It’s a new year and no new year would feel right if I didn’t start it with a series of some kind to keep me grounded. I’m constantly told that I need grounding because I tend to be all over the place in my thinking & my reading (at any given time, I’m busy reading 5 books which is, probably, a little much) so by doing a series, I’m forced to focus my reading in one direction. Ingenious. The most important ingredient in food is salt and so I’ll start with it, beginning at the Dead Sea for no particular reason other than that my

sister-in-law went there recently and fell head over heels in love with Israel while she was at it. The name goes back to the Hellenistic era and you can read about it in the Bible in the bits between the story of Abraham and the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah. If want to read the story of Sodom, it’s in Genesis 19 – look up from v 5 – 11 (it makes for horrific reading because Lot’s attitude to his poor daughters in a time of crisis was pretty shoddy, to say the least). Briefly, the two cities were annihilated by fires from heaven. If you carry on reading, you’ll see that the area next to the lake was the place where King David

found refuge from Saul and even later Herod the 1^st stopped there when Jerusalem was under siege by the Parthinians (actually, he hid in one of the fortresses he built at Masada) where, a little over 1½ centuries later, the Jewish Zealots committed mass suicide there when the Romans attacked them (almost mass, Josephus escaped to tell the tale). Towards the end of 1940, beginning 1950, hundreds of religious documents dated between 150BC & 70AD were found in caves near the ancient settlement of Qumran (about 1,6 kilometres from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea)

NAMES BY THE DEAD SEA HAS BEEN KNOWN

• Salt Sea (biblical reference)
• Sea of Arabah (biblical reference)
• Sea of Sodom (post biblical)
• Sea of Lot (post biblical)
• Lake Asphaltites (The Greeks)
• Sea of Asphalt (post biblical)
• Stinking Sea (post biblical)
• Devil’s Sea (Crusader name)

I found this recipe from Lorraine Pascal a while back & it’s so easy that I had to share it.

SO HOW DID IT HAPPEN

• About 3 million years ago the region we now call the Dead Sea, the Jordan River & the Wadi Arabah was being inundated by water coming from the Mediterranean Sea; it formed a crooked bay & was connected to the sea by the Jezreel Valley; life continued with occasional floods when the weather changed and so on.
• The lake in the Dead Sea Rift was calledLake Sedom and it deposited beds of salt that eventually became 3 km thick.
• Around 2 million years ago the land between the Rift Valley & the Mediterranean started to rise so much that the ocean couldn’t flood the bay anymore & it became a lake.
• The first prehistoric lake was called Lake Amora & it was a fresh water or brackish lake; eventually the climate became drier & the lake shrank and became saltier.
• The saltwater predecessor of the Dead Sea is named Lake Lisan and 70,000 to 12,000 years ago, it’s level was about 100 m higher than it is at the moment. 10,000 years ago, the lake level dropped dramatically, probably to levels even lower than today.

BIG FAT SALT & PEPPER BREADSTICKS

Ingredients

• 450g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
• 1 x 7g sachet fast-action dried yeast
• 1½ tsp salt
• 250–275ml warm water
• Olive oil for oiling
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tbsp coarse sea salt, like Malden
• 2 tbsp freshly ground black pepper

Method

• Dust two large baking trays with flour.
• Put the flour, yeast and the salt into a large bowl and add enough of the water to make a soft, but not sticky dough; if you’re kneading by hand, knead well for 10 minutes on a lightly floured work surface or if you’re using an electric mixer with a dough hook, five minutes will do.
• Divide the mixture into 12 equal portions, each weighing about 60g; then roll the portions into balls before putting each ball on a floured surface and rolling into a long sausage shape about 25cmx2cm.
• If you want to make twists, run a knife down the centre to split the dough, leaving a bit at one end uncut; braid or plait the two halves over each other to give a twisted effect.
• Place the breadsticks on the prepared baking trays, spacing them 4cm apart; cover them loosely with oiled cling wrap, making sure it is airtight and then leave in a warm place for 30 minutes or until the breadsticks have almost doubled in size.
• Preheat the oven to 200C.
• Remove the cling wrap & brush each breadstick with the extra virgin olive oil. Sprinkle half of the breadsticks with the sea salt and the rest with the freshly ground black pepper.
• Bake on the top third of the oven for about 20 minutes or until the breadsticks are lightly golden-brown and feel firm to the touch.
• Remove the breadsticks from the oven and leave to cool on the baking trays.

INTERESTING STUFF TO KNOW ABOUT THE DEAD SEA

• It seems that in early Biblical times it’s most important function was to serve as a barrier, blocking traffic to Judah from the east,
• An army of Ammonites and Moabites was said to have crossed a particularly shallow part of the Dead Sea when they were hell bent on attacking poor old King Jehoshaphat one bright & sunny day.
• Ezekiel prophesied the Dead Sea would  ”be healed and made fresh” some day in the distant future and Zechariah said:  ”Living waters will go out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea (probably the Dead Sea) and half to the western sea (probably the Mediterranean)”.
• 7 million tons of water evaporated increasing the salt content (salinity ranges from 26-35%).
• The Dead Sea is almost 9 times as salty as the world’s oceans and twice as saline as the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
• It’s the lowest elevation & the lowest body of water on the surface of planet Earth.
• The Jordan river is the only river that flows into the Dead Sea and there are no outlets.
• It is one of the saltiest bodies of water on earth Lake Assal in Djibouti, Lake Garabogazköl and some hypersaline lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica have higher salinities.

LOCATION

It’s in the Syro-African Rift which is a 4000-mile fault line in the earth’s crust and the lowest point of dry land on earth is the shoreline of  Dead Sea at 1300 feet below sea level. There are 2 theories on it’s origin:

1. The eldest one states that it lies in a true rift zone & is an extension of the Red Sea Rift or the Great Rift Valley of eastern Africa.
2. Recently, however, scientists have to come to the conclusion that it’s a consequence of a “step-over” discontinuity along the Dead Sea Rift and therefore creates an extension of the crust with consequent subsidence.

SEA BREAM IN SALT CRUST

This is a Robuchon recipe (because I got the book this Christmas) and is perfect exactly as it is; you will find that his recipes always work and need no adjustment and if you stick to them, you’ll always have an incredible result; however,  since I donI’t have a pic, I borrowed one from my favourite website where you’ll find a brilliantly researched article on the origin of the recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 whole sea bream, about 1,5 kg cleaned by your fishmonger but don’t remove the scales (do remove the gills, fins and the guts)
• 2 sprigs fresh thyme
• 1 tsp coriander leaves
• 2 kg coarse salt
• ½ lemon, juice only
• Pepper, fine salt and extra virgin olive oil

Method

• Preheat oven to 230 c & quickly rinse the fish under cold, running water and dry with paper towels; season the cavity well.
• Spread a 2cm  thick bed of coarse salt in a baking try or baking dish (preferably ceramic, large enough to hold the whole fish and pretty enough to bring to the table); lay the fish on the salt and flip it over so that it is entirely covered with salt (if it isn’t covered, help it along with your hands); then sprinkle the surface with a few drops of water.
• Bake for 45 minutes on the bed of salt, at the end of which you take the dish to the table as is; in front of your guests, gently shatter the salt crust so that you have access to the fish, gently remove the skin so that you have access to the fillets by running a thin, sharp knife around the base of the fish’s head and down it’s backbone on each side.
• If necessary, use a pastry brush to sweep any traces of salt off the fillets; pepper each fillet lightly before drizzling with ½ tbsp of extra virgin olive oil and a little lemon juice.

SALT PRODUCTION

There’s loads of salt here and there are rock salt deposits occurring in Mount Sedom along the southwestern shore. Salt has been collected here since antiquity and at the beginning of the 20^th century, in 1929, this region saw the first company set up & called the Palestine Potash Company; it provided work to both Arabs and Jews and peace reigned in the region. Interesting thought that. In 1948 it was blasted to smithereens in the Arab-Israeli War and eventually, whatever was left over was nationalized & turned into the Dead Sea Works Limited which extracted potash & minerals from the Dead Sea. In Jordan, on the other side, Arab Potash was formed in 1956 and it still operates producing potash, sodium chloride & bromine; subsidiary outlets were built in the southern part, at Sedom (the original factory was shot down during the 1948 Israeli/Arab war). In 1955 another one was started to produce potash, magnesium & calcium chloride and a further one makes a host of other chemicals as well as bromine.

SALTY STIR FRIED CALAMARI

Ingredients 

• 750g calamari, cleaned
• 1 tsp black & Sichuan peppercorns, mixed to taste
• 1 tsp Malden salt
• 1-2 tbsp grapeseed oil for frying
• 1 chilli, finely sliced
• 1 small leek, sliced

Method

• For the salad, cut the cucumber lengthways into short strips. Toss with the beansprouts and watercress and set aside in the fridge until needed.
• Whisk together the soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar and salt.
• Clean the calamari properly and score the inside in a diamond pattern then cut into squares; separate the tentacles because they’re great on their own.
• Heat a heavy-based pan over a high heat, toss in the peppercorns and dry-roast them for a few seconds, shaking the pan occasionally until they become dark & you can smell the pepper aroma; crush them in a mortar and pestle just so that they’re coarse and then stir in the salt flakes.
• Heat a wok over a high heat until it’s smoking, add the half the oil & half the calamari & stir-fry it for 2 minutes until it’s just coloured, then put it into a platter & do the rest in the same way.
• Now return it to the wok and add a tsp of the salt & pepper mixture or more to taste, leaving the rest for another day.
• Toss together for about 10 seconds, add the red chilli and the spring onions & toss together very briefly.
• Divide the between 4 plates & serve with salad, preferably with an oriental dressing.

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Salt trading began in or around the town of Jericho 10,000 years ago and it was a centre of salt trade and the Dead Sea may well have been used to transport the salt from the surrounding area. It is also hear where the ancient towns of Sodom and Gomorrah were located but nobody really knows much about these infamous towns except that they were in the southern Dead Sea region and that their inhabitants were, in all probability, salt workers – with, if you believe Genesis 19, semi fanatical sexual urges. In this region there’s a mountain called Mount Sodom (more of a ridge than a mountain) which consists almost entirely of salt so it’s probably near here that Lot’s wife gave into her urge to look back to her erstwhile home. There is no pillar that is truly Lot’s wife but tourist guides usually find one to show to tourists and when that one wears down, they find another. The most important salt trade route stretched from Mount Sodom to the Mediterranean and for those of you planning to visit, there’s still the derelict remains of a Roman fort that would have guarded the precious route so long ago.