Worth your salt

Its reputation has ebbed and flowed but as IVY CARRUTH discovers, seasoning from the sea is back in fashion.

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SALT IS LIFE. I MEAN THAT IN THE LITERAL sense, and in the sense of all things flavour. With a nod to journalistic transparency, and just so you know who you're dealing with here, I'll confess: I'm one of those heathens who salts my food before even tasting it.

Several years ago, my partner and I were at a super-celebrated, über-cheffy Sydney restaurant, after inheriting a booking that a friend had made months in advance, only to find herself unable to use. “Did we want it?” she'd asked. We did.

So, we're sitting there, smugly enjoying our luck and the atmosphere, gawping at this striking space alongside one of the world’s most iconic landmarks. The bread came out with a flourish, as everything tends to at a restaurant of this calibre, fat and tawny, with the open, lacy crumb that heralds a proper sourdough.

The butter, though? Unsalted. The sacrilege of serving such bland beurre with this leavened perfection was a betrayal. Soon enough, and before I even asked, my partner flagged someone down. “Can we get some salt, please?”

The waiter, pausing, looked pained. “I'll need to ask Chef,” he told us with trepidation. “The way it’s presented is the way Chef thinks you should eat it.” Then he literally spun on his heel.

That was when I began carrying a tiny tin of Maldon in my bag.

Samin Nosrat, author of the James Beard Award-winning tome