famously defied the salt monopoly of India’s colonial masters Britain by leading the Salt March, or the Salt Satyagraha, in 1930, as an important part of the Indian independence movement, which triggered the country’s civil disobedience movement. Gandhi also chose the 1882 British Salt Act as the first target of Satyagraha.
Saturday Star