THE SALT BOOK

The last book was primarily about sugar, but this one is at the opposite end of the taste spectrum. As its name suggests, it is all about salt!

If you find it hard to imagine a cookbook about salt, this will change your mind forever. Apart from the most basic recipe – how to make your own salt! –  there is information on making flavoured salts and using a variety of salts in  your dishes.

This is not an unhealthy book. There is information of the health effects of salt and the authors are careful to counsel diners not to add salt at the table, but instead use better salts, more sparingly, when cooking.

In this, the absolutely complete book about salt, you will discover the origin of ham and salt-curing, the science of using salt, its history, uses (and abuses) and the dozens of different varieties from Himalayan salt blocks to palest pink fleur de sel, the colours ranging from red to black, blue, pink, grey and of course, sparkling white.

Buy this for the recipes and enjoy them, but do read the book right through and learn more than you ever thought you could know about one of mankind’s most basic and necessary ingredients.

The Salt Book, Fritz Gubler & David Glynn, Arbon Publishing, 2010, rrp A$34.99, softcover.