I have a husband who won’t eat fish. This is especially painful because I am the type of person to desperately covet what I cannot have. If someone tells me something is unattainable I will hit the wall at the end of the internet looking for it. Usually I am victorious. Case in point: my doorbell is actually made from two wine glasses that sound like they are clinking together when a little spring-loaded electromagnet chimes them. I truly found it at the end of the internet and I’m pretty sure it was because someone told me I couldn’t. This long diatribe is all to say that Jonas’ lack of fish fortitude only makes me crave it all the more. Especially in summer. Strangely enough, he has one exception in the seaward realm: tuna. He will order ahi with abandon, despite its sustainability implications. I feel bad buying it given said implications, but when a girl craves fish and there isn’t another option, she’s gotta do what she’s gotta do.

Hence, I give you ahi poached in duck fat prepared l’orange. The whole l’orange thing came about because I was contemplating a way to tie my duck fat in with the dish and I decided adapting a classic duck preparation to fish would make an interesting juxtaposition. I was right. It was one of the most succulent slices of fish I have had in years. I did my poaching in the sous vide bath, thus enabling me to use far less duck fat than I would have needed had I poached stovetop in a pan. Because the poaching is for such a short time relatively speaking, however, you could probably get away with poaching in a food-safe vacuum-sealed bag on the stovetop in temperature-controlled water.

I was a little worried all the elements of the dish might not play nice with one another, but my concern was all for naught. The key players- ahi, duck fat, oranges, figs and translucent potato rounds- all clung together like star-crossed lovers about to be damned. The duck fat brought out a brilliant silken texture in the tuna that made biting through it a dream. The figs, from a neighbor’s tree, bathed luxuriously in the caramelly citrus sauce and lent a sense of cohesion between the potatoes and the rest of the dish. Who knew figs and potatoes paired so perfectly? I’m dreaming up a figgy gratin melange as I type… Pommes Maxim are a wonderful, and relatively simple, take away from The French Laundry. It’s a fun process that involves making 1/4” slices of potato on the mandolin, then using a 2” cutter to stamp them into rounds. They come together as wheels on parchment, then get pan-fried in (you guessed it) duck fat (my addition). It’s all you can do not to devour them straight from the pan when they develop a golden crust and fill the kitchen with their sweet perfume.

Ahi Poached in Duck Fat L’Orange with Caramelized Figs

Serves 4

• 1 lb block of sushi-grade ahi tuna (COLD)
• Kosher salt and pepper
• 4 tbsp duck fat- solid
• Juice of one organic orange
• 1 tsp organic orange zest
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1 tbsp champagne vinegar
• 4 quartered figs
• 4 slices of orange or 8 slices of mandarin
• ¼ c duck stock (can use chicken if duck is not on hand)

1. Bring sous vide bath to 138°. Pat tuna dry, season with salt and pepper, and seal into food safe bag along with duck fat using a vacuum sealer. Poach tuna in water bath for 17 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, in a skillet just large enough to hold the tuna, reduce orange juice, zest, honey, and vinegar to thin syrup consistency. Be careful not to reduce too much or you will not have enough syrup to glaze the tuna.
3. Remove the tuna from the water bath and pour two tablespoons of the duck/tuna fat into the skillet. Heat the skillet to medium high and sear the tuna on all sides in the orange glaze quickly so as not to further cook the inside of the tuna block. Remove the tuna to a cutting board to rest.
4. Add the figs and orange slices to the skillet and coat with the remaining glaze. Add the duck stock, scrape the pan with a wooden spoon to deglaze, and again reduce by half. This should take two minutes. While the stock is reducing to sauce, slice the tuna into quarter inch thick rectangles. Arrange on a plate along with the figs, orange slices and sauce.

I’ve been steeped in French Laundry recipes so much lately I haven’t been doing much personal recipe development. Consequently I decided to devote my attention to one of my favorite things- confit de canard, known in these parts as duck confit. The irony of duck confit is that the cooking process is meant as a way to preserve the duck for later use, however the second I confit (preserve) a Pekin leg I am all over it like a lush on Lillet (that’s me too, this summer anyway).

I have been fascinated with the confit method for some time; a fascination which was exacerbated by my love affair with the Sous Vide Supreme. Since you need a low, ambient temperature to slowly cook the duck in order to render its own fat (I also augment it with a generous slather of already-rendered fat), sous vide is the perfect cooking method. Another benefit of sous vide is that you can use less additional fat (I’ve tried not using any and it works, though the depth of flavor is just not there) in the cooking process and turn out exceptional results.  This is my fifth attempt at defining just the right cure time as well as cook time and temp on duck confit, and I am pleased to confidently publish the results.

The zucchini tagliatelle and beet puree are suggested accompaniments that both sprung from my summer garden bounty. The beet puree adds a perfect hint of sweetness to counterbalance the salty duck and the consistency makes it more than addictive. I love that this preparation of zucchini elevates the classic garden staple to a sophisticated component of a decadent dish.

Duck Confit

This makes 2 duck legs and serves 2. Increase as necessary.

note: you will want to start this recipe the night before as the duck requires curing in the salt overnight.

The cure

• 1/3 c Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt
• 3 fresh bay Leaves
• 5- 4” thyme sprigs
• 1.4 c fresh parsley leaves
• ½ tsp SMOKED GARLIC POWDER
• 6 black peppercorns
• Two tablespoons duck fat

Finely grind all cure ingredients (except for duck fat) in a spice grinder. Place two towel-dried duck legs in a food-safe bag and coat with the salt blend. Seal the bag using a vacuum sealer. Place in refrigerator to cure for 12 hours. Set the water temperature of your sous vide to 185°. Cut open the bag and gently rinse the duck legs and inside of bag. Pat dry. Put the duck legs back in the bag along with two tablespoons duck fat and reseal. Immerse in the water bath for seven hours. Remove from bath and let rest 15 minutes. Cut open the bag and gently pour off the duck fat into a container and place the duck legs on a paper towel-lined plate. Heat a film of canola oil in a medium skillet. Cook the duck legs skin-side down for 3-4 minutes, or until they slide freely in the pan and develop a dark-golden crust.

Zucchini Tagliatelle

• 1 large zucchini or 2 small
• Kosher salt
• Pepper
• 1 tbsp  rendered duck fat from the duck confit

Using a mandolin, make long, thin strips of zucchini to resemble pasta ribbons. Spread them evenly on a clean kitchen towel and sprinkle with salt. Allow the salt to draw the moisture from the zucchini for a few minutes, then press the ribbons with another towel to remove the moisture. You can repeat this process several times for a firmer final texture (to resemble al dente pasta). Pepper the ribbons, then sauté in duck fat for a few minutes until just cooked. Do not overcook the zucchini or it will turn mushy. I like to use a round cutter form to plate the zucchini, that way it stays in a nice pile on the plate, but do as you wish. A squeeze of lemon goes nicely with this dish.

Beet Puree

• 2 medium beets (I mixed a red beet and a Chioggia beet to achieve the pink color)
• 1 cup heavy cream
• ¼ c water
• 1 tbsp rendered duck fat or butter

Chop the beets into uniform ½” cubes. Very gently boil them in the cream and water until they are soft- about half an hour. Strain the cream into a bowl and reserve. Pass the beets through a food mill, then a fine mesh strainer (use the back end of a ladle to get them through the strainer). This will give a perfectly smooth, airy texture. Place the beet puree in a small saucepan, and just before service reheat along with a tablespoon of the reserved cream and the duck fat/butter.

I’m probably somehow cheating by systematically selecting the more appealing-sounding recipes to prepare first from The French Laundry. It would be more equivocal if I just started on page one and worked my way through to page 326, but I’m going to allow myself a little flexibility.  It’s not like I’m making the deliberately easy-seeming recipes. It’s just that usually, if given the choice amongst all the fish, fowl, and four-legged beasts, I can’t help but gravitate toward duck. That may be because we had ducks growing up on the little half-ark my father, channeling his inner-god complex, created for us.

I say half-ark because mostly we had one of everything, so we would have been SOL in truly apocalyptic times.  One cow (Slobber, my bff), one horse (Smokey, my nemesis), one stork (a tale for another time), one sheep, and so on, you get the picture. Which is why it was a little odd that we had two ducks. They were the unchallenged rulers of the realm. They had the dogs, cowering in fear every time they so much as wobbled by on their webby, stumpy feet. I was a brazen little girl, insisting on mowing the lawn with my shirt off just because I had seen my dad do it a hundred times. I rode our horse bareback and explored the far-reaches of our acreage on solo missions armed only with a pair of threadbare shorts and an active imagination. This is to say, I didn’t scare easily. But I was amongst the plebian denizens frightened to the core of those scheming ducks. If I would round a corner and happen unawares upon the ducks, they would come at me clucking and pecking at my heels until I left them to their malicious devices.

Fast-forward nearly thirty years- maybe I subconsciously like to eat duck because I feel like I’m somehow getting back at those two saboteurs of my happy-go-lucky childhood. I certainly don’t hate ducks in their live state; I think they’re striking and on the smarter side as far as fowl goes.  I do, however, prefer them on the plate if they’re going to be within five feet of me.  Which is why I jumped at the chance to make Keller’s duck roulade. It’s basically flattened duck breasts wrapped in blanched chard leaves cooked at 190° in a water bath for 8 minutes.  Sounds simple enough, no? So I thought I would measure the total time spent making the dish. It starts with a “quick sauce” of duck bones and anyone who has made one of the quick sauces from The French Laundry knows that they are anything but quick.  I figured since I needed to make the sauce from duck bones it would be more economical to buy a whole duck for the affair. I’d use the breasts for the roulade, the carcass for the sauce, and reserve the legs for a confit preparation along with the fat I could render from the bird.  It turned out to be a wise choice, however I felt a little like Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York going all meat-cleaver on my duck carcass.  There was duck blood sputtering all over the kitchen and I was really happy Bentley Danger was tucked safely in his crib for a nap, because who wants their two-year-old to liken them to Bill the Butcher?

I’ve broken down plenty of fowl carcasses in my life, but never quite so meticulously as with this duck. It was imperative that my breasts remain as large and intact as possible in order to maximize them for the roulade, so I took great care extracting them from the frame (upon rereading the previous sentence, I suppose one might read it with dirtier thoughts than I intended. Oops!). Keller wants the remaining bones 2” long in order to extract as much possible flavor for the quick stock, so I had to somehow cleave very carefully. I don’t know about you, but it is all but impossible for me to bring a cleaver down on anything and not close my eyes as its making contact. Not sure if it’s some cobweb in my mind from a horror flick gone awry, or just a natural instinct, but I’d be curious if it’s the same for you. I wonder if it’s the same thing as trying to sneeze with your eyes open, perhaps.

About the time I was carefully extracting my luscious breasts, I started fantasizing about who I would have to dinner along with Thomas Keller. It’s a far-flung goal of mine to cook for him, but who best to fill the remaining seats? I decided to go ahead and put together a dream-team of my all-time-favorite living idols, cooking and otherwise. So that’s Thomas Keller, Jeffrey Steingarten (there would have to be an amuse bouche of grubs or beetles or something to satisfy him), Christopher Walken, and David Lebovitz.  I could waltz with Walken, test my latest gelato on Lebovitz, quake in my boots for what Steingarten would say of the meal, and bask in the sheer genius of Keller all night long.  I actually think it would be a well-blended set, and I don’t think they’ve all been in the same room at once before, so I would give them something to bond over. I would LOVE to hear your ultimate dinner party if you’d care to share in the comments. Make sure they’re living folks- that way there’s a remote chance it will actually happen!

After the starting the sauce, I got down to trimming up the duck breasts so they’d fit symmetrically within the chard leaves. It was a sad sight trimming off all the perfectly good meat, but I’ve reserved it for another use, so all is well with the world. Rolling the breasts in the leaves was trickier than it sounded, but in the end I got perfect little roll-ups that rested in the refrigerator while the sous vide machine heated up to temperature. Keller actually calls for immersing the roulades wrapped in plastic into a pot of water kept at 190°, but I have a sous vide machine, so why not use it?

Meanwhile I got a chance to play with the chemical properties of corn by extracting corn water from the cob, then heating it and watching it quickly thicken from the natural cornstarch present. The creamy corn that is a part of this recipe is a relatively simple vegetable dish that I will repeat often since it was beyond pleasurable.  The morel topper made with what eventually became duck sauce, however, is what pushed me over the edge to try this dish. Morels are nearing the end of their season here in Washington, and they are my favorite mushroom by far. This is perhaps the best showcase of their meaty, woodsy qualities I’ve prepared this season. From top to bottom, this dish is a MUST-TRY if you are even remotely a Keller-phile such as myself. Nothing is overly-daunting, and the ratio of accomplishment to time spent is quite high for a recipe from The French Laundry.

Never one to jump on the latest baking trend, you can imagine my surprise when I found myself unable to shake the concept of engineering a croquembouche.  Let’s start by answering the question, what is a croquembouche.  It’s essentially a tower of profiteroles glued together with caramel, often drizzled in chocolate, spun sugar, or all manner of fancy schmancy décor.  Not my type of thing. I like contemporary solid lines, bold colors, no frills.  So why can’t I get the damn thing out of my head? I’ve been making pate au choux with which to turn into profiteroles all summer, so I suppose architecting the croquembouche was the next inevitable step.  The problem is that I didn’t fully execute my vision since I only baked a measly 21 pate au choux, and what kind of tower can you really construct with only 21 building blocks?  So what that means is that this project is incomplete and must be revisited soon, at a time when I can whip up at least twice that many and construct my dream Barbie mansion from tiny pastry balls.

Knowing myself and my proclivity to take a perfectly good, classic thing and turn it all akimbo, I figured a classic croquembouche just wouldn’t do.  This is when I remembered seeing a method for turning foie gras into Chantilly crème recently.  Why not do semi-savory choux and fill them with goosey-oozy liver-y goodness then drizzle the whole thing in maple-balsamic reduction made to look like chocolate syrup? Yes, genius. Pure, diabolical, evil genius.  I considered not telling my lucky-number-13 guests that they would in fact be masticating goose livers rather than benign cream, but a vegetarian in our midst guilted me into full-disclosure.  I needn’t have bothered warning people, it seems. They well and truly were little bites of The Rapture. People popped them like it was 1974 and they were disco queens slamming back ‘ludes, so I’m pretty sure they needed no introduction after all.

To put the whole thing together I started with a good, sturdy batch of pate au choux.  Whilst my piped lovelies were puffing up in the oven, I contemplated the Foie Chantilly.  I did a bunch of internet research on how to fluff up the foie, and settled on mixing it with heated cream in a food processor for a few moments to sufficiently blend it. Then I passed it through a sieve into a mixing bowl over ice and proceeded to hand whisk it to stiff peaks.  In terms of quantity, for five ounces of foie, I used ¾ c heavy cream, a pinch of salt, and two tablespoons of superfine or caster sugar.  I heated the cream, sugar, and salt together in a heavy saucepan whilst I chopped the foie into ½” cubes and set reserved them in the food processor. Working quickly, once the cream was just nearing the boiling point, I added it to the foie and whirred it for ten seconds. I immediately passed it through the sieve and into the waiting chilled mixing bowl. It’s important to get it cool quickly so that it will whip properly.  I bet a pacojet would have been a really cool toy to employ for the whipping process, but I’ve got an official moratorium on kitchen gadgets here in the Salty Seattle household thanks to my evil husbandJ Once I whipped and chilled my cream and the pate au choux were cool, I piped each pastry full of a sufficient amount of choux using a star tip.  At this point I had savory profiteroles awaiting their drizzled fate.

For the sauce, I simply reduced equal parts balsamic and maple syrup in a small saucepan until it reached the consistency of thick molasses.  I then cooled it and dipped the butt ends of the profiteroles in the syrup to use as a binding agent.  I stacked a meager tower, though mark my words, this is only the beginning. My experimenting is far from finito.  In the meantime, enjoy this mini-tower knowing that I’ve created a monster in myself and I likely won’t stop until I construct a croquembouche the size of Frankenstein. And they make a movie about it.

Dinners that elicit utter silence in guests are the ones to strive for. When the food takes precedence and words simply do not form in your head, you have achieved something great.  This was one of those meals.

It all started a few weeks ago when an amazing blogger friend stated “You cook the most exotic food. Do you ever just roast a chicken?” I decided to take it as a challenge, because truth be told, I rarely just roast a chicken. Maybe a bit of spring cleaning in the kitchen is in order to appreciate the simple wonders of classic fare.  Fast forward to a few days ago- I found myself on a lazy drive cruising the back roads of the Kitsap Peninsula in search of fresh eggs. Can I just state for the record and for the hundredth time that I desperately want chickens and ducks and I don’t think it’s fair that my evil husband won’t let me keep them on our in-city lot? Stated.  My loose goal was to end up at Pheasant Fields Farm, although I’ve never been before.  I rolled up and was greeted by dozens of friendly free-roaming chickens, who incidentally struck fear into Bentley’s little heart. He clung to my legs like never before but he was so awed he couldn’t walk away.  Come to find out, I had missed by a half hour the slaughter of a whole mess of chickens. If you know me at all you can imagine how disappointed I was to miss such a thing, but I’m told they’ll do it again soon and I’m invited to come participate. Plus, they still had all the equipment set up along with a giant bucket of heads and feet which they graciously gave me to take home and make stock. All that collagen- oh yes, baby!

I was only too happy to take one of the freshly-rigormortisized chickens off their hands along with some duck and chicken eggs right out of the nests. I learned a great tip I wish I had known when I unceremoniously killed my own chicken last fall.  Don’t cook the birds until they are no longer stiff, as rigor mortis causes toughness if you cut meat off the bone while the bird is still in that state. It takes 24-48 hours for the bird to loosen back up, though you’re welcome to brine the bird during that time.  I waited the obligatory two days and meanwhile made a batch of fresh cottage cheese.  I decided cottage cheese noodles would be a perfect accompaniment to simple chicken.  I also had some triple crème languishing in the refrigerator (don’t ask) so I tossed that in with the noodles along with a boatload of my fresh eggs, some thyme, just churned-butter and the cottage cheese.  This was my first experience making the noodles with a pasta machine. I felt a little bit like a sellout since I have hand-rolled and cut them several times a week for as long as I can remember, but I guess that fact in itself justifies a machine.  The noodles sure are nice and uniform, even if they do lack the personality of truly handmade pasta.  I will use the machine in the future but will also definitely retain my hand-rolled technique as well. Another interesting observation about machine-rolling the noodles is that it doesn’t require nearly as much wine. You simply cannot hand-make noodles without regular gulps from a big balloon wine glass in order to fortify your strength. Because you need less strength for machine-done pasta, you don’t encounter near-enough of this happy problem.

Once enough time had passed, I removed my newly-loosened chicken from her brine and fired up the smoker while her skin air-dried.  I figured one little change from roasting the chicken to smoking it really doesn’t make much of a difference to my initial challenge, as it’s essentially just cooking it in an outdoor oven over apple wood as opposed to an indoor one.  Once she was nice and dry and the smoker was nice and hot (I averaged 220° F for 3 hours for a 5.5 lb bird) I trussed her, stuffed her cavity with a bit of thyme, and rained Maldon salt and a touch of pepper over her body.  Because simplicity was the name of the game here, I didn’t want to get complicated with extra rubs, marinades, or god-forbid basting, which doesn’t work well with smoking as it lets too much heat escape.

Once my chicken was nearing completion I tossed the noodle concoction into the oven and whipped together a simple butter lettuce and cucumber salad along with some homemade buttermilk dressing.  I made a jus to drizzle over the chicken by reducing the juices collected from her cavity in a saucepan along with some vermouth and thyme.

The noodles came out, the chicken was carved, salad was served et voila- I can DO simple, damn it! And I’m happy to report it was so simply damn delicious that not a word was spoken amongst five of the most talkative people I know for over 60 seconds.  They resumed their maddening din after they recovered from their delight, but did so with a lingering smile around their lips as they licked the last of the chicken from the glistening bones.

For several years I have had the desire to host a salt-tasting party, I simply lacked the impetus. Until now.  You see, I’ve always felt the salty soiree should have serendipitous timing all around, and that wasn’t possible in days gone by.  For me, everything had to be essential, perfect, balanced.  The food, the guests, the salts, the level of engagement- the whole shebang.  When I finally decided a few months ago that the signs were looking auspicious to host the party, it was a right nice feeling. Right nice indeed, because I’ve been stewing over the concept for so long, there really wasn’t much to settle on.  Except for incorporating some new obsessions in terms of food (can you say sous vide?) and making sure the guest list didn’t go entirely jabberwocky with too many tasters and not enough salt, all the pre-planning was a cinch.

I planned a from-scratch menu deliberately devoid of salt to encourage tasting and pairing. Notables included sous vide custard duck eggs, sliced heirloom tomatoes, no-knead baguettes by Patrick aka best breadbaker in the world, homemade cottage cheese, homemade burrata, a slew of Italian cheeses including a three-milk Robiola and Bra Tenero, jicama, fava beans and honey, sous vide potatoes and beets, and edamame.  Whew, if that wasn’t a salt-less mouthful I don’t know what would be.  I did not forget the dessert category, which consisted of maple caramels, chocolate pavé and triple chocolate truffle tart by Patrick, and four types of ice cream: rhubarb crème fraiche, coffee hazelnut, quadruple chocolate and goat yoghurt maple.

Since many members of the Seattle fooderati scene showed for the 70+ person party, there were countless other notable culinary creations from the likes of Michael Natkin, the man behind Herbivoracious, Jenny Richards of Purplehousedirt, Lorna Yee from The Cookbook Chronicles,  Marc Schermerhorn of the infamous @marcseattle twitter feed, Keren Brown aka Frantic Foodie, and many more.  The lovely and talented Jeanne Sauvage of Fourchickens, brought me a carton of homegrown eggs that I’ve been coddling as though they were babies; I want chickens and ducks so badly I can taste them, but that’s a story for another time.

For the tasting itself, I lined my dining table with over 60 empty vessels and assigned each one a corresponding number.  We created a master list on the Ipad that contained each number, then, when attendees brought salt, they simply chose a vessel, told us the number, and we catalogued each salt into the secret master list.  This way the tasting was truly blind.  I raided my own global collection of salt and filled roughly twenty of the vessels, and once all the guests had proffered their hand-selected salts, we had 63 samples.  I established four categories for the tasting: Best Overall Tasting Salt, Best Blended Salt, Best Pairing-Savory, and Best Pairing-Sweet.  My graphic designer neighbor Cyndy created ballots so folks could cast their votes, and I’ve just tallied the results, which are molto interessante indeed.

Repurposed Aarnio Bubble Chair as Wine Chiller

Before I get to that I want to mention some of the notable salts on display that evening, representing six continents.  Janna Wemmer from Secret Stash Salts brought a dizzying array of her expertly-blended salts, including bloody mary salt, smoked chipotle, and lavender rosemary to name a few.  She is a locally-focused artisan producer of the finest blended salt available in the Pacific Northwest, and her salts should be included in any representational goodie bag of local products.  Local foodie-about-town Traca Savadogo was able to get Mark and Marjorie Fuller of famed restaurant Spring Hill to donate some of Mark’s ancestral Hawaiian red clay sea salt, aged 25 years,  which was one I made sure to sneak a reserve of for later use.  Apparently the aging process sweetens the deal, and I mean that in a literal sense.  The kind folks over at Marx Foods heard about the tasting and donated some perfectly structured Portugese Flor de Sal for our tasting pleasure. I’ve been finishing with this one for a few weeks and am very happy with the crystal structure and depth of character.

Every party is bound to have one jester, and this soiree was not immune.  Our non-food-obsessed neighbor thought it would be quite funny to cart in a salt-lick, which he did with much pride to much snickering.  We had to give it a fair tasting, so we chipped some off the old block and put it in a vessel, much to the chagrin of the poor folks who tasted it.  Oddly, it did receive one vote; some kind soul nominated it in the savory pairing category for its complementary taste with radishes.  Many of the salts travelled here from around the globe, but only a few did so expressly to be tasted at the party.  One such salt was a Waddenzout brought all the way from Amsterdam by Robert and Patrick. I sure hope that one didn’t have any extra Amsterdam-additives in it, if you know what I mean.  Another well-travelled salt came from my amazing friend Emily (Happy Birthday, Baby) who sent over some Korean Bamboo salt from Ulsan, where she is teaching for the year.  Lily and Rodney brought forth a slew of salts from Vancouver BC made by Edible Canada.  Of the twenty or so salts I personally contributed, besides my homemade salt, many of them came from the Portland-based salt boutique The Meadow.  If you think of the most esoteric salt in all the lands and are scratching your head as to where to find it, chances are you’ll find it at The Meadow, which is my go-to salt destination, both online and in the flesh.

Alright, enough of me waxing lyrical about one of the greatest substances on earth- let’s see the results.  The winner in the best overall finishing salt category is the timeless classic, Maldon Sea Salt. It’s crystal structure alone is a thing of marvel; I really believe this salt should be one of the wonders of the world because it comes in the form of little dissolving pyramids. I love other salts equally for different things, but I am not surprised that Maldon unanimously won the grand prize.  There were four salts tied for second place in this category: Trapani Sea Salt, my own sea salt, Secret Stash Salt’s Lavendar Rosemary, and Pangasinan Star.

The winner of best blended salt goes to Black Truffle Sea Salt.  A very close second goes to Secret Stash Salt’s Lavender Rosemary Salt.  Tied for third place here are Evergreen Edible Salt and Wreck Beach Edible Salt.  Best Pairing-Sweet has three salts tied for first place. They are: Murray River Pink Salt, Maldon Sea Salt, and Tahitian Vanilla Salt, all being paired with caramels. In fact, caramels were the favored vehicle with which to sweetly taste salt.  The trickiest category was Best Pairing-Savory.  I think it’s because there was so much food it was difficult to get consistency.  Five salts tied for first place in this category. They are: The Drive Edible on heirloom tomatoes, Tahitian Vanilla on Eggs (maybe these voters had a few glasses of wine?), Sale alle Erbe delle Mar Lunghe (salt with herbs from the long sea) on Patrick’s bread, Haleakala Ruby on heirloom tomatoes, and Murray River on mozzarella and edamame.

these glasses did not stay empty for long

Alright, this was a bloody long-winded post, so I’m going to wrap it up.  It is my goal to showcase the winners in all categories and do some refined tasting with them in a more controlled environment. I’d like to perfect some pairings and suss out which qualities about each of the winning salts made it memorable for tasters.  Expect to see more salt in this space soon, but then, you probably already knew that.  Have a salt-sational day!

all the salts- the morning after

PS- special thanks to Lisa Page Ramey for providing some of the mid-party action shots; there was a lot going on and our camera languished in the corner for much of the evening.