Sea Salt Butter Caramels- Surf and Turf.

It would be too bad if salted caramels became, as it were, a victim of their own success. American tastes have always run to the salt-tinged sweet; we just never identified it in a way that could deem it faddish. Chocolate covered pretzels, tin roof sundaes, gritty Reece's peanut butter cups, cracker jacks, pay day bars- salt keeps sweets lively and balanced. Fashion aside, salted caramels are one of our confectionery staples. They glitter with flaky salt scraped off of rocks in the sea in Crete and the other ingredients are just cream and butter and sugar, and a shot of rum, marrying the flavors and giving a subtle base note. These are a satisfying project- turning a liquid into a dense creamy solid with a gently yielding chew feels like magic. They have a bold luscious dairy richness, and that bite of salt is fresh like the sea air.

Just because making candy is like magic does not mean it is difficult- a candy thermometer makes these very simple. (However, growing up without a candy thermometer and using instead glasses of ice water lined up on the counter to test the consistency brought me closer to the secret life of things).

We will need:

600 g/ 3 C  sugar

120 g/ 1/2 C corn syrup

120 ml/ 1/2 C water

1 tsp flaky sea salt

400 ml/ scant 2 C heavy cream

140 g/ 5 oz butter

1 shot rum, or some vanilla

Before starting to cook, line a loaf pan with foil and butter it thickly and thoroughly. Get our a candy thermometer and put it in a glass of hot water.

Heat the cream, butter, and salt together in a small pan.

Take a large, tall pan (the mixture will bubble up like mad when we add the cream to the caramel), pour the sugar into the center, the water around it, and the corn syrup over the whole. Warm, then let it come to a full boil- it will be frothy and white-

Keep a watching it- don't leave the stove for a second. It will stay white, and white, and white, then. as soon as it starts to take on some color, it darkens quickly. When it is a deep honey color, stand back as far as you can and pour in the hot cream. It froths and steams like a volcano and is really loud.

As soon as it subsides, give it a few stirs with a long-handled wooden spoon, attach a candy thermometer, and again keep the closest watch. The thermometer climbs slowly at first and then picks up speed.

The very second it reaches 115 C/ 240 F, take it from the heat, add the rum, and pout it into the waiting pan lined with buttered foil. Sprinkle lightly with more sea salt. Let it cool at room temperature- which takes forever or at least 5 - 6 hours, or put it outside, as I did. It's winter, and the cold caramel gets really hard and you'll think, at least I did, that it is overcooked it and it would be too hard and chewy. As it comes to room temperature and also seems to take in some softening moisture from the air, it is firm enough to hold its shape, soft enough to melt on the tongue.

Turn the bar out upside down onto a piece of non-stick baking paper. Carefully peel off the foil and, while still upside down, but it into whatever size pieces you like (cutting through the softer underside makes neat pieces).

Finishing-

They are ready to eat and delicious plain, but hard to wrap or serve or give- you cannot trust the surface to not stick to anything after a few hours. An elegant solution is to dip the bottoms only in tempered chocolate. Also, the salt has sunk in and you can't see it so well- a few streaks of chocolate on top give the more salt something to cling to and shimmer.

Take a little over half of 200 g/ 7 oz. dark chocolate, melt it in the microwave or over simmering water, then add the rest of the chocolate. Stir until it melts in and the temperature of the chocolate cools (it will feel cool to your bottom lip). Dip the bottoms of the caramels, letting it come up the sides as much as you like, set them on a piece of non-stick paper, and drizzle the rest over the tops, sprinkling with salt flakes right away before it has a chance to set (tempered chocolate sets fast).

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Animal, Vegetable, Mineral.

"The salt is from Paros. I scraped it off a rock."

We were already well into dinner when he set the dish of salt on the table. It defined the evening; I had never known such a primordial, elemental satisfaction at the table. Games of twenty questions and dinner parties both are divided into three categories. Only the boldest of players pick "mineral." In the shimmering heat of a Mediterranean summer, salt is second only to water. There's nothing for a languishing pulse like an anchovy filet, some inky dry-cured olives, handfuls of peanuts roasted in their salty shells (the Cretan accompaniment to tsicoudia)- these breathe lust back into the blood. Condiment? The dish of hand-gathered salt was not less than the crystallization of the elemental. You could imagine it being gathered, too- the quenching wine-dark sea, scorching sun, rocks jutting up and cradling pools of ever thickening sea water, the warm breezes coaxing those pristine crystals to gather at the pools' edges. The sum of months of crashing waves and sun and wind glittered from the dish. I ate it plain, between bites of food. The large flakes etch the lip a little and sting, not unpleasantly.

But as I say we were midway through our evening when the dish of salt appeared. Things started out with very great but entirely conventional promise- the most pleasant of dining companions and host- people whose thoughts you want to hear, people you want to talk to- the key element of a gathering. There was brilliantly tasty wine- a white perfumed with blush- a terrace, the largest and most glorious rosemary bush anyone had ever seen, and a fat view of both the Parthenon and my new favorite, the subtle observatory. The rosemary and lavender filled the breeze; every now and then orange blossoms and jasmine wafted up from the street.  My warm expectations were exceeded before we went down to the table. Then they were turned on their head.

Wrapped in the auspicious paper of a fishmonger was our meal- not in the oven, not on the grill, not in a pan. A gleaming knife lay next to it.

I like two kinds of meals. One is the egalitarian variety of the mezze/zakuski/dim sum table. The other is the absolute supremacy of the vanquished and noble (so graceful our creatures of the sea), and the ritual dismantling of it by skilled hand. So when our host took his knife to that graphite blue tuna and slit it wide open, my pulse quickened, just like at the climax of the Rite of Spring. Organs spilled out onto the countertop and the rich mineral tang of blood filled the room. Poultry blood, or the warm blood of a mammal, that may have been too much for an urban creature. But this blood flowed cool and fresh. He cut the flesh into delicate slices and we ate them with chopsticks, dipping them into a dish of soy sauce. Touching it proved irresistible and I switched to fingertips. The fish was as supple as the deep pink of it indicated.

"Fischblut," Gustav Klimt, 1897. Life flows eternal (from cool veins).

As we lingered over the sashimi and the wine, our host put the liver and the egg sacs into a hot pan for a sear. The eggs were fine and snapping firm, popping to the bite; the liver was silky on the tongue. As a third course, he fried the skin and bones up crisp like fish bacon. The very wholeness of it added to a sense of occasion, indeed ceremony. Not a bit of the fine creature was discarded in vain. 

Were there vegetables, breads? In abundance, but only afterward. Nothing shared the reign of the tuna. As the salt had a provenance, so did everything else- the luscious tomatoes, the baby zucchini. The rawness of the primal feast, so delicate on the tongue, excited an animal vitality, the keenest awareness. When the best of the excellent wines came out- it was lush indeed, a darkest honey-colored white- we could tell it was curiously delicious with the artichokes. (Truly even a caveman knows what a difficult pairing that can be.) 

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