citrus salts

my second bergamot adventure was to use it for citrus salts. i read about these on these on 101 cookbooks and they are very exciting!

the idea is to mix flakey sea salt with citrus zest, dry it out in the oven so that the zest is completely dry and will crumble when rubbed between your fingers, and then use these to add an extra layer of flavour to your dishes, adding the salt at the table.

i used bergamot, blood orange and lime zests and, as a result, now have little jars of citrus salt that i can play with in various dishes. the first was used last night – blood orange salt to season a confit duck, fennel and blood orange salad. just wonderful.

101 cookbook’s citrus salts

for each type of salt you'll need:

65 g flaky sea salt

1 tablespoon of citrus zest

preheat your oven to 105c. combine the salt and citrus zest in a bowl and mix well - really work the zest into the salt, making sure there aren't any clumps of zest. spread across a parchment-lined baking sheet. if you're making more than one flavor of salt, repeat this as many times as necessary.

bake for 70 minutes, or until the citrus is completely dried out. flecks of zest should crumble when pinched between your fingers. remove from oven and allow to cool a bit. at this point you can pulse each salt a few times in a food processor if you like, or you can enjoy it as is. salts keep in an air-tight jar for a couple of months.