Salt, films that aren't Barbenheimer, and hot apple cider.
As well as plenty of suggestions for your weekend.
Hello, it’s great to
see you again!
Editor – Phoebe Tully
—
I haven’t seen either Barbie or Oppenheimer yet, but feel the need to talk about films this week for fear of being kicked off Substack.
Last week I went to a talk at QAGOMA as part of the launch of their new cinema series on Hollywood Screwballs. I studied film history as part of my history undergrad (oh yes, the useless knowledge in me goes way back!), and I remember being struck by both how utterly silly these 1930s films are, and also utterly chic.
According to film historian Keva York, who led the talk, this was revolutionary at the time – that the leading actors would be suave but also the butt of the jokes – but it feels radical still, especially for women. Amazing the level of reflection that a scene with a pet leopard, a wild leopard, a frantically barking dog, a circus troupe in a jailhouse, and a Katherine Hepburn in evening wear can bring, right?
We’re still not at a point where it’s common for a “beautiful” or glamorous or chic woman to also be the joker or the fool – we leave this either to the supporting roles or fall into the trope of women who don’t “have it all together” being the ones we can laugh at. But I’m telling you for a fact that I can wear an evening gown and still not have it all together, my friends.
Anyway, that’s enough from me this week. The top click-throughs of last week were of the pyjama set and peignoir I’d mentioned you’d wear with your lover. Go you.
Does salt need to be gourmet too?
Australia has approximately 34,000 kilometres of shoreline, yet the salt on your table is almost definitely from England ($) or Pakistan ($). Why do we import sea salt into Australia?
The BBC World Service recently did an interview with Rajesh Shah of the Vikas Center for Development about how technology is improving the conditions for salt workers in the Indian state of Gujarat. It was a striking reminder that this commonplace ingredient is another chance to vote with our dollars.
Last year I was fortunate enough to tour the East Coast of Tasmania, and one of the places I visited was Tasman Sea Salt, which is available at Harris Farm Markets ($). The husband-and-wife team harness clean energy to produce their incredibly pure product, which you can literally see being pumped from the sea like in this video.
After a tour of the basically-just-a-shed-factory at the bottom of the world, Tasman Sea Salt’s co-founder Alice Laing led our group through a salt sommelier tasting ($$). (Stop rolling your eyes; it was fascinating!) We were presented with a platter of food, ranging from a sliced tomato to a chocolate truffle, and invited to taste each without and then with salt.
Everything we sampled tasted more “itself” with a grain or two of salt on top. The tomato was more tomatoey. The salmon more salmony and complex. As Samin Nosrat wrote in this article titled, fittingly, “The Single Most Important Ingredient”:
Salt’s relationship to flavor is multidimensional: It has its own particular taste, and it both balances and enhances the flavor of other ingredients.
This is not the power of just salt, but of good salt. So as with most things in life, the lesson here isn’t simply to whack more salt on things, but to use salt better (and vote with our dollars). Remember that for most people, the advice to reduce salt is largely based on processed foods; most of us can’t over-do salt if we’re cooking. More than 70% of sodium in our diets comes from restaurant and packaged food, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
So, start by storing your salt in a salt cellar ($) so you can pinch it. Forget the Saxa shaker! It’s way too hard to control (and probably shouldn’t be that refined anyway). Get used to tasting as you cook, then adding a little bit of salt at a time. Keep adding salt until your dish starts to actually taste salty – it will take more than you think!
And for the love of God, please season your salads. This is why salads taste better when you get them in restaurants and cafés. Or do as BA suggests for “crunchy (but not sharp) raw vegetable sides that are seasoned through”: add a little salt, then wait for it to draw out some water. This works particularly well for cucumbers, cabbages, radishes, carrots, funnel and onion.
As you’ll see, good sea salt is worth its weight in… well, you know. Had to get that reference in somewhere.
DO | massage jojoba oil into your arms and legs, then get into a bath with sandalwood essential oil and soak it all in.
MAKE | hot apple cider to enjoy under a blanket around a camp fire. Salted, of course.
READ | East of Eden by John Steinbeck
WATCH | It Happened One Night (1934)
LISTEN | Comedy – Paul Kelly and the Messengers