Salty

Quite possibly one of the best flavours of all! Salt has been used through history as a favour enhancer and preserver. It has been instrumental in the building of economies, the Romans paid their soldiers with salt and Medieval Europeans started preserving fish from America for sale in Europe and the salt route helped the economies of cities along the salt route through Europe and the Middle East. When researching this topic I was actually really surprised to find museums dedicated to salt dotted throughout Europe, North America and South America and even Japan.

A salt museum built from bricks of salt, Uyuni Bolivia.

Image from: http://austintoargentina.travellerspoint.com/13/

Salt used as a preserver in a historical context removed communities dependency on seasonal and regional availability of food. Imagine what that did for their diet and their food selections! Now we couldn't imagine living without choice of produce. Before people started preserving produce, their diets where very limited to what could be produced during a season. Even though we are now no where near as dependant on seasons, due to freezing and preserving, we still tend to follow seasonal trends for example eating stews in winter, salads in summer and pigging out on berries in spring (well I know that I do!). I also read a really interesting article about memories and the creating of them through food which I have attached if you're interested (My Favourite Recipes: Recreating Emotions and Memories through cooking I certainly was! This research is so very close to what I am interested in and how I feel about food. So unbelievably great to see some others out there to love thinking about food, memory and identity. Anyway back to salty...

Jansson's Temptation (Jansson's Frestelse) a LOT nicer than it looks!

Image from: http://www.sweden.se/upload/Sweden_se/english/Theme%20sites/Culinary%20classics%20new/jansson.jpg

Whenever I think of things salty, I am drawn back to my childhood and I think of the anchovies that my dad used in his Jansson's Temptation (Swedish dish of anchovies, potatoes and cream) and the ubiquitous can of tuna in brine which my mum would make into fish cakes or tuna mornay (not a favourite of mine when I was younger). Jansson's Temptation is still a dish that I make to remember my father and as a way to express the Swedish side of my identity.  However as I have gotten older salty for me also makes me think of fish sauce and soy sauce, which are of course not surprisingly two of the major flavour components in South East Asian cuisine. Salt also enhances other flavours such as making sweet sweeter, this always makes me thing of salted caramel macarons- Yum-o!

Who doesn't love a macaron?

Image from: http://thecakemistress.com/blog/articles/macaron-adriano-zumbo/

So how does salt help people express their cooking identity? In my last instalment I looked at spicy and food identity and the respect of traditions through the passing on of recipes. Food identity is also about re-creating memories and cultural traditions. But what I am interested at the moment is how this relates to people, like myself (an Australian/Swede) who loves to make other cuisines? What does cooking a cuisine that isn't part of our heritage mean in regards to our food identities? I believe that I cook South East Asian cuisine (for instance) for various reasons. Thailand was the first overseas destination that I travelled to, and it greatly influenced my cooking when I returned. I remembered that I made numerous Thai beef salads trying to relive that first taste the dish in it's homeland. I was totally obsessed with fish sauce and would add it to dressings to add that salty/fishy flavour. So for me, making Thai salads and using fish sauce was a way for me to demonstrate that I was interested in other cultures and that I had travelled and was an expression of the experiences of my life. So my cooking repertoire is really quite influenced by my family, my travels and projections of how I view myself as well travelled (both in the countries that I have visited and in countries that I still have to travel).