The Salt of Two Seas

There is a long argument among Italian cooks about whether sea salt is necessary, or whether it is sentimental. I have decided, after enough years to have an opinion, that it is both, and that this is not a contradiction.

Salt from the Mediterranean carries the memory of the sea it left. It is wet at first, slightly grey, slightly sweet under the iodine. The salt of the Sea of Japan, harvested off the cold coasts of Noto, is finer and dryer and reads almost mineral. They are different tools. They want different jobs.

The mistake is to treat all salt as one ingredient, the way the mistake is to treat all olive oil as one ingredient. The mistake is also to treat them as exotic, when in fact the cook two thousand miles north of either sea is using the same molecule.