Seasoning is all about balance; so you must be constantly tasting and adjusting. Of course, it is also true that taste is a subjective thing, and I would never be so precious as to get angry with anyone in the restaurant who wanted to add extra seasoning to their food, as some chefs famously have. I only hope that people taste first.
These days everyone is rightly concerned about the quantity of salt that children, in particular, are eating, but most of the damage is done not when we cook fresh food, but by the salt we often unconsciously eat in processed food. Also, if you taste and season carefully as you are cooking, allowing the salt time to dissolve and do its job of flavouring properly, you will end up using far less than if you taste at the end, panic because everything is bland, and start seasoning crazily.
Most chefs have cut back the quantity of salt in cooking over the years, and looked for different ways of amplifying tastes, for example bubbling up juices and sauces in the pan, so that they reduce and thicken, and the flavour intensifies. Also, we are constantly trying to find producers and farmers who value traditional methods and believe that flavour is more important than fast-grown, perfect-looking homogenous products that will please the supermarkets. So, when you have a carefully and slowly reared, properly hung piece of meat, a terrific vegetable that has not been forced under glass, or a fish straight from the boat, you don’t need to season heavily, or you will distort the essential flavours.
On the other hand, everyone is crying, ‘salt, salt, salt!’ as if it is a demon, but we all need a certain amount of it for our bodies to function properly.
We can take a lesson from the behaviour of animals in the wild whose trails will often lead to natural sources of salt, because it is essential for them to stay alive. I remember reading about the big apes, the ones that are so human that they look like us and have a ‘wife’ and family – at certain times of the year they will head towards mountains which they know form natural rock salt and lick the salt.
Because we are so used to refrigeration, we underestimate the importance that salt has played in our civilisation and politics. As well as keeping the body healthy, and flavouring food, when it was first discovered that you could use it to extract moisture from meat or fish, and therefore cure and preserve foods so you had something to eat all year round, it must have seemed a magical thing. No wonder whole communities were built around the production and trade of something so precious. In Italy, Venezia owes much of its splendour to its position at the centre of the salt trade (along with Genova). Roads were built especially to transport salt; wars were fought over it, taxes raised on it – all of which Mark Kurlansky brings together in his brilliant book called Salt: A World History.
The first proper salt works date back to 640BC, when one of the early Roman kings, Ancus Martius, built an enclosed basin at Ostia and let in seawater, which evaporated under the sun, leaving behind sea salt. The road that the salt travelled in order to be sold was called the Via Salaria, and the soldiers who protected it were often paid in salt, which is where the word ‘salary’ comes from. If someone didn’t do his job properly he was considered ‘not worth his salt’. The word salami (pork preserved with salt) comes from the Latin ‘sal’ for salt, as does salad (it was used to describe the Roman way of adding salt to greens and herbs, perhaps to draw out bitter juices in the way that we do with aubergines, then dressing them with oil and vinegar).
We have Parma ham because people in the region needed to preserve meat, and salt could be brought in from Venezia, with payment in either money or hams. Of course, there was a massive trade in smuggling in order to avoid paying the taxes that were levied on salt. The route the smugglers used is called La Via del Sale (the road of salt) and runs all the way from the Appeninos to Liguria. Nowadays part of the route is used for a fantastic endurance motorbike race, also called La Via del Sale.
What we are talking about is natural sea or rock salt, very different from ‘table salt’, which is bleached and refined, often has chemicals added and has a harshly salty flavour. I always thought what a great job it would be to spend your days skimming off the perfect little crystals at some natural saltpan, somewhere wild and beautiful. This is the kind of salt you can pack around a piece of meat or fish for baking in the way that has been done for thousands of years. (Originally, you would have dug a pit in the ground, put in the fish or meat in its salt crust, covered it over and built a fire over the top.) As it cooks, the salt crust becomes rock hard, sealing in all the moisture and juices, and gently seasoning at the same time, but without making the cooked meat or fish taste ‘salty’.
When Thomas Keller, the inspirational chef of the French Laundry in California, came to Locanda to eat, we got talking and he told me about the way he served foie gras with five different salts, including Dead Sea Salt and Jurassic Salt. When he went back to America he sent me some of the Jurassic Salt, which is mined in Utah. It is incredible to think that it comes from a geological layer underneath that of the dinosaurs. At one time most of North America was covered in shallow sea, which evaporated over millions of years, leaving behind the salt, then in the Jurassic era volcanoes erupted around the old seabed and sealed the salt inside volcanic ash. The salt comes in a pinkish block that you have to grate, and it has a flavour that is amazing; it almost has a fizzy character to it. We sprinkled it over some carpaccio and served it with nothing else but a piece of lemon and it was beautiful.
When you are seasoning, it is important to remember that salt has the function of extracting moisture as well as flavouring. You need to season meat or fish before you start to cook it, because once the outside has been sealed, your salt and pepper won’t penetrate in the same way. However, once you season a piece of meat or fish with salt, it will start to ‘sweat’ out its juices, so if you do this too far ahead of cooking it the flesh will become tougher. The trick is to season your meat or fish with salt and pepper just before you cook it – then, especially if you are cooking it over a high heat, the meat will be properly seasoned, and the salt and pepper will help form a nice ‘crust’ around the outside of the meat, while the juices will be sealed inside.
With some dishes you also need to consider how much salt is contained in the ingredients you are cooking before you add any extra. I will only taste and season a risotto, for example, right at the end, because you are working with a lightly seasoned stock all the way through, which will intensify in flavour as it reduces, and then it will be finished with pecorino or Parmesan, which is also quite salty.
And remember that when you cook beans or pulses in water, unlike other vegetables, they should only be seasoned at the end of cooking, as the salt will draw the moisture from their skins and toughen them up if you put it in at the beginning.
At home, we always have a pot of sea salt crystals in the kitchen, which we keep away from the heat and moisture from the steam around the cooker, so that it keeps dry. Then we put a little of it into the grinder at a time.
Always also use freshly ground black pepper, which has much more warmth and aroma and a cleaner taste than white pepper. As with all spices, the flavour is held in the volatile oils inside the peppercorns, which are quickly lost once they are released; so ready-ground pepper, especially if it is exposed to warmth or sunlight, will lose its potency very quickly. I hate big pepper grinders, not only because they remind