SpiceLines

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.

In Japan, cabbage, carrots and scallion are lightly "pickled" in salt. After a few hours, the
salt draws out the sweetness of the vegetables, which remain crunchy and fresh-tasting.

I’ve been using ancient Japanese sea salt a lot this week: Its delicate but fulsome flavor, the result of steeping pure Inland Sea salt water with seaweed--has become so irresistible that I’ve been nibbling it when no one is looking . I started to wonder: Do the Japanese use salt differently than we do?

In Hiroko Shimbo’s book, The Japanese Kitchen. I found a recipe for salt-pickled cabbage, or kyabetsu no sakuseki zuke, that is about as far from Kosher dills, bread and butter pickles and hot garlic dills as you can get. There’s no vinegar at all in this recipe, only salt, cabbage, carrot, peppery shiso leaf and the paste of a single umeboshi plum that has itself been pickled in salt. And unlike most Western pickles, this quick cabbage pickle tastes fresh and despite the salt, ever so slightly sweet.

For centuries, the Japanese have pickled vegetables in salty brine as a way of preserving them. But for more modern pickles, ready to eat in hours, Shimbo says that salt should amount to only 2 percent of the weight of the vegetables. Normally such pickling is done in a special pickling pot which has “an inner lid that is screwed down to apply the proper pressure to the vegetables,” But, she suggests, you can also put the vegetables in a container and top them with a plate weighted down with cans of food weighing about 2 pounds. After 5 hours in the refrigerator, you have a very mild, still fresh-tasting “pickle.”

I decided to try it, with a few small changes. I used both green and red cabbage to make it more colorful, and as shiso leaves are in short supply around here in January--my favorite Asian greengrocer mournfully held up a dead plant and said, “Not till summer”--I substituted slivered scallions. Obviously they lack shiso’s minty, peppery taste but I liked the mild onion flavor the scallions added to the pickle. And instead of buying whole umeboshi plums, I used a teaspoonful of sour, salty umeboshi paste.

I gave some thought to the salt. I made one batch with Oshima Island Red Label sea salt, a simple but expensive Japanese sea salt. And, quite profligately, I made another with fluffy French fleur de sel. The Oshima Island salt made a good pickle, but the fleur de sel coaxed all the sweetness of the cabbage to the fore. Shimbo, incldentally, just uses plain salt.

Be sure to eat the cabbage as soon as it is ready. At 5 hours, there is a pleasing balance of sweet and salty flavors, and, though slightly wilted, the cabbage is still crunchy. If it sits much longer, especially overnight, the salt will take over.

Quick Salt-Pickled Cabbage
(adapted from Hiroko Shimbo, The Japanese Kitchen)

Makes about 3 cups

Ingredients for the pickle:

1/2-pound green cabbage cut into 1-1/2 inch pieces
1/2-pound red cabbage, cut into 1-1/2 inch pieces
1 medium carrot, julienned
1 rounded teaspoon umeboshi paste (see note)
2 tablespoons mirin (sweet cooking wine) (see note)
3 scallions, green tops only, slivered and cut into 2-inch lengths
1 tablespoon sea salt
White sesame seeds, toasted (for garnish)
Shoyu (Japanese soy sauce) (see note)

Method:

1. Bring 2 quarts of water to boil. Put the cabbage and carrot in a colander and pour the boiling water over them. Cool the vegetables under cold running water and drain them well.
2. Mix the umeboshi paste with the mirin. In a large bowl, combine this mixture with the vegetables and the scallions. Add the salt and toss.
3. Put the vegetables in a flat-bottomed container, position a plate on top to cover them, and weight the plate with a clean stone or unopened food cans weighing about 2 pounds. Refrigerate for 5 hours.
4. Before serving, toast the sesame seeds: Heat a small skillet over a low to medium flame, then add the seeds and toast them, shaking the skillet occasionally, until the seeds are heated through and plump looking, about 1 to 2 minutes. Grind them coarsely in a mortar and pestle.
5. To serve, drain the liquid from the pickled cabbage. Sprinkle with the sesame seeds, drizzle with a little soy sauce and serve with grilled pork, chicken or meaty fish, such as swordfish, and rice.

Note: I found Eden Umeboshi Paste at Whole Foods. Mirin, shoyu, and, in season, shiso (or perilla) leaves, are available at Asian markets. Mirin and Japanese soy sauce can also be found in the international aisle of some supermarkets.