Saltspresso

Salt is one of those miracle crystals everyone loves to hate. It can be used to enhance other flavours, cure meat, conduct electrical signals in the nervous system (electrolyte), form clouds, and ward off evil, but it can also increase your blood pressure, cause stomach cancer, stroke or heart disease if taken in excess.

There are also many kinds of salt. Having only sea salt in the house, I nicked off to the corner store to pick up something a little more suited to a gourmet espresso experience. I would up buying a 6 variety sampler. Eurasian Black Salt tasted like eggs so we immediately gave it a failing grade and moved on. It definitely has some sulfur in it, and I'm not sure what to do with it. You know, besides witchcraft.

Up next was Himalayan Pink Salt. I expected it to bring out the natural flavours of the coffee and that's exactly what it did. I thought it tasted intensely nutty and the flavour profile really popped. Brian had a somewhat different experience. He is sensitive to salt in a way that I am not. He tasted the saltiness quite intensely to the point of feeling it on his lips. I didn't get the lip thing, and got the distinct impression that I enjoyed it much more than he did. My blood will probably explode from my body in a gruesome display of pressure at some point.

Internet people who have tried smoked salt say that it is really nice on brownies (with chocolate in general), and in vegetarian dishes lends a meaty quality. I don't know about that, but it smells a bit like stale campfire. Of course it should work with espresso. Whoa! This time the salt hit me in the face hole. The smokiness was quite nice. Now to find a way to get it without curing my tongue.