Salt producers show local flavour
It wasn't until we undertook the big drive around Australia last year that I began to wonder why our family dinner table always had a little dish of Maldon Sea Salt on it.
Maldon salt is nice enough. It's soft, white and flaky in a way salt never was when I was a kid. In the 1970s, there was rock salt in grinders and cooking salt, harsh little crystals that slid easily out of the tall plastic cone they came in.
A selection of premium salt products.
The problem I have with Maldon salt is that it must travel such a long way to get here - from the east coast of Essex in Britain, where it is harvested, not in the northwestern Victorian town of Maldon as I had lazily assumed. I have the same issue with the delicious grey French salts and Himalayan Black Salt.
Outside the Sydney-Melbourne corridor within which fancy salt buyers like me tend to be found, our nation produces bounteous salt mostly as a byproduct of salinity. Salinity is cursed by graziers and croppers because it equates to inhospitable farming land: unsurprisingly, it is particularly prevalent where rainfall is especially low.
In South Australia, so many pink lakes ringed by pretty pink crusts of crunchy salt look from a distance like sugary confections. And I wasn't in the least surprised to discover salt is a significant West Australian export.
In the hot, dry Pilbara, mining giant Rio Tinto has a slew of salt mines near Dampier and Karratha, Port Hedland and Carnarvon. Colossal mountains of Dampier Salt can been seen from pretty much everywhere in Port Hedland, from where the stuff is shipped all over the world.
These operations have helped establish Australia as the fifth-largest salt-producing nation in the world, but when you see the crystals being piled high by earth-moving equipment, it's a fair guess the stuff isn't meant for human consumption.
Dampier Salt is mainly used in the production of plastics, glass, detergents, soaps, textiles, industrial chemicals, road de-icing and, only occasionally, in food processing.
The use of salt in "food processing" provides a hint of how the chemical came to be known as "the white death". Most processed foods, sweet and savoury, are loaded with sodium, which is why diets high in processed foods have led to dangerous levels of sodium consumption and its attendant health problems.
Then there are the diets we strive to have; rich in wholefoods, fresh and organic fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy. Added salt, in the form of generous pinches of soft flakes, have their place here and gourmet producers argue that salts containing other minerals such as magnesium, sulphate, calcium, potassium, iron and iodine are less damaging to health than salt processed into pure sodium chloride.
Remarkably, local producers have started making gourmet salt flakes only in the past decade, and their products are still not widely available in the big supermarket chains.
Australia is the fifth-biggest industrial salt-producing nation but gourmet flakes are a recent innovation.
Duncan Thomson is co-owner with wife Jan of Murray River Salt, which produces the distinctive pink salt flakes. The Thomsons began a salt-mining business near Mildura in 1982, producing industrial salt for domestic and international export.
In 2003, they began experimenting with producing the gourmet flakes, using a mixing process to give the salt its distinctive colouring.
"We use salt mined at Mourquong (in NSW, 17km from Mildura) and underground aquifer waters and re-mix it," Duncan says.
In the early days the Thomsons frequently travelled from their Mildura head office to Collingwood farmers' market in Melbourne, not only to make sales but also to get feedback from buyers and other producers.
"We were producing one to two tonnes and we're now exporting around the world about 150 tonnes," he says.
Chefs are thrilled to see local producers entering the fray. Paul Wilson, ex-food director for several Melbourne eateries including St Kilda's Prince of Wales Hotel, says the previous dominance of French products has been challenged in recent years by the emergence of interesting Australian salts.
He cites Mount Zero as one of the best. Producers the Seymour family have been harvesting the salt for less than five years from a lake in central western Victoria.
This year's two to three-week harvest in April was expected to yield 40 tonnes for distribution around the nation. Usually the family harvests 20-30 tonnes from the land operated by the Barengi Gadjin Land Council, but rain defeated the previous two harvests, generating pent-up demand for a bigger haul this year.
The Seymours hand-harvest their salt using a shallow shovelling method that minimises the collection of impurities and does not disturb the delicate ecology of the lake.
Richard Seymour says Australians have traditionally regarded European products as the benchmark.
"We certainly found that when we started out with our olive oil back in the 1990s," he says. "We've had a 20-year process of educating the public."
Mount Zero recently released a sea-kelp salt product that blends pink lake salt with iodine-rich kelp harvested from the beaches of southern NSW. This new line is intended to rival the well-known European grey salts.
For all the tinkering the Seymours are doing, gourmet salt accounts for just 10 per cent of the company's business. In salt, however, they see growth potential.
And as for why local products retail at prices rivalling imported products?
Syd Weddell of specialty food retailer Essential Ingredient cannot explain the similar price points. Murray River Salt undergoes the complex mixing and drying process and Mount Zero's hand-harvesting doesn't come cheap, but Maldon undergoes a similar process to Murray River and France's Il de Re is hand-harvested akin to Mount Zero. The strong Australian dollar probably offsets other importation costs - or else the Australian producers have set their retail prices according to what they think the market will pay.
They wouldn't be gourmet if they were mass-produced, would they?
Compliments to the condiments
OUR local salt producers are striding ahead, but unfortunately consumers don't realise it and are still patting themselves on the back after having moved from Saxa to Maldon. Folks, it's time to get educated and sample some of these local beauties.
Pukara Estate Charcoal and Olive Smoked Salt Flakes ($10.95): large and crispy, and a dark grey basalt that looks like moon dust. The bouquet is mild with a hint of olive, while the taste is much more tangy and altogether sharper. Open a jar of the Pepper and Olive salt flakes and prepare to have your socks blasted off by the pleasingly pungent light brown flakes. The Oak Smoked flakes are milder and paler still, with a much more subtle palette. pukaraestate.com.au
Murray River Gourmet Salt Flakes ($8.40): these crunchy salt bombs are a pleasing pink, with flakes with the texture of snow. These come with a subtle bouquet and their extreme crumbliness dissolves easily on the tongue. essentialingredient.com.au
Mt Zero Pink Lake Sea Salt Kelp ($16): just like a bracing dip in the ocean, this rock salt is mixed with sea kelp harvested from remote southern NSW beaches. mountzeroolives.com
Himalayan Salt Brick ($12.70): mined from the famed mountain ranges, I had at first thought this was the sodium equivalent of licking granny's cake bowl after the Mixmaster had done its work. But this salt brick is much more sophisticated. It's salt, obviously, but also part cooking implement (heat it and cook beef strips on it), part decorative centrepiece and part serving board. Serve a tomato salad on it and watch soak up its pleasant saltiness. essentialingredient.com.au
Source: The Australian, 3 August 2013
