byJAY KOS

Surf &TurfSurf &Turf

F[ood]ash•ion

#11 | November 2010

Surf and turf are one of the items on menus that I’ve always found question-able. I’ve always had a distaste for such large portions of food served at restaurants and especially when they are two completely opposite varieties of food. The thought of a large T-bone steak served with shrimp just seems so unappealing. I do, however, think that a small tasting of different foods can be interesting and especially with my new toy salt block, I needed an excuse to try it out. An excuse for two reasons: f irst, I was curi-ous about how the different foods would take to cooking on salt and second, because I wanted to assemble beef with scallops and see if it worked! But beware, the block took a half hour to heat up and an hour or so to cool down. “The Meadow” on Hudson in NYC sells salts from all over the world for cooking and for f inishing with. They also sell these fantastic blocks of salt that you cook directly on the stove top with. They carry an extensive variety of natural sea salts and eve some infused with black truff le and plum. The salts come from India, France, the UK, as well as many other countries and all have totally distinct tastes and are made for different purposes. Salt is a key ingredient to chefs around the world and a wonderful f lavor addition to any food, even chocolate!

Today’s dish is a paper-thin sliced f ilet mignon served with fried red onions, french fries from a cast iron pot and seared scallops.

Surf &TurfSurf &TurfAll photographs by Erica Simone

Interview Mark Bitterman,

owner of The Meadow

What is the difference be-tween natural sea salt and the table salt most people are used to?

Table salt is ref ined and stan-dardized, making it devoid of any character that ties it to the people, food, and tra-ditions from which it came. Natural salt is incredibly di-verse, with moisture con-tent, crystal size and shape, and mineral make-up vary-ing from salt to salt depend-ing on the methods used to make it and the lands and seas it came from.

A lot of home chefs use kosher salt. Is kosher salt in the same league as what you sell?

I do have thoughts on Ko-sher salt. Kosher is openly endorsed by the profes-sional chef community for a number of reasons; it is cheap, it is readily avail-able, it is easy to dispense with the f ingers, it is neutral. But the same could be said of any processed food that any serious-minded chef would adamantly ban from his or her kitchen. Essentially Kosher is just an industrial

product that’s lent a certain false aura of authenticity be-cause it is certif ied kosher (which is unconcerned with its naturalness).

Salt gets a really bad rap and recently New York has cut down on the salt used in restaurants. What can you tell me that would be in contrast to this? Why is salt good for you and why is natural sea salt ok but re-f ined salt not ok?

Use as much salt so long as you are the one salting your food. The media has an un-fortunate habit of picking up on one subject and terror-izing people with it, but re-f ined carbohydrates, sugars, and fats make up the VAST majority of the food we eat, not salt. Avoid all that junk, and you will you also be avoiding the processed salt that is blended into all of it to make it taste good. Foods that have not been pre-salt-ed are generally less ref ined, and so f inding a food you can salt yourself gives you higher quality ingredients as a foundation–then your own hand and taste buds can determine the necessary amount of salt. This goes for restaurants, too. Chef’s should at the very least ex-plore strategies and ideas for allowing customers to

engage in the act of salting their own food. I need very little salt to make something taste good to my palate. Plus, I love salting. It’s tactile, it accentuates the integrity of each ingredient, and I can vary the amount of salt from bite to bite, gaining insight in to different layers of f lavors within.

How many different kinds of salts do you sell?

We sell more than 100 va-rieties of sea salt and rock salt from dozens of countries around the world.

What is your favorite salt for?

I never put the salt ahead of the food. I let the food, the recipe, the context of the

meal, inspire me, and then pick a salt. But for most people, 3 salts are plenty: a ‘f leur de sel’ for delicate food, a f lake salt for added spark when you want the salt to show itself off, and a ’sel gris’ for hearty foods such as steak and root veg-etables. ‘Sel gris’ is also your all around cooking salt, for pasta water, saucing, etc…