SpiceLines

Beguiled in Santa Fe, after a glass of Prosecco
and a plate of green chile mashed potatoes at
Santa Cafe..

OK, what is SpiceLines?

It’s my spice blog. It’s the place where you’ll discover absolutely everything about spices and good living.

How modest. And you are…?

Courtenay Beinhorn Dunk. Obsessive cook, style fanatic, avid traveler, reluctant writer, food photographer when the light is right.

So what will I find on SpiceLines?

Spicy recipes, interviews with chefs like Floyd Cardoz and Susana Trilling, reviews of irresistible books like Jame’s Oseland’s Cradle of Flavor, basics such as “How to Peel a Clove of Garlic.” There’s a growing section on tools of the trade—see our entries on Spice Grinders under $30 and the Best Peppermills. Check out Travel Diary for my trip to Vera Cruz. And there’s SpiceTales, an adventure story with episodes posted by Claire, when she feels like it.

Who is Claire?

A red-headed food writer whose impulsive marriage to an Italo-Indian plant hunter seems to have dead-ended in a murder. Now her husband has vanished and his identical twin brother has landed on her doorstep. Other than that, I don’t know much--except that her husband’s name is Marco Polo. You can check out all the episodes to date by clicking on SpiceTales under Categories.

What’s coming for 2007?

Better living through spices. Designer mortars and pestles. Forays into tropical gardening. How mustard heals burns and other entries on the science of spice. Ancient Japanese sea salt. Travel to Sweden, maybe Bhutan, certainly Paris. Vietnamese cookbooks.

How did SpiceLines get started?

I’ve loved spicy food forever. I grew up in San Antonio, which means that my friends and I cut our teeth on Tex-Mex: nachos with super-hot jalapenos, cheesy enchiladas with chile con carne, and oceans of salsa. But thanks to great cooks like Aurora Rodriguez and family trips to Mexico, I was also eating more authentic regional fare: delicately battered and fried chiles rellenos stuffed with picadillo, huachinango (redfish) a la veracruzana, and mole poblano with cinnamon-flavored chocolate and three or four kinds of chiles. Our kitchen sizzled with garlic and cumin. It’s an irresistible smell that makes me feel warm and happy, even today.

After college and film school, I moved to New York, worked on a couple of movies, and finally learned to cook. I discovered French, Japanese and Cuban food and wrote the occasional piece for Food & Wine and The New York Times. Then came the mesquite-grilling craze. Our family place was thick with mesquite and we had always used the wood for cooking, so I did a book—Beinhorn’s Mesquite Cookery—with recipes like Quail in Lime and Tequila that used the great food I grew up with as a starting point.

Mesquite was the '80's, right? Power suits and Boy George?

Excuse me. The ‘80s were a great decade. I spent ten years eating my way through Chinatown, reading every word M.F.K. Fisher ever wrote, writing about fine teas and Japanese appetizers, learning to cook stuff like sweetbreads and soufflés.

So what about spices?

The more I traveled, the more I noticed that spices and their flavors are global. It’s the local tastes that are different.

When I ate fish head curry in Singapore I could taste the earthiness of the cumin that flavors carrot salad in Morocco and tomatillo salsa in Mexico. In Paris at Ze Kitchen Galerie, William Ledeuil used flowery Tahitian vanilla to bring out the sea-sweet taste of perfectly fresh sea bass. In the West we think of cinnamon as a dessert spice, yet at La Maison Bleue in Fez, it was the dominant spice in a savory 14th century lamb and couscous dish.

Spices are everywhere?

They are the “lines,” if you will, that cross the globe and link people everywhere together. Dishes may taste different in Morocco and Mexico, or in the 14th and 21st centuries, but the flavor echoes are startlingly familiar. My hunch is that if we could sit down together at one table, we might be able to eat our way to understanding one another.

On a lighter note, what’s your favorite spice?

I adore pepper of all kinds—black, white, green. Black pepper goes onto almost everything, from smoked salmon and watermelon at breakfast to tonight’s martinis with pickled green tomatoes. Our house pepper is Indian Special Extra Bold Black Peppercorns from Penzeys—unbelievably fresh, big, explosive.

What’s your favorite pepper mill?

It’s the Atlas, which is modeled after a Greek coffee grinder that soldiers carried into the field. It’s tall and slender, made of copper, and has a crank top. When you grind, you can literally feel the mechanism pulverizing the peppercorns. It’s very satisfying and beautiful enough to go from the kitchen counter to the table. Bill and I are leaving one to each of our children in our wills.

What’s the most exotic spice you use?

At the moment, the most exotic spice I’m using is actually a Moroccan blend—ras el hanout, which means “top of the shop,” or the spice merchant’s best blend. Some friends shared a packet of whole spices that came from an herboriste in Marrakesh: it’s full of some extremely weird roots and seeds that none of us can identify, plus peppercorns, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon and galangal, which is related to ginger. It’s incredibly pungent and just a tiny pinch is enough to flavor whatever you’re cooking.

What’s in your kitchen library?

Probably 300 cookbooks. A complete set of Saveur. The first 90 issues of Simple Cooking, John Thorne’s exceptional food newsletter. Whenever I’m tempted to slough off, by example John holds me to a higher standard.

What books can’t you can’t live without?

Ian Hemphill’s Spice and Herb Bible. Ian is an Australian spice merchant who has literally spent his life in the spice and herb business. His book is really a wonderfully detailed encylopedia, plus it has entries on unfamiliar Australian seasonings like lemon myrtle and wattleseed.

And Harold Magee’s On Food and Cooking. The second edition has a great section on spices and their chemical make-up. It goes a long way towards explaining why pepper and cinnamon taste the way they do.

What’s your favorite piece of kitchen equipment?

That’s hard. There’s the mortar and pestle I lugged back from Singapore 12 years ago. It’s made of volcanic stone and is wonderful for grinding “wet” ingredients like fresh ginger and garlic, lemon grass, etc.

I really adore my tagine. It’s a two-piece earthenware cookpot from Marrakesh, made of a special clay from Ourika in the low Atlas mountains. You layer your food in the bottom and then simmer it over a low flame for a couple of hours. The conical top captures the steam and bastes the food while it’s cooking—all the flavors mingle and the dish becomes rich and aromatic. There’s a great recipe on SpiceLines for Chicken Tagine with Green Olives, Carrots and Preserved Lemon.

But I just got a sharkskin-covered wasabi grater. It is the most beautiful object, a perfect merger of form and function. I don’t have any fresh wasabi root at the moment, so I’ll probably try grating fresh ginger.

Favorite travel destinations?

Paris, Bali, Santa Fe, Vera Cruz, Fez. In the offing: South India, Bhutan, Sweden.

Where do you buy your spices?

My favorite shop is in the Marais in Paris. The owner is a 6th generation saffron merchant and he has a big apothecary jar of the most ravishing red-gold saffron on his counter. The smell is out of this world, The shop actually has a “sniffing bar” where you can almost get high on spices like nutmeg and mace. Often the spices at specialty shops in France are more vivid than in America. If you read Didier Corlou’s cookbook, A la Verticale des Epices, you begin to suspect that the French enjoy a deeply sensuous appreciation for spices that doesn’t exist here in the States.

I also love Christina’s in Cambridge, Mass. which always has something new and offbeat to try. That’s where I discovered smoked black Mexican salt—it’s very intense, but used sparingly, it adds a mysterious undertone to meaty stews. Kalustyans in New York has a huge selection of spices from many countries. I love their rose-scented spice mix for chai.

And for ordering spices on line, you can’t beat Penzeys. Their whole spices are very fresh and the selection is amazing: seven kinds of peppercorns from India, Indonesia and Malaysia; vanilla from Madagascar, Mexico and Tahiti. You can also get true cinnamon from Sri Lanka and compare it with cassia (which is sold as cinnamon in the U.S.) from Vietnam, China and Indonesia. Each one is distinctly different.

What do you wear when you’re cooking?

Bare feet. Gap Favorite T and Joe’s Jeans. All my T-shirts have turmeric stains, but I’ll never wear an apron.

What are you cooking tonight?

Chicken enchiladas with tomatillo sauce. It’s real comfort food, rich and cheesy, but punched up with Serrano chilies and tart tomatillos. The interplay of flavors is just amazing.

Some ingredients for the enchiladas include, clockwise from top left: onion,
corn tortillas, serrano chiles, tomatillos, garlic and cilantro.

Comfort food. What is it?

Here’s my story: I’m coming home from school--a little bedraggled, uniform awry, hair a mess--and there’s Aurora with features that could have come from an Aztec stone carving, standing impassively at the stove in her checked purple and white apron, as she stirs a pot of frijoles borrachas, or chops tomatoes and chiles for pico de gallo. I go straight from the kitchen door to the stove, swerving only for a spoon, to taste food so deliciously familiar that one mouthful obliterates the day’s snubs and flubs.

Aurora smiles, just a little.

For most of us, comfort food means tastes, aromas, maybe even textures that transport us to a warm, safe, happy place. I was lucky to have Aurora, and she had her mother, Maria Ynez Ramirez. Maria Ynez was a laundress by profession. By instinct, she was a cook who could replicate a dish simply by tasting it once. As Aurora tells it, her garden in Ranchito Providencia was rich with herbs like romero (rosemary), tomillo (thyme), and hierba buena (mint). There were vegetables--elote (corn), calabaza (squash), jitomate (tomato), frijoles (beans)--and a wealth of chiles—piquin, cascabel, jalapeno, serrano, pasilla. Goats, chickens, turkeys and pigs were tethered or corralled nearby.

At Christmas, Maria Ynez would cook for more than 60 people from their rancho: a whole roasted pig, stacks of paper-thin, crisply fried bunuelos, scores of tamales, vats of atole. For fiestas, there was turkey mole. or chivo vaporera, a year-old kid steamed over pot of simmering water and served in its own broth. She had a battery of enormous earthenware cazulelas or pots, and everything was cooked in an outdoor oven or on a fogon, a rustic grill positioned over an open fire.

A few years ago Aurora and I started to write down a few of her mother’s recipes. I love the way Orejones de Calabaza ("Big Ears" of Squash) begins: “When the weather turns cold and the last crop of calabaza india has been picked, cut the calabazas into thin slices and dry them on the spines of the nopal cactus for five days….” Calabaza india is a round native squash that can be white, black, grey or cream-colored; when picked young, it is tender; when old it is as hard as a coconut. It was dried on thorns since the air could circulate and dry the slices more quickly. It's this sort of detail that convinces me that Maria Ynez was an unsung national treasure.

For me comfort food begins with the earthy aromas of sizzling cumin and garlic, two spices Aurora uses abundantly in her Enchiladas de Pollo en Salsa de Tomatillo: Chicken Enchiladas in Tomatillo Sauce. A whole chicken is roasted with cumin and garlic, then shredded and rolled into corn tortillas which have been dipped in tart tomatillo sauce simmered with cilantro and hot serrano chiles. The enchiladas are covered with mild cheese—Aurora always uses a mixture of Monterrey Jack and Muenster—and baked until the cheese bubbles and turns golden.

You must use corn tortillas for this recipe. I wouldn’t dream of trying it with flour tortillas: it seems to me that they would make the dish much too starchy. Corn tortillas absorb just the right amount of tomatillo sauce, becoming supple and tender enough to wrap around the chicken, and their slightly earthy taste mingles perfectly with the flavors of the cumin and cheese. If you live in a city where tortillas are freshly made, you are ten steps ahead. Otherwise, root around in the refrigerated case at your supermarket: usually you can find two or three packages of corn tortillas tucked behind the mountains of flour tortillas.

As for the tomatillos, you can probably find them in the produce section of your supermarket. These bright green fruits encased in papery husks are an ancient food that can be traced to Mexico’s pre-Columbian past. Like ordinary tomatoes, they are members of the nightshade family: the names for both derive from the Nahuatl tomatl which, according to www.hortpurdue.edu, referred generically to “globose fruits or berries which have many seeds, watery flesh and which are sometimes enclosed in a membrane.” Tomatillos have a very tart, fresh taste that creates a wonderful interplay of flavors with the succulent chicken, rich cheese and spicy chiles.

I love to make this dish when it is gloomy and cold outside. It will take the better part of a day, though most of the hands-on time occurs during the assembly process. Your kitchen will likely be a mess, counters splotched with sauce and oil, onion crunched underfoot, but the whole house will be warm and fragrant with enticing aromas. Besides, you can only get comfortable when there’s a little messiness around.

Aurora’s Chicken Enchiladas in Tomatillo Sauce

To serve four

Ingredients for the sauce:

3 pounds tomatillos
12 cloves garlic
4 teaspoons cumin seed
3 serrano peppers, seeded and chopped
2 tablespoons water
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 bunch cilantro, finely chopped
Salt to taste

Ingredients for the chicken:

1 4-pound roasting chicken
1 tablespoon garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon cumin seed
Salt to taste
Canola oil
Additional garlic and cumin to taste

Ingredients for enchiladas:

18 corn tortillas, 6 inches in diameter
Canola oil
4 cups tomatillo sauce (see below)
4 cups shredded chicken (see below)
1 large onion, finely chopped
1-1/2 cups shredded Monterrey Jack cheese
1-1/2 cups shredded Muenster cheese

Method:

1. For the tomatillo sauce: Remove the papery husks from the tomatillos, wash them well and cut them half. Put them in a pot with the garlic, cumin, serrano peppers and 2 tablespoons of water. (The tomatillos exude a lot of liquid, so this is just to get them started.) Cook, covered, over a medium flame for 30 minutes, or until the tomatillos are very soft.
2. Put the tomatillo mixture and all its liquid in a blender or food processor and whirr for 10 to 15 seconds. Do not over-process. Return the sauce to the pot, add the onion and cilantro, and cook, covered, for 15 minutes longer. Add salt to taste and set aside. (The sauce can be made a couple of days ahead and refrigerated until needed.)
3. For the chicken: Set the oven to 350 degrees. Rinse the chicken and pat it dry, inside and out. Rub it all over with canola oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Mix the garlic and cumin and rub it over the chicken and in the cavity. Put it in a roasting pan and roast for one hour and 15-20 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through. Remove and set aside to cool. Reserve the pan juices.
4. When the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the skin and discard. Strip off the meat and shred it with your fingers into bite-size pieces. You should have about 4 cups of meat. Moisten the chicken with a spoonful or two of the reserved juices and mix it with additional cumin and garlic, as desired. Add salt to taste.
5. For the enchiladas, set up an assembly line as follows: On the left front burner of your stove, place a small cast iron frying pan or skillet filled with 1/4-inch canola oil over a medium-low flame. Next to it place the tomatillo sauce in a shallow saucepan over a low flame. Next to that arrange in succession a large plate, a bowl with the shredded chicken, a bowl of the chopped onion and a 9- X 13-inch baking dish.
6. To assemble the enchiladas, use a spatula to place a tortilla in the hot oil for 4 to 5 seconds. (Tongs will probably tear a hole in the tortilla.) Let it puff slightly, then turn and cook it for another 4 to 5 seconds. With the spatula, immediately transfer the tortilla to the pan with the tomatillo salsa and press it down briefy so that it can absorb a little sauce. Remove the tortilla to the plate and lay it out flat.
7. On the tortilla, place some chicken and sprinkle it with chopped onion. Roll the tortilla up into a cylinder and place it in the baking dish. Repeat with the remaining tortillas. You should be able to squeeze 18 enchiladas into the baking dish—12 of them vertically and 6 horizontally. Spread the remaining tomatillo sauce and any leftover onion over the top of the enchiladas and sprinkle with the mixed cheeses.
8. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until the cheese is bubbling and has started to brown. Remove from the oven and serve immediately, accompanied by a simple green salad and cold beer.

Handmade salt from the Seto-uchi Inland Sea in Japan is infused with the color
and rich flavor of hon'dawara seaweed in a process that dates back 2,500 years.

“Japan has a long and meandering coastline that would otherwise provide ideal tidal ponds and inlets for sea salt production, but its humid climate with regular storms and periodic flooding renders it a salt region of high cost and low production.”

Mark Kurlansky in Salt: A World History

A few years ago when exotic sea salts were suddenly every gourmand’s darling, I began ordering tiny bags and boxes of salt from the far corners of the globe. They came in a flood—creamy Fleur de Sel de Guerande, fine-textured Oshima Island Blue Label from Japan, mellow Flor de Sel from Portugal, and many, many more. And soon I was sautéing fingerling potatoes, steaming halibut, even frying eggs, showering rare salts over everything in the interest of research. Occasionally I had the niggling feeling that all this sodium chloride was a bit like the emperor's new clothes: as exquisite as many of these rare salts seemed, in end they basically tasted…salty.

As Vogue food critic Jeffrey Steingarten wrote in “Salt Chic,” (March, 2001), it is unclear how well our taste buds can actually distinguish one salt from another. To answer this burning question, Steingarten and two friendly scientists devised a controlled experiment in a British “taste” laboratory. Twenty panelists sat in individual booths in which the air was kept at 72 degrees, sipping saline solutions in which 13 salts—“chic” and otherwise--had been dissolved. Disaster: most could not detect the difference between to-die-for Fleur de Sel from the Ile de Re and ordinary Diamond Crystal table salt. This is the exotic salt lover’s dilemma: Could it be that, in the dark, all salts taste alike?

No they do not. Some, like Amabito No Moshio, a artisanal Japanese sea salt, are wonderfully distinctive. The word “Moshio,” (literally “seaweed salt”) refers to an ancient salt ash produced nearly 2,500 years ago on the tiny island of Kami-Kamagari in the Seto-uchi Inland Sea. Its very existence is proof of man’s ingenuity—and of our utter craving for sodium chloride. Because of Japan’s watery climate, the early islanders had to figure out how to extract salt from sea water without benefit of a hot sun. They invented a complex process in which seaweed was dried on the beach, then bathed it in a pool of pure sea water. Finally, they boiled the briny mixture in a clay pot over a wood fire: The water gradually evaporated, leaving behind salt crystals and ash from the seaweed. This was Moshio.

Cut to the present day. In 1984, archaeologists on Kami-Kamagari dug up a salt pot dating from the 3rd or 4th century AD. This discovery inspired the islanders to begin making salt again in the traditional way. The modern version is called Amabito No Moshio--roughly, “seaweed salt of a person of the sea.” Normally one wouldn’t describe salt as “delicious,” but this one is.

The salt is still made mostly by hand, though with a high tech twist. Pure salt water from the Inland Sea is collected in a large pool where it is remains until the liquid begins to evaporate, creating a briny solution. Next it is infused with Hon’dawara seaweed; it is this all- important step that gives Moshio its distinctive flavor and pale beige hue. The solution is then cooked in a large iron pot until the water evaporates and begins to crystallize into “a mass resembling a chunky sherbet.” Then technology takes over as a centrifuge extracts more water from the ”sherbet.” Finally, the remaining mass is cooked in a pot over an open fire, while being stirred with a wooden paddle, creating dry, “free flowing granules.” Every day, the Kamagari Bussan Company goes through 10 tons of seawater just to yield 200 kilos of salt.

So is all that effort worth it? Unlike Crag Claiborne, who once confessed to eating salt right out of the cellar, I don’t usually nibble salt by itself, but I could not stop tasting pinches of Amabito No Moshio. Like some types of fleur de sel, the delicate, pale beige crystals almost fizz as they dissolve, leaving a light, refreshing sea-sweetness in the mouth. But it is the rich, complex flavor that really sets this salt apart: Not only is it unusually high in minerals like potassium and magnesium, but it also has that mysterious, rounded “brothy” taste known as ‘umami.” Umami means “delicious” in Japanese and it is often referred to as the fifth taste, after sweet, salty, sour and bitter. According to Harold Magee in On Food and Cooking, in 1908 a Japanese scientist named Kikunae Ikeda identified kombu, a type of seaweed, as a natural source for monosodium glutamate. “He also found that MSG provides a unique savory taste sensation…and…pointed out that other foods, including meats and cheese, also provide it.”

So there you have it: This rare, handmade sea salt brings out the flavor of foods in much the same way as the evil MSG, but without the headaches. Like fleur de sel, it is so ethereal that one might use it only as a finishing salt. MTC, the New York-based importer, suggests using it as a condiment for tempura, sushi, sashimi or grilled seafood and meat—all foods with a bit of oil or fattiness. And indeed, on Christmas Day, we found that a sprinkling of this delicate sea salt enhanced the rich, meaty flavor of rare-roasted beef tenderloin.

Since then I’ve been experimenting. I love to shower Moshio over slow-roasted baby golden or yellow-fleshed potatoes. Simply prick and roast the potatoes in a 350 oven for a couple of hours, then cut them open and drizzle with a few drops of olive oil. Sprinkle the potatoes with a little Amabito No Moshio and eat them with your fingers while still warm. The taste of the salt brings out the tubers’ earthy sweetness in a way that no ordinary salt can. It helps, of course, to engage in “mindful eating” while you’re savoring the potatoes—if you’re simply chatting with a friend while popping them into your mouth, you might say “Oh, these are great,” but not quite grasp their uniqueness.

A very different way to use Moshio is for salt-grilling fish—this will be the subject of my next post, but let me say now that it is quite extraordinary, involving washing the fish in two changes of salted water and sprinkling more salt over the fish before grilling.

Mark Kurlansky writes that in 1905, when the Japanese government created a salt monopoly, it determined that the Seto Inland Sea was the best locale for salt production “because it was sheltered between two islands in a relatively southern climate.” The salt beds between Osaka and Hiroshima were destroyed during World War II, but restored during the 1950’s. This is approximately the same area in which Moshio is now made.

Amabito No Moshio is imported by MTC, www.nymtc.com and is available at retail from www.atthemeadow.com.

For lots more about salt, see Mark Kurlansky, Salt: A World History (New York: Walker and Company, 2002. Jeffrey Steingarten’s article, “Salt Chic,” can be found in It Must Have Been Something I Ate (New York: Random House, 2002). To read about some of the other salts I’ve tasted, see www.globalprovince.com. Click on Best of Class and enter “Salt” in the Google Search Box.

Have you noticed the exotic coconut and tamarind curries cuddling up to vats of pineapple salsa and jars of pasta sauce at Costco lately? Indian convenience foods are flooding into the US, says Monica Bhide in “Tikka in No Time” (Washington Post, January 24, 2007). “More than 1,200 Indian food products have been introduced in the United States since 2000—almost 300 of them in 2006,” she writes. Among the most popular items at one Washington-area market are “ready-made potato-stuffed breads, onion breads, nans, tandoori breads and spiced breads from Deep or Pillsbury…”

Pillsbury? Well, yes. According to the Boston Globe, General Mills, “a long time player in the international market,” has been importing frozen flatbreads from India for the last four years and selling them in Doughboy-emblazoned packaging. In “Frozen Indian Foods Catch on in US" (July 12, 2006), Lylah M. Alphonse writes that in the Greater Boston Area Indian groceries are selling “heat-and-eat treats like samosas and spicy vegetable curries…along with pre-fried chunks of paneer, a soft Indian cheese used in many vegetarian dishes, and ice creams in flavors…such as mango and pistachio…”

It’s those convenient coconut and tamarind curries that have really won my heart. Made by Maya Kaimal, author of Savoring the Spice Coast of India and winner of an IACP Julia Child Award for her first book, Curried Favors: Family Recipes from South India, they are sold at Costco and Whole Foods. Intensely flavored with ginger, sour tamarind, green chilies and other spices, they are the best kind of convenience food: good enough to eat right out of the container, standing up in the kitchen. Come to think of it, they’ve never lasted long enough for me to actually cook with them.

Whatever happened to table salt? Here, a selection of gourmet salts; from left to right, top:
kosher salt, black lava salt; middle: vanilla-flavored sea salt, fleur de sel; bottom, pink Himalayan salt.

Mark Kurlansky, who wrote Salt: A World History, was in town a few days ago. He’s a portly guy with a mop of curly white hair that tumbles over his forehead. Florid of face. bearded and bespectacled, he wears an expression that hovers between exasperation and rascally good humor. He looks like a man who might follow Diamond Jim Brady’s gastronomic advice: “Sit four inches from the table and eat until your stomach touches it”—and relish every bite.

Diamond Jim, the famed 19th century New York railroad baron, gourmand, and admirer of Lillian Russell, was talking about oysters, of course, and Kurlanksy was here to read from his more recent epic, The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell. But I’ve been thinking a lot about salt, so naturally I had to ask what varieties he favors. He grinned broadly, gazed into the distance, then looked back at me: “I have so much salt in my kitchen from writing that book that I’ll never use it up.” He continued: “But I like fleur de sel for sprinkling over salads, and I use fine salt for baking. Some people like finding big pieces of salt in baked goods, but I don’t. And there’s a coarse-grained Basque salt—Ana—which I really like.”

Immediately my mind raced: Basque Ana? How can I get hold of some? Every few days I seem to run across an elusive new salt, one that simply has to be tracked down by mail, internet or phone. But it’s impossible to keep up. The salt world is spinning out of control and the vast array of choices can short out your brain circuitry: fluffy white salt from Cyprus, rose-colored Bolivian salt hand-harvested in the Andes from ancient lava-covered sea beds, and coconut and kaffir lime Balinese smoked salt are just the latest to set my head spinning.

There is already a glut of sodium chloride in my pantry, enough to keep a whole village in well-salted high blood pressure for a decade. Maldon Sea Salt, smoked black Mexican salt, a creamy colored sea salt from the coast of Oaxaca, sel gris from Guerande, Blue and Red Label Salts from Oshima Island, a Japanese salt made from pure seawater infused with seaweed, black lava salt, fleur de sel from Brittany, rosy pink salt from Jurassic sea beds in the Himalayas, red Hawaiian alaea salt, flaky Welsh Halen Mon salt flavored with Tahitian vanilla-- and there’s even more on the next shelf.

The secret to salt sanity is to pare down. Kurlansky quite sensibly has gravitated to three major categories: An elegant finishing salt, a fine salt for baking and a coarse salt for a bit of crunch. I’d add two more: a basic everyday salt and fifth category of fun salts for fooling around.

Here are the five essential salts for your pantry:

1. Basic Everyday Salt: This should be an inexpensive salt that you can keep in a dish by the stove, to sprinkle into pasta water, to mix into marinades, to season scrambled eggs, to whisk into salad dressing and for a thousand other uses.

Kosher salt is my favorite everyday salt, and the choice of many chefs. It’s the little black dress of salts—always appropriate, always in style. As Michele Anna Jordan wrote in Salt & Pepper, it is “…my default salt, the one I carry in my purse or pocket in a discreet little wooden box, just in case…” Besides seasoning, you can use it to make a brine for the Thanksgiving turkey, as a rub for grilled meats, or for rimming margarita glasses.

Chefs like kosher salt because its odd-shaped crystals are larger than those of ordinary table salt. This makes it easier to take a hefty pinch and sprinkle it evenly over a dish; it also affords more control over the saltiness of the dish. When it dissolves, it produces a pleasing burst of salty flavor.

Diamond Crystal, produced by the patented Alberger process, has no additives. It’s just pure salt with large irregularly shaped crystals that make flavors sing. It is available in supermarkets or from amazon.com (3 lbs., $2.09). Morton’s Kosher Salt has flatter crystals, with “yellow prussiate of soda” added to keep it from clumping (3 lbs., $1.59 at most supermarkets).

2. Fine Sea Salt for Baking: Still there's one problem with kosher salt. It doesn’t always dissolve in batter, especially if there’s not much liquid. This can produce brownies booby-trapped with tiny salt bombs--great if you love salt with your chocolate, not so great if you just want a delicious brownie. Instead, choose a fine sea salt that will dissolve more easily in thick batter.

Although many sea salts derive their briny sweet flavor from high levels of potassium and magnesium, a mineral taste is not always desirable in baking. One option is to use a refined sea salt, such as La Baleine Sea Salt Fine Crytals which has been produced in the French Camargue since 1856. It is pure white and tastes simply of salt, though a “magnesia anti-caking agent” has been added. Happily, it does not have the metallic flavor of ordinary table salt. Available at Whole Foods (26.5 oz, $2.99) or from saltworks.us ($3.49)

3. Finishing salt: In this category are the expensive, premium salts which are used almost as condiments. It includes French fleur de sel (literally “flower of salt”) which is the “cream” or “caviar” (Patricia Wells’ words, not mine) of sea salt hand-harvested from salt ponds in Brittany near the town of Guerande. On warm summer afternoons when a dry wind blows from the east, the paludiers (artisan harvesters) skim the finest, whitest, fluffiest crystals that have evaporated around the edge of the salt ponds and place them in a wicker basket to dry. This is the legendary fleur de sel and according to Saltworks, for every 80 pounds of sel gris (grey salt) that is harvested, the paludiers rake only 3 pounds of fleur de sel.

Fleur de sel from M. Gilles Hervey is creamy and slightly moist, with irregularly shaped crystals ranging from very large to very small. When I first tasted it a few years ago, I described its flavor as delicate, with an elusive saltiness that waxes and wanes on the tongue until it dissolves, leaving a lingering sweetness. (For more, see globalprovince.com.) Use fleur de sel sparingly to season fingerling potatoes that have been slowly cooked in butter, on luscious summer tomatoes layered with goat cheese, or on grilled meats and fish. Saltworks suggests dipping radishes in fleur de sel and eating them with sweet butter and pieces of baguette. At saltworks.us, (5.4 oz, $13.50).

A cousin of fleur de sel is made in Portugal, where traditional salt beds in the Algarve have been revived after decades of neglect. Flor de sal, as it is called, has thin, flat, white crystals with an intensely salty flavor that quickly mellows and becomes mildly sweet. At zingermans.com, (250 grams, $10).

Finally, I would put Maldon Sea Salt in the category of finishing salts. Although many people use it as high end, rather expensive table salt. its crumbly, pyramid-shaped white crystals, delicate crunch and light taste of the sea make it an ideal condiment. I happen to like it on oatmeal simmered in milk until creamy, but it can be used exactly as you would any other fleur de sel. Harvested in traditional salt beds in Essex, England; at chefshop.com (8.5 oz., $7.49).

4. Coarse sea salt: An appealing choice when you want a bit of crunch. Sprinkle coarse sea salt over a salad, steamed vegetables or roasted or grilled meats. If the grains are very large, you may need to run them through a salt grinder or crush them in a mortar and pestle.

There are two that I especially like: Sel Gris de Guerande is pale gray sea salt raked from the salt beds in Brittany during the hot summer months (this is the layer below the fleur de sel). It is slightly damp, with wonderfully crunchy, irregularly shaped crystals that have a fleetingly sharp taste that quickly turns full and sweet. Right now I’m using sel gris from L’Epicerie in Paris; other brands can be found at chefshop.com and saltworks.us.

I confess also to an unfashionable fondness for Alaea Lava Red Hawaiian Salt, a coarse sea salt from the island of Kaua’i which is mixed with volcanic red clay. The iron oxide in the clay gives the salt a dusty red-orange hue; it is said to have healthy benefits. Purists object to the clay, but I’ve found that the Alaea salt has a lovely, mellow flavor that makes it great on just about everything from roast pork to steamed vegetables dressed with lemon juice and a little oilve oil. I get mine directly from hawaiisalt.com (16 oz., $7.39)

5. An experimental salt: This is the crazy category, one where you can keep trying all the new salts flooding the market. It includes smoked salts, salts mixed with herbs or spices, and offbeat salts from exotic parts of the world.

Smoked salts from Maine to the Pacific Northwest are big right now. I like the powerful Mexican Black Smoked Salt which gives a delicious smoky undertone to venison or beef chili made with ancho and chipolte peppers. It is available at Christina’s Spice Shop in Cambridge, MA. No website. Telephone: 617-492-7021.

Moving closer to the fringe is Halen Mon Vanilla Sea Salt flavored with ground up Tahitian vanilla beans. The contrast of the large flaky crystals with the sweet, distinctly floral taste of the vanilla is intriguing. Chefshop suggests sprinkling it over scallops or meaty white fish such as halibut—I plan to try it on shrimp cooked in white wine and chicken stock, with a touch of lime. It’s also interesting with chocolate. A keeper? Stay tuned. At chefshop.com (2.1 oz., $10.99)

As for exotic parts of the world, Himalayan pink salt, extracted from Jurassic-era sea beds, has 84 trace minerals and iron; it is said to stimulate the circulation, lower blood pressure, and heal other ailments. Hmmm… It has a powerfully salty taste with a sharp bite than never quite fades. But it’s very pretty, although the chunkiest crystals are too big to use without grinding. At saltworks.com (7 oz., $14.99).