The culture of Algarve salt

Marc Millon

slow

the international herald of taste
issue n° 29, may 2002

Ó mar salgado, quanto do teu sal
São lágrimas de Portugal!
Salt-laden sea, how much of all your salt
Is tears of Portugal!

(From Mar Salgado by Fernando Pessoa, translated by Jonathan Griffin)

On the waterfront at Olhão, east of Faro, in front of the covered fish market, there are outdoor racks set up for the wind-drying of cação. The local prawn fishermen catch this dogfish, a type of small shark, in their nets, but as the fish has little commercial value, they split and salt it for their own use, then hang it out to dry in the fresh Atlantic air. The salted dogfish may be cooked in caldeirada, or fish stew, a local specialty particularly enjoyed by the fisherfolk of Olhão at Christmas.
By the banks of the Arade estuary in Portimão, we sit at outdoor tables and enjoy the sizzling smell of sardines, cooked simply over charcoal. The taste, like the smell, is exquisite, and the flavor that is so typical comes not just from the sea-fresh, oily, slightly burnt flesh of the fish but from the hard crunch of the coarse sea salt that has been copiously tossed over it as it cooks.
In ancient covered markets and in glistening modern supermarkets alike, throughout the Algarve, and indeed throughout all of Portugal, stacks of seemingly rock-hard bacalhau are piled high, the strong-smelling slabs, saturated literally to the bone with crystallized salt.
Indeed, for centuries now, Europe’s intrepid fishermen have headed out to the fishing grounds of Iceland, armed with a suitable supply of salt (historically, Portuguese salt from Sétubal), in search of a rich and prized catch of North Atlantic cod. After salting and air-drying, the resulting salt cod was, and still is, virtually indestructible, and can be transported long distances, even in the heat. Thus salt cod became the staple food for the lean days stipulated by the Church.
It may perhaps seem odd to us today, with refrigeration, freezing and modern transportation, and with such an outstanding source of fresh fish readily available, that bacalhau is still so widely eaten and appreciated in Portugal. For indeed this is a country proud to boast that there are at least as many ways to prepare this much loved food as there are days of the year.

Meanwhile, way up high on the slopes of Monchique, the mountain that oversees Portugal’s southern coastline, pigs fed on a diet of acorns are transformed into sweet mountain presunto by salting then air-drying in well-ventilated ham lofts. Other meats, such as the paprika-spiked chouriço, are similarly salt cured while the milk from herds of scrawny sheep, goats and cows is transformed, through the vital addition of salt, into a range of outstanding artisan-produced cheeses.
Since time immemorial, in Portugal, as in all of Europe and the world, salt has been indispensable for the preservation and conservation of food. Indeed, salt is indispensable for life itself. Salt is a basic commodity, fundamental to our daily diet, yet it is something we all use with hardly a second thought and with little if any appreciation for its rich historic, cultural, ecological and gastronomic values. For producers of traditional sea salt, there, in a pinch, lies the problem and the challenge.

A protected habitat
In a country blessed with an extensive coastline pierced with numerous inlets, estuaries, rivers and lagoons, a beneficial, sunny climate and dry Atlantic winds for evaporation, it is natural that throughout Portugal salt from the sea has long been harvested.
However, the availability of more inexpensively obtained rock salt has made the gathering of sea salt a marginal activity at best. Salt pans have been abandoned up and down the country and today the Algarve, the southern outpost fanned by the hot winds that blow across from North Africa, is one of the few remaining areas where this traditional activity continues. Visitors flying in to Faro may look down from their airplane windows as they come in to land to notice an extensive patchwork of manmade salt pans in the marshy lagoons that extend out to sea. These salt pans form a rich, historic system of salinas, probably begun by the Romans, possibly even earlier by the Phoenicians, and which in the Middle Ages supplied much of Europe with its table salt.
Today, as elsewhere in the country, most of the ancient salt pans along this coastline are abandoned and the area is a protected natural reserve. Others have been transformed into fish farms. But an important number remain, worked by a handful of traditional producers who stubbornly continue this timeless activity, harvesting by hand, utilizing age-old methods and tools, a rich bounty from the sea – flor de sal and sal marinho tradicional.
The methods for doing this are well documented and the importance and value of this traditional activity was recognized at the Slow Food Awards 2001 when the international panel of jurors awarded João Navalho and NECTON a prize for work in the salinas of the Algarve (see Slow 25).

To visit Navalho at the salt marshes of Olhão is to enter into a separate world, a protected ecosystem that abides by the rhythms of nature, the seasons and the limited intervention of man.
The salinas comprise a complex, self-contained system of large and small lagoons, interconnected by channels, separated by banks planted with hedges that resist erosion from the winter storms, and linked by narrow footpaths. In winter, they lie dormant, left full with the last good, salt rich waters from the summer. If the winter is dry, then this allows production to start early in the spring.
Meanwhile, during the closed season, this is a paradise for migratory birds, and indeed the sight of pink flamingos wading in the salinas on their long, spindly legs is a beautiful one. Birds such as the blackwinged stilt, avocet, Kentish plover, egret, little tern and many others come to winter in the Algarve’s salinas each year.

By April, the winter rains have mainly finished and the birds have begun their journeys back north. The salinas, meanwhile, are ready to resume their productive cycle once more. Each day, provided conditions are favorable – a dry wind from the north is ideal whereas the heavy, damp Levante from the southeast precludes the gathering of salt – the delicate crystals that form on the top surface of the salt pans are simply but skillfully raked off by hand. The result is flor de sal, literally skimmed off the top of the salina as it crystallizes yet before it forms into the heavier crystals that precipitate to the bottom. These heavier, coarser crystals, in contrast, are sal marinho tradicional, still a valued product but large-grained, harder, less crumbly in the fingers and less valuable, too, on the market than the relatively rare, hand-gathered flor de sal.

The salt trade
Flor de sal from the Algarve can be compared to the better-known French fleur de sel de Guérande. Both are great products, literally the ‘crème de la crème’ of salt. Whereas sodium chloride is the principal element of normal table salt, flor de sal benefits from a high concentration of other natural mineral salts and trace elements, notably potassium, magnesium, calcium and iron. These elements not only add flavor; studies have indicated that they may be positively beneficial to health.
French fleur de sel de Guérande, through canny marketing, is today widely appreciated by gourmets and chefs throughout the world, who are prepared to pay a hefty premium for this superior product. Yet by contrast, flor de sal from the Algarve remains virtually unknown and little appreciated, both inside and outside Portugal. Furthermore, the producers have been penalized in recent years by a Portuguese government stricture that stipulates different classes of salt based on the purity of sodium chloride content. Paradoxically, the added mineral salts and trace elements in flor de sal and sal marinho tradicional that make them such rich and valuable products take them below the required level of 96 percent sodium chloride, a classification that makes them theoretically unfit for the table.
Foreign recognition of the outstanding quality of flor de sal and sal marinho tradicional, however, in the form of a Slow Food Award, may have made the government rethink this absurdity. It is hoped that by the time this article is published, the anomaly in the law will have been changed through the creation of new categories that recognize and reward the excellence of these two quality Portuguese products.

Such a move will certainly assist in the distribution of flor de sal and sal marinho tradicional. But will consumers learn to appreciate and, more to the point, purchase them? A visit to an Algarve supermarket indicates the problem the producers of traditional, hand-gathered salt are up against. At the time of writing (April 2002), a kilogram of coarse rock salt costs just USD 0.20; 250 grams of basic sal de mesa, or table salt, costs USD 0.26. Flor de sal, however, sells for between two and three dollars for 250 grams, or around ten times the price of basic sal de mesa.
Since salt is considered by all a basic commodity rather than a luxury or gourmet product, it would seem to require something of a leap of faith for consumers to change the habits of a lifetime and purchase the more expensive product. Yet on the other hand, by any standard, salt — even flor de sal — remains an inexpensive commodity. In the normal scheme of shopping, the purchase of the more highly valued product would probably add very little in relation to a total monthly family spend.

The taste of salt
The question, however, still needs to be asked: is such a traditional, artisan-made product really ‘worth its salt’, purely from a gastronomic — if not an historical, cultural or ecological — point of view? Or is the taste of salt, whether rock, sea, industrial or traditional, well, just salty?
An unscientific but considered tasting proved the quality of the traditional product beyond doubt. We simply toasted slabs of coarse, dense Portuguese bread, rubbed each with a cut clove of garlic and drizzled over some new season extravirgin olive oil from the Alentejo. On one slab, we sprinkled ordinary sal de mesa.

On another, we crumbled with our fingers flor de sal. On a third, we added coarse rock salt while on a fourth, we sprinkled coarse sal marinho tradicional. Normal sal de mesa, which almost always includes anticoagulants and other permitted additives, is, paradoxically, the saltiest in flavor. The texture in the mouth is even and rather gritty. Flor de sal has a flavor at once more delicate and less salty yet at the same time more complex and intense, with perhaps just hints of the sea, while the delicate friable texture of the crystals almost melt in the mouth. Coarse rock salt is hard and crunchy in texture, and intensely salty, whereas the sal marinho tradicional, while coarse and nicely crunchy, shares the more subtle qualities and flavor of flor de sal and seems to enhance and bring out the flavor of the garlic and oil-infused bread.

In recent years, consumers have learned to appreciate and distinguish the finer qualities of extravirgin olive oil, single-estate extravirgin olive oil and even monovarietal single-estate extravirgin olive oil. Basic commodities such as vinegar now demand whole shelves in supermarkets throughout the world. Similarly, I believe, it is time for intelligent consumers to come to appreciate the more subtle flavor, quality and naturalness of traditionally produced sea salt, whether from the Algarve, Brittany, Essex, Japan, or elsewhere. Indeed, when you add to this the alleged health benefits, allied with the historic, cultural and ecological arguments, there is little doubt in our minds that this is a traditional product that demands support. For our part, we’ll be forever reminded, whenever we fly in to Faro Airport, and look down on the salinas spread out below us, to stock up on a suitable quantity of flor de sal to take back home with us. This is not holiday nostalgia, or even to protect an ancient way of life or an endangered ecosystem, but quite simply for the taste that it brings – the taste of Portugal.

Bibliography
M Kurlansky, Salt: A World History, Jonathan Cape, London 2002.
Premio Slow Food Biography/citation for João Navalho, see the Slow Food Award section at http://www.slowfood.com
JG Walmsley, “The Ecological Importance of Mediterranean Salinas”
http://www.gnest.org/Conferences/Saltworks_post/081-095.pdf
“Insula: The Salt Route in the Mediterranean”
http://www.insula.org/saltroute/
F Pessoa, ‘Selected Poems’ of Fernando Pessoa, Jonathan Griffin (translator), Penguin (second edition), Harmondsworth 2002.