Fleur de Sel, and Salted Caramel

Quite a few years ago, back in university days, I heard about a salt called “Fleur de Sel”, and it was prohibitively expensive for me at the time, but I have wanted to try it ever since. It comes from the sea, as most people probably know, and genuine fleur de sel is kind of greyish, and wettish (I could be imagining this, but that is what I remember), like it was just freshly cultivated from the sea…see? Fresh is important, even with salt !
Well, seven or eight years back (wow time flies), Steve and I were on a weekend away to Niagara-on-the-Lake, and we found a little Provencal-themed store, where we bought a beautiful blue and yellow table cloth to go in our then blue and yellow Provencal kitchen, in a house we no longer live in, and lo and behold for a mere $20 or so, a beautiful little robin’s egg blue ceramic pot of “fleur de sel” with its own darling little spoon. Yes, I’m totally susceptible to marketing ploys. That salt had my name on it, in fact, it burst out singing with joy when it saw me coming into the store, and I have to say, the feeling was mutual. Real actual “fleur de sel” in person! It was love at first taste. My fleur de sel is actually harvested in Spain, off the coast of Ibiza. (I found this on a site called Frenchy Bee, and it is currently available for a mere $21.75. Looks like a site I will have to check out in more detail!)

Sal de Ibiza - Spanish Fleur de Sel Sea Salt - Ceramic Jar and Spoon - 4.4 ozHand harvested on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza in the Parc Natural de ses Salines d'Eivissa. This fleur de sel is unique in taste and texture retaining 80 essential minerals and trace elements such as magnesium, fluoride and iodine. The crystals only form under special conditions before being harvested by hand: lots of natural sunshine, low humidity and slight winds.

• Sale de Ibiza is fresh salt, always slightly moist and best kept that way.
• Enjoy the beautiful blue ceramic jar with cork top with matching white ceramic salt spoon.
• Use as a finishing salt on roasted vegetables and grilled meat, in marinades and salad dressings.

I found my empty jar, but for a few grains of salt I kept for sentimental reasons. Does this make me weird? I supposed I could splurge and buy myself new salt, but I've clung to these for so long, they've attained an almost holy state of being. Yes, I guess that confirms that I'm weird, lol.  Anyway, the back side of this jar (because can anyone have too much salt info?? --don't answer that!!) you learn:

"For over 2,700 years, a sea-salt of premium quality has been harvested in the saline fields on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. The island's inhabitants have always been very proud of their marine salt, regarded as one of the best of its kind. The supreme "Queen of Salts", however, hand-harvested in the Nature Reserve of the "Parc natural de ses Salines d'Eivissa", is the "Fleur de Sel" (Blossom of Salt). Unique in taste and texture, it is a rare and precious delicacy. The fragile "Fleur de Sel" crystals only form in conditions of abundant bright sunshine, low humidity and gentle winds. "Fleur de Sel" is exceptionally rich in vital minerals and trace-elements [Magnesium, Potassium, Fluoride and Iodine, et. al.). It is a surprisingly mild, yet very aromatic and tasty salt."

This salt was definitely much too good for children, and husbands who don’t appreciate salt, and well pretty much anyone really who does not have my zeal for salt. This was my DREAM salt, and I wanted to hoard it, and use its precious little grains sparingly so that it would last forever. Alas, all good things come to an end, and the salt is no longer with us, but that little ceramic pot is, just because it's cute and I like it. I did really, really enjoy my fleur de sel and this may sound weird, but I mostly used it to have radishes as a snack which I loved, just to really enjoy the salt. Turns out radishes aren’t all that tasteless when you eat them by the bowlful and they give you really nasty breath, like garlic does. I’ve always liked that “hot” little kick radishes have, but that heat aspect really multiplies when you eat large quantities of radishes. I have now eaten so many of them from my fleur de sel days that I don’t even know if I have eaten them since. It was definitely not used for salting water. It was special salt. Honestly,  a really great unrefined sea salt, and ultimately worth it to me, and that’s what matters.

And what do you know, the year after I bought my sea salt, President’s Choice came out with a line of trendy gourmet salts.   I bought all of them to see if they were good. I have to say, I really liked the pink Himalayan salt. It was funny, there was one (they were in sleek modern Ikea-ish little silver tins, like those little clockmaker tins you see everywhere now, but used to cost a fortune) called a Mediterranean sea salt or something, so you thought, oh cool, look at all these flakes of Mediterranean salt, but if you look closely, you could see that they were all formed in a mold or something. Salt is just not usually pyramid shaped. Although I just reread the Wikipedia info where salt from Cyprus is pyramid shaped, so I stand corrected! Guess I should not have been using it for pasta water :)

Wikipedia has this to say about Fleur de Sel;

Fleur de sel ("Flower of salt" in French) is a hand-harvested sea salt collected by workers who scrape only the top layer of salt before it sinks to the bottom of large salt pans. Traditional French fleur de sel is collected off the coast of Brittany (most notably in the towns of Guérande - Fleur de Sel de Guérande, hand harvested from salt marsh water being the most revered), Noirmoutier, and also Camargue. It is an artisanal food product. Due to its relative scarcity, Fleur de sel is one of the more expensive salts.

Fleur de sel is often slightly grey due to the sand collected in the process of harvesting the salt from the pans. On occasion, the presence of Dunaliella salina (a type of pink microalgae commonly found in salt marshes) can give it a light pink tint. It is usually sold in sealed jars.

Parallels to authentic Fleur de sel, sourced from other territories, include:

• "Flor de sal", a Portuguese variant from the Algarve.
• Maldon Sea Salt Flakes from Essex, UK, similar in nature but with smaller crystals.
• Cyprus Sea Salt Flakes, with pyramid-shaped crystals and a pure white colour.

  Well, that concludes the lecture on fleur de sel. I loved the top photo, it really looks like a field of salt blossoms. Perfect. 

I wanted to find a recipe that would show off salt, and I am a big fan of savoury/sweet combinations of food, so I thought first of "salted caramel". I then had a light bulb moment ....what about caramel-filled soft pretzels?? Well, I'm just going to begin with the salted caramel recipe, because as it turned out, the this caramel would not work for pretzel filling, so I'm still experimenting with it. My first attempt at salted caramel was not quite what I'd hoped, I cooked it too long, not having a candy thermometer, but it ended up with a crunchy toffee-like texture very similar to the inside of a Skor bar, but without all the bother of eating all the chocolate off first (I can't be the only one who does that)!!

 The second version turned out better, since Barb stirred it and monitored it the entire time while I got dinner ready for the kids, and knew we would cook it less time than the first batch.  It was perfect caramel, like the MacIntosh kind I remember from childhood, but better, creamy and buttery with a subtle hint of salt in it. Delicious.  However, it is still not the right texture for pretzel filling, so I'm still playing around with other recipes, and will let you know the verdict.

  Here is a photo of both varieties. You could definitely taste the hint of salt, and I added more just so it looked pretty :) Since I was out of fleur de sel, I just used sea salt, and I'm pretty sure no one would ever know the difference, even me :)  It easier to cook than you might think, and as long as you don't burn it, it will taste pretty good no matter what texture you end up with. The salted caramel recipe I used follows, and I found it at:  epicurious.com/Fleur-de-Sel-Caramels . Try it, you will love it!!

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1 teaspoon fleur de sel*
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• 1/4 cup water
• Special equipment: parchment paper; a deep-fat thermometer
• Line bottom and sides of an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper, then lightly oil parchment.
  Bring cream, butter, and fleur de sel to a boil in a small saucepan, then remove from heat and set aside.
  Boil sugar, corn syrup, and water in a 3- to 4-quart heavy saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Boil, without stirring but gently swirling pan, until mixture is a light golden caramel.
  Carefully stir in cream mixture (mixture will bubble up) and simmer, stirring frequently, until caramel registers 248°F on thermometer, 10 to 15 minutes. Pour into baking pan and cool 2 hours. Cut into 1-inch pieces, then wrap each piece in a 4-inch square of wax paper, twisting 2 ends to close.