In a salt crust

Cooking food in a salt crust ("a la sal" in Spanish) is a traditional way of cooking in the countries around the Mediterranean sea. It may come as no surprise that the most usual dish found to be prepared like this is a fish like sea bass. 

It´s a very good way to prepare food, as no fat is required, and the food is actually prepared within its proper juices. When properly taking away the salt crust, the food isn´t too salty either and the salt has not only absorbed fat from the food, but also the cooking smells.

At home, Gonzalo normally prepares the typical Spanish dishes (tortilla, paella, and lubina/dorada a la sal), while I cook the rest. But this time, as I was lucky to be able to collaborate in a project by Sal Costa, I tried out a couple of different recipes using this cooking method.

Both recipes come from the booklets included in the project pack. 

1/ Salmonetes con salsa de tomate y aceitunas - red mullet in a tomato and olive sauce

Ingredients : 8 large red mullets - 2 kg of salt - 200g tomatoes - 200g onion - 20g unpitted green olives - 20g capers (on vinegar) - 3 spoons of olive oil (virgen extra) - 1 spoon of Xeres vinegar - 1 spoon of oregano - parsley

Preparation :

• ask your fish monger to clean the mullets opening them up as little as possible, and maintaining the scales
•  put a layer of salt in an oven dish, put some parsley on top, and then the red mullets; cover with the rest of the salt
• cook in the oven at 220ºC for 18 minutes
• meanwhile : chop tomatoes and onion small, add capers, the sliced olives and the oregano; add vinegar and olive oil according to personal taste
• remove salt from the red mullets; serve with the sauce

As you can tell, I changed the sauce a bit, as I didn´t have any olives in the house at that moment, but the result was just perfect, as far as the sauce was concerned.

2/ Gambas a la sal - prawns prepared in a salt crust
Ingredients : salt - fresh prawns (preferentially large size)
Preparation : 

• preheat oven at 200ºC
• cover an oven tray with a salt layer; put the prawns on top and cover completely with salt
• humidify the salt slightly
• cook in the oven for ca. 20 minutes
• remove salt and serve inmediately

The latter recipe was a straight success from the first moment, while we´ll need to repeat the experience with the red mullet at least once more. It was very hard to remove the salt layer correctly, so we ended up with a slightly over-salty fish. I attributed it to the red mullet being smaller than the sea bass we normally use to prepare this way (when removing the salt using bigger fish, one takes away the skin as well), but I learned it was really because of having overhumidified the salt.
From exchanges with fellow- participants I now know that one can optimise this by

• humidifying the salt by spraying a bit of water over it
• breaking the salt layer at the end and using a pastry brush to remove the salt

In the project booklet (as well as in videocasted recipes we were shown) other recipes use the technique with meat or vegetables, but honestly, I prefer to use other cooking methods (steaming vegetables, or grilling meat) because it is easier to check whether the cooking is "done". Further more, you should never forget that removing the salt gives you a bit of cleaning up to do as well. For fish you need to count 30 minutes of cooking in a preheated oven at 220ºC for a piece of 1kg; for every 0.5 kg more, you add 5-10 minutes to the cooking time. For smaller fish, it might help to indicate where the position of the fish is in the oven dish, in order to make it easier to break the salt crust.

Overall, it was a very positive experience, and we´ve extended the use of salt when cooking.