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| Thursday, February 28, 2008
Ingrained Writer : Chris TanChris Tan expounds on the uses of salt in the kitchen with references to the salt bible. The result is an insightful take on the teachings of Christ and how it applies to us.  (1) saltHave you ever been confronted with bland soup? If you have, you know how different, how much better, it tastes after you add a sprinkle of salt to it. It's almost mystical, how a few colourless grains can transform blandness, adding contours and shape to what was previously flat. What is salt? Salt is good. (Luke 14:34) Salt is the unexpected union of two violent elements, the one combustible, the other noxious. Each tames the other, and the resulting marriage is a mystery, as pure and safe as its precursors are dangerous. Salt is neither boring nor uniform. Salt can be grey, pale pink, pale brown, dark red, even a smoky purple-black that becomes a delicate pastel rose when crushed. It can be as many different whites as the Eskimos have apocryphally different snows. Blinding, fluorescent white, soft and gentle white, crunchy and glittering white. There is salt (which is named fleur de sel, flower of salt) with a demure, mild character. There is salt whose crystals bear sharp edges that can cut. There is salt that dissolves especially quickly, permeating its surroundings. There is salt that must be ground down before it can be used. There is salt that is mined as solid rocks, chips cut off ancient seas. What is the meaning of salt? Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.(Leviticus 2:13) Don't you know that the LORD, the God of Israel, has given the kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a covenant of salt? (2 Chronicles 13:5) Then he went out to the spring and threw the salt into it, saying, "This is what the LORD says: 'I have healed this water. Never again will it cause death or make the land unproductive.' " And the water has remained wholesome to this day, according to the word Elisha had spoken. (2 Kings 2:21-22) Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.(Colossians 4:6) As a cook I have learnt how important salt is to food (and thus life). It preserves: it seasons; it lifts other flavours; it mediates; it cleans. Cocoonings in salt baths cause the transformation of some ingredients into wholly different entities. Anchovies become fish sauce, salmon becomes gravlax, haunches of pig become prosciutto, legumes become soy sauce and miso and bean paste. You are the salt of the earth. (Matthew 5:13) Many ingredients only reveal their true flavours with the help of salt as a background note. Salt can bring out dimensions and subtleties that would otherwise stay hidden. Our head Chef has given us a mandate to be the same in the soup of the world. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. (Matthew 5:13) As a cook, I also know the worthlessness of salt that is not salty. Low-sodium substitutes, tasted on their own, are metallic and flat, a bitter void on the tongue. There is no culinary replacement for salt, no, not one. And then there are the artificial flavour enhancers, monosodium glutamate, sodium inosinate, and other jumbles of syllables that tangle the tongue and jangle its tastebuds. On their own, these man-made counterfeits of salt have no integrity, merely ghosts of tastes that promise sweetness and saltiness but yield neither. Added to dishes, they flatter and bombast, leaving firework trails of thirst and tiredness. Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other.(Mark 9:50) The world does not need spiritual MSG. There is plenty of that around already. Neither does it need bland, de-saltified salt. We must not be that. What we must be is real salt, that may sting at first, but in time cleans and transforms, bringing healing and savour. (1) Image was taken from http://whatscookingamerica.net/Information/Salt.htm Chris is a food consultant and freelance writer.
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