Can you make your own salt?

Can I make my own salt? G. Pascoe

I have a friend who makes his own salt every few weeks. He lives down on the south coast of New South Wales and collects sea water in a bucket from a sheltered cove on a rugged, protected part of the coast. He pours the water into a wide saucepan and boils it, evaporating the water away, until it becomes slightly viscous. At this stage there is so much salt in the remaining water that it flocculates (forms in small clumps) out of the solution and the bottom of the pan is covered in tiny salt crystals. He keeps on boiling this mixture until enough of the water has evaporated to leave a thin, white slurry of salt at the bottom of the pan. Then he turns the heat right down and stirs the pan to stop the salt from sticking, as there is plankton among the salt that would burn if the pot was not continually stirred. Within 15 minutes the slurry is quite stiff and for the next 10 minutes or so he nurtures the salt from being a thick paste into a coarse sand-like texture of tiny little balls. His salt has a definite tang of the sea, a mild seaweedy taste, and a delicious mouth-filling texture.

Further to your advice as to how much is the ''juice of a lemon'', could you please clarify how much ginger is a ''knob''? D. Bukowski

As you may be aware, knobs come in all shapes and sizes. This is as true in the door furnishing section of Bunnings, the corridors of Parliament House and the exciting world of ginger. The stuff we call ''ginger'' is the rhizome of the ginger plant. As it grows, it naturally wants to spread. Fingers or ''knobs'' develop on the side of the central rhizome. These can be two to four centimetres long. They should be peeled and chopped and grated before cooking to release the aromatic oil in the cells. As these fingers or knobs vary in size and weight it is up to the cook to determine how much to use. The ginger harvest has just started, so look for fresh, plump ginger with a thin skin and a pinkish purple flush. Store fresh ginger at 13C to 15C in a dark area of a cool cupboard. Some people store fresh ginger in sherry, while others freeze it and grate it as needed.

My sausage meat always clogs the sausage mincer. J. Gerard

The weather has turned and, quite naturally, any good cook's thoughts are turning to sausages. The rise of home-made sausages and house-made snags in restaurants in the past few years has greatly increased the quality of snorkers, as the Brits call their bangers. This also means a move away from the classic ''mystery bag'', the derisive term for the fact that if you put enough seasoning on low-grade meat, mince it, and stuff it into sausage casing you can get away with anything. On that, if you're buying flavoured sausages from butchers avoid the stuff made with pre-mixed flavourings - the number of E numbers in that stuff is remarkable. As to your problem, the protein myosin in sausage meat coagulates at 50C. You need to rinse the meat off the equipment in cold water before you wash it in hot water, otherwise the meat will ''cook'' and hold fast.

Feedback

Last week we asked if you had spotted any menu howlers. There have been so many entries I feel like starting an awards ceremony with chefs walking the red carpet to see who will win the coveted Gold Macquarie for the worst menu typo. Here are just a few. From I. Kurnuszko, ''seen on a menu at our local pizza was 'chocolate mouse' ''. P. Watson writes, ''Many years ago my mother took my two sisters and me on holiday to Guernsey in the Channel Islands. On the hotel's menu one night was a dish called 'Dick Livers' ''. W. Cooper writes, ''I saw my most memorable howler in Rome. The first item on the English menu was 'lamb with herpes' ''.

Send your queries (and howlers) to brainfood@richardcornish.com.au