Flor de Sal
If you’ve watched any of the current generation of cooking shows, you are familiar with the ubiquitous pleas from celebrity chefs to use “unsalted butter please”, “kosher salt”, “unbleached flour”, and the everpresent “EVO” (extra virgin olive oil). You also get exposed to ritzy ingredients like Meyer Lemons, Valrhona and Callebaut chocolate, and fleur de sel. This latter ingredient, an expensive finishing touch, is harvested in Brittany. But in the March issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Corby Kummer seeks out a “wonderfully sweet and nuanced” salt, cheaper than the French stuff, harvested from salt marshes in Portugal.

Two graduate students wanted to use these salt marshes to produce algae that creates natural dyes. But they first had to restore the neglected wetlands on the property. So the salt pans were brought back to production quality and a remarkably white “flor de sal” was the result. Unfortunately, Portuguese law places their salt, high in healthy minerals not allowed in Portugal’s classification of “table salt”, into a category “fit only for dumping on roads.” So it cannot be legally sold at prices that will recoup their costs. The government is being petitioned and the two entrepreneurs are hoping to get back to their algae project someday soon. Will we hear about this “flor de sal” in the next crop of cooking shows? Keep an eye out for it.