It’s a cruel trick of the brain that the things we can’t easily reach become so much dearer to us by that quality alone. Consider one of the recent additions to the list of my favorite foods ever: pissaladière, Provençal pizza. It has all the makings of a Neven Pleaser: rich, salty, satisfying. Yet I can’t think of a single restaurant in Portland that serves in (on a regular basis, anyway).

Luckily, it’s pretty easy to make pissaladière at home. Before we look at the ingredients, a brief disclaimer: like pizza, this is a dish of many styles and variations. This recipe is a combination of several kinds I’ve read about, ordered, and attempted myself. Feel free to improvise. I’m including a bonus sauce at the end; it’s optional but delicious, and good to know as a secret weapon for other dishes.

The below recipe, combined with a nice salad, will feed two. If you plan on using both puff pastry sheets from the package, double everything and bake in sequence.

• 1 sheet puff pastry, frozen
• 8-12 anchovy fillets; half chopped, half whole
• 10-15 niçoise (“nee-swaz”) olives or Kalamatas, pitted and quartered
• 1 large onion, sliced chunky
• fresh thyme
• fresh parsley, chopped
• good olive oil
• salt, sugar, black pepper

Ingredient notes: the best possible anchovies are Ortiz brand; Scalia will also work. Check your local Italian deli - the grocery store is unlikely to carry anything you’d want to eat.

Preheat the oven to 500º F. Next, grab the puff pastry sheet; they usually come in pairs, so remove one from the package and place it on a tray on the counter for 30 to 60 minutes, until it unfolds easily.

Meanwhile, let’s caramelize the onions - heat a bit of oil in a shallow nonstick skillet on medium-high. When it’s shimmering, add the onion and half a teaspoon each of salt and sugar. Stir lightly immediately to distribute the sugar. Cook 15-25 minutes until the onion is soft, with some brown spots, but not fully browned. If any slices were so small that they’re now burnt black, remove them. When done, remove from heat and add half a tablespoon of water to the skillet to keep the onions shiny and moving. Set aside.

Time to assemble: place a large sheet of parchment paper (NOT wax paper) on a pizza peel or a cookie sheet. Unfold the puff pastry sheet onto it and roll it out with a rolling pin lightly; we want to prevent the whole thing from puffing up madly, but don’t “crush” it.

Brush the whole thing with olive oil; if your anchovies came in a nice oil themselves, add some of that. Next, top with the olives, then the chopped anchovies, leaving a 1/2” border around the toppings. Add a sprinkle of fresh thyme and grind on some black pepper. Grab onions from the skillet using tongs and top the pissaladière. Finish it off with the whole anchovy fillets arranged in a pretty criss-cross pattern.

Bake for 10-15 minutes, until the edges of the puff pastry and the underside are golden brown. The edges may puff up quite a bit, but they’ll deflate once out of the oven. Let it cool for 5 minutes, then cut into a 2 × 3 grid. Top with the parsley and the sauce. What sauce? This sauce:

Bonus recipe: herbed mayonnaise

I learned this as sauce ravigote, which is probably not quite right, though the definition of the sauce appears to be controversial. Let’s just call it a sort of herbed mayo.

• 1 tbsp mayo; if possible, Kewpie brand
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp canola, grapeseed, or other mild oil
  
• 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tbsp combined fresh herbs: parsley, chervil, tarragon, thyme; minced as finely as possible

Combine the egg, mayo, and mustard in a small bowl. Slowly drizzle in the oil while whisking vigorously, making sure it gets integrated and the sauce stays together without separating. Stir in the juice and the herbs. Add salt if needed.

Grab dollops of the sauce with a fork and drizzle it over the pissaladière; if you have any left over, it’ll keep in the fridge for a week. Use it on literally anything savory.

Serve everything with a crisp white wine or lemonade for the youngsters.

The New York Times has a fascinating page one story today about salt. It’s an interesting piece of reporting about the effect of salt on food, particularly processed food, and how the food industry has not just embraced but become addicted to salt over the decades. It’s also a peek into how the government regulates the food we eat and the tension between scientific research, the food industry, government and your average grocery shopper.

I always worry when I read stories likes this one, though, because I fear that the lesson learned at the end isn’t “eat fewer processed foods” but “salt is bad”. And since my email and twitter have already filled with questions about this latest salvo against salt, here’s my bit.

First, you need salt to live, just like you need fat, so completely getting rid of it, even if you could, is a bad idea. Second, the vast majority of salt consumed, particularly in Western diets, comes from processed foods, not from properly seasoning your food while you’re cooking — the NYT article claims processed and restaurant foods account for 80% of Americans’ salt intake.

The human palate is highly attuned to detect salt, which, along with finicky consumers, makes it difficult for processed food manufacturers like Kraft and Kellogg to significantly reduce salt without driving their customers away. Add to the fact that salt is a much cheaper additive than, say, fresh herbs, and it’s easy to understand why the food industry is reluctant to stop over-salting the food they process for us.

Which leads to an obvious recommendation: eat fewer processed foods, cook more, use fresh ingredients but don’t be afraid to properly season your food with salt. It’s obvious, though not necessarily easy, and it’s something we hope to help with.

That’s me, Salt, wearing a custom chef jacket courtesy of Fat, Jim Ray. I’m holding my gift for Mr. Steven Frank, a plush hambone.

(Photo by Antichrista)

Incredibly intricate labyrinths made of salt by Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto (chef’s hat tip to Kottke)

cowsandmilk:

So, what do we see?  Forty two years of studies involving hundreds of thousands of patients, all with long follow up times on intervention.  And the longer the follow up time, the more pronounced the effect, indicating that continuing to eat more salt or eat less salt over longer periods of time had even more impact.

So, I don’t know where saltandfat gets their information on the lack of scientific links, but it seems to be bunk to me.  Large studies written up in major medical journals disagree with him, leaving him appearing to be the salt version of climate change denialists.

I knew this link was going to get me in trouble, I never thought I’d have the pleasure of being equated with a climate change denier. And the blog’s only been up a day! Is climate change denial the new Godwin’s Law?

My overall point is that people generally think that salt causes hypertension, full stop, but the evidence doesn’t bear that out. From Harold McGee’s “On Food and Science” p. 642-643:

Medical scientists have long suspected that constant excessive salt intake results in an excessive volume of plasma being contained in our blood vessels, and therefore causes high blood pressure, which damages the blood vessels and increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. However, low-salt diets have been found to lower high blood pressure only modestly,and only in some people. And low-salt diets have surprising side effects of their own, including undesirable increases in blood cholesterol levels. At this time, it appears that most beneficial non-medical influences on blood pressure are general dietary balance — more vegetables, fruits, and seeds rich in potassium, calcium and other minerals — together with physical exercise that conditions the whole cardiovascular system.

Gary Taubes has more on the political science of salt and the clash of public health and good science.

However, it would appear I was somewhat wrong, or at the very least poorly expressed my point. I do agree that we eat too much salt, thanks largely to processed food and that reducing that intake is a good thing. Cooking more is a great way to do that, but you shouldn’t fear the salt in your own kitchen. My big concern is a grand pronouncement that tells everyone to stop eating salt leading to vast misconceptions and bad science.

As far as I understand it, the science goes something like this: sodium is a necessary component of human health. Salt causes a temporary retention of water until it can be processed by the kidneys. People who already have hypertension or are at risk for strokes or other cardiovascular problems, due to a variety of lifestyle choices, should watch their salt intake. Modern, particularly western, diets have vastly more salt than the human body requires, largely thanks to processed foods, which also contain all kinds of other nasties, like refined carbohydrates and hydrogenated fats. Eat fewer processed foods, cook more, but don’t be afraid to use salt in the kitchen.

I have no desire to get into a fight over this and I’m certainly not going to back and forth reblog NO YOU’RE WRONG. I think that if more people ate more real food and less refined, prepackaged, high-sodium foods, we’d be better for it.

Having already defeated smoking and trans fats, Michael Bloomberg has now turned his attention to salt. I’m certainly a fan of eliminating the first two but here I think Bloomberg’s gone too far in his coddling of New Yorkers. Salt is as misunderstood as it is an important component of the human diet and, in my mind, unfairly lumped together with truly noxious additives — like hydrogenated fats, artificial sweeteners and the dreaded high fructose corn syrup.

One of the worst misconceptions about salt is that it’s linked to high blood pressure and other heart diseases, despite no scientific evidence definitively linking the two. I’ll have more to say about salt in the future but put me down as an opponent of top down regulations against its use.