Infused Salt, First Attempt

Why hello there. Bas here, writing to you 2:05 Friday morning. Why am I up, you ask? That's a good question. I promise you, all will be answered throughout the following recipe.

Now, I need to make something clear here. Rose and I both love salt. LOVE it. We put it on pretty much everything, even if it already has salt in it. We both believe that salt enhances pretty much every recipe, sweet, salty, savoury, whatever. As she stated in her previous post, Rose even uses it in baking. WHAT?! I know, right? It's okay. Her baking is exquisite. Follow her example, trust me. Anyway, on to the the recipe.

I was inspired to try infusing salt while watching one of my favorite shows, Chopped on Food Network. One of the competitors made a rose salt by drying and pulverizing rose petals. This intrigued me, so I did some research on infusing salts. The process seems pretty easy: Find some ingredients that contain some type of oil, mix them with Sea or Kosher salt, allow them to 'ferment'  or smoke on a grill and voila.

Right. I'm a college student. I have very limited supplies, let alone access to a high quality grill or smoker. I also don't have a fully stocked kitchen like they usually do on TV. So here is my improvised, super simple, experimental version of an infused salt.

Garlic Rosemary Salt

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup table salt (really you should use sea or kosher salt, but I didn't have either on hand, nor was I about to walk to Safeway at 2 in the morning)
• 3 sprigs fresh Rosemary 
• 1 clove garlic

Directions

Start by prepping the rosemary. Rose and I had access to a Farmer's market a few weekends ago, so I had a bunch of fresh, organic rosemary. I could go all Ina Garten and blather on about organic, local ingredients. I envy the fact that she has access to those kinds of ingredients. I really do. I love them when I have them, but let's face it: most of the time, store bought, mass produced produce is easier to come by. Use organic if you can, but I'm not gonna judge you. Promise.

Pull the sprigs off the rosemary and discard the stalks.

Use the the end of a rolling pin to bruise the leaves. I happen to have a French Rolling Pin, the best kind to use, lying around my kitchen. Yes, I'm a kitchen tool snob. Get used to it. Anyway...

Pour your salt into a shallow container that has a lid. Layer the crushed rosemary on top of the salt.

Next for the garlic. I love garlic. So does Rose. See why we're friends... One of my favorite things about cooking with garlic is that you get to smash it before you chop it.

See? Now here's why my garlic looks so pitiful: Remember how I told you it's 2:05am? Yeah, well, I was supposed to go on a date tonight. Guess who got stood up? Hence the level of anger that went into the garlic. I know people say cooking is all about love, but I find that anger yields some pretty good results too.

Roughly chop the garlic. We don't want minced here, as you want to be able to remove it later on. Now my garlic is extremely wet. Again, I'm using some high quality local, organic garlic. Store bought is more than fine. Seriously.

Throw the garlic in with the rosemary and salt, then give it a few tosses. You want the salt to coat everything and get in between all the herbs and garlic.

Tightly cover with a lid and store in your cabinet. I'm going to leave this sitting for a day or two, then sift the salt out. I'll get back to you in a few days with the results. Let's pray I didn't just inadvertently create my own version of cyanide...

Cheers!