The Oakley of Salt

This post is a shameless plug for a particular product so I will make it clear from the start that I am not receiving payment of any kind for this review from the manufacturers and, if they see fit to send me any form of gratuity after reading this (I can be contacted by the email form to the right!!) I will of course publish it.

Anyway, on to the post proper. Almost all recipes call for salt. It's so common that it can become almost invisible on the page. Yet proper seasoning does lift a dish from being a simple cure for hunger to being a delicious delicacy. Salt, in moderation, can be an excellent way to improve do this.

Some say that the only way to get good food is to get good ingredients. I agree with this to a point but I for one am not in the fortunate position to be able to splash out on the best of all ingredients. Some have to be economised on for the greater good of my bank balance. However I do believe that there is one ingredient that, if a bit more is spent on it, can be used to bring out the best in other ingredients you have perhaps saved on. That ingredient is salt and specifically Maldon sea salt.

It sounds ridiculous doesn't it? Brand named salt. The ultimate yuppie accessory. However I stick to my guns. Using Maldon in your day to day cooking makes a huge improvement. Place a crystal on your tongue and you wll get a wonderfully intense salty flavour. So much so that only the occasional pinch is needed to achieve wonderful flavours in your food. Anecdotal evidence backs me up on this. I find I use far less of this than of other brands of sea salt to achieve similar levels of flavour. Compared to ground table salt it's not even in the same league.

There is the secondary advantage of it being available in several high street supermarket chains. This makes it easy to get. While it would be lovely to spend hours browsing in delis and independent markets for the weekly shop, few of us have the time. Supermarkets tend to be the default option so it's availability there does make life much easier.

In fact the only major draw back it the price. At over £2 for 500g it isn't cheap but I still maintaitn that it is well worth the money.

Finally, for those of you interested in the origin of the title of this post: it comes from an incident on a family holiday years ago. I had bought a pair of Oakley sunglasses prompting much mocking from my parents about being a fashion victim. This lasted right up until I went for a swim and gave the sunglasses to my mother to keep safe. She put them on so they wouldn't get lost and realised in an instant that, as well as being expensive, they were in fact brilliant sunglasses and allowed her eyes to relax instead of just dimming the glare. So much so that next birthday, she requested a pair!

Anyway, I digress. Pick up some Maldon with your next weekly shop and give it a try. If you feel like it, you can even let me know what you think

TFB