How To Use Gourmet Sea Salt In Your Food

By L. Moses
Gourmet chefs have known for some time the tremendous value of salt. We're not talking about ordinary table salt or even kosher salt which both definitely have their place. No, we're talking about the wide variety of specialized sea salts previously unavailable to the general public. Perhaps it was Iron Chef or any one of the other foodie television programs now watched by millions or perhaps it was simply an evolution of grocers and manufacturers, whatever the reason, the general public now has access to gourmet sea salts previously only used by the best chefs in the world.
Pure Salt, Fusions and More
Gourmet sea salt is just that, sea salt from unique areas of the world. Like a grape made into a fine wine, each salt has its own unique flavor and texture derived from the area it comes from. For example Hawaiian Sea Salt is reddish in color due to the minerals in the clay and it has a mild taste. Contrast that with the almost colorless Bali Sea Salt harvested annually from evaporating sea water in hollowed out palm tree trunks.
Gourmet Sea Salts can take on any number of unusual flavors including the smoky flavor of Fume de Sol made by cold smoking salt crystals in vintage wine barrels. The French Sea Salts in particular are known for having a very natural and earthy taste and considered to be one of the best tasting salts in the world. Even better, many Gourmet Sea Salts are now offered in combination with the perfect pairing of herbs and flavorings like Curry, Black Truffle and even Merlot. Imagine sprinkling your favorite steak with Merlot infused Sea Salt just before placing it on the grill. Gourmet cooking doesn't get much better or easier.
Gourmet Meals in a Pinch
Each salt has its own purpose. Some, like the Organic Sea Salts from France can be used in baking, cooking and even as a kicked-up table salt. The Hawaiian Sea Salt on the other hand has a very distinct flavor that works exceptionally well with a variety of meats. You can combine it with herbs and rub your favorite meat for grilling or roasting and have a truly distinct flavor. For example, the Japanese Curry Salt is excellent on eggs, vegetables, and even tofu.
With the abundance of Gourmet Sea Salts available on the market, it is tempting to buy them all. The good news is that you can. Salt doesn't go bad. Stocking up on a variety of flavors means that you will have the tools at your fingertips, or at least in your pantry, to create a special gourmet meal in a pinch.
Find the best gourmet sea salts available at http://www.mysecretpantry.com/ today!
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The Simplest and Best Way to Cure Olives

By Gerald Smith
If you are lucky enough to have your own olive trees, you will know how bitter raw olives taste straight from the tree. The bitterness is left behind with the pulp when olives are pressed to make oil, but if you want to prepare them for eating - and spare the expense of a press - the fruit must first must be processed, or 'cured'. Although there are several ways to do this, this article will outline the simplest - and in my experience the best - method, which uses only salt. It's the way olives have been cured in Greece for at least three thousand years.
Ripe olives generally include a mixture of black and green fruit. The black olives are the riper ones, but don't wait to harvest them until all of them are black. When the majority of the olives on the tree are black, all of them are ready for picking. Don't wait for the olives to fall from the tree, because by that time many of them will be spoiled. The following cure works equally well on both black and green olives.
Remove any stems and leaves, and wash the fruit in a bucket using fresh water. Pour away the dirty water and spread the olives across a clean table or floor.
Using a sharp knife or fork, make three or four cuts in the skin of each olive. These incisions will enable the salt water to draw the bitterness out of the fruit - the treatment won't work without them.
Dissolve 120 grams of salt into each liter of a bucket of clean water. Throw the the pricked olives into this solution, using an upturned plate to ensure that every olive is submerged. Note that this is about three times the concentration of salt in seawater, so don't use seawater as a substitute.
After 24 hours, pour the liquid away and replace with clean saline water of the same concentration. Repeat this step daily for about 12 days. After 10 days, taste an olive or two each day: continue this washing cycle until every trace of bitterness has gone.
When the washing process is completed and the olives are edible, they are ready to be stored. Pour away the last of the saline solution and dry the olives. Place them into sealable storage jars, topping up the jars with olive oil. If you want, you can add flavorings to the oil: garlic, basil and lemon juice are particular favorites. Ensure that every olive is submerged in the oil, then seal the jar. Store the olives in a cool, dark place.
Although this method is both cheap and simple, it is also quite labor-intensive, and therefore unsuitable for commercial quantities of fruit. The finished product, however, is delicious: those chemically-treated, mass-produced olives that you can buy for a fortune at the local delicatessen will never taste the same again.
Gerald Smith is a technical consultant at [http://www.smithgcb.demon.co.uk/]Piedmont Properties, a real estate agency specializing in Italian vineyards.
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