The Georgia trip wasn’t for book research. Duguid leads intimate group tours to places she loves and has written about, partnering with local food-focused friends to do what she calls “immersing through”: approaching other cultures through food, informed by an intense drive to understand how things work.
Destinations have included Thailand, where much of her classic book “Hot Sour Salty Sweet,” co-written with ex-partner Jeffrey Alford, is based; and Georgia, one of the Caucasus countries featured in her “Taste of Persia.” On an upcoming trip to Japan, she’ll delve into sweet and salty shio koji, for what she calls “salt and rice magic.”
The former geographer and lawyer starts from a place of not knowing. “In travel, I think about what’s fruitful to explore, as opposed to what I know,” she says. “I don’t go looking for specific answers. It’s better to keep my eyes open so I can stay present to the human landscape.”
“The Miracle of Salt” brings together the elements that readers love about the James Beard Award winner: endless curiosity, respect for other cultures, a spirit of experimentation and fearlessness in the kitchen. “I want to un-intimidate, while at the same time generating a sense of wonder,” Duguid says.
Why salt, when there are so many places still to discover?
“Salt is a forever subject,” Duguid says. “To say that we need it to live means that it goes back to the earliest humans.”
Unlike her other books — this is the third she has written three on her own and six with Alford — “The Miracle of Salt” is the first with extensive non-travel research. Duguid complemented pre-pandemic visits to Morocco, Japan, England, Italy and Peru with explorations of academic papers and books about salt archaeology and production, older cookbooks and “a zillion online rabbit holes.” The result is an artfully photographed, resource-rich 400-page book replete with history and essential information about cooking and preserving with salt. And, of course, recipes.
“In all the other books, I wrote about things I’d seen myself,” she says. Duguid never looks at photos of places she’s about to visit, because she doesn’t want those pictures in her head. “I’m too literal minded to take anybody’s word for anything. I was a complete beginner in the land of salt.”
Duguid was initially perplexed about how to structure the book, ultimately deciding to break it down into two major sections. The Salt Larder explains the types of salt, how to determine the salinity and preservation approaches. There are also instructions for making some staples, including flavored salts, kimchi, preserved lemons and corned beef. The second section, From Larder to Table, uses these salt-preserved ingredients in recipes.
An improviser in the kitchen — fish sauce with olive oil remains her go-to seasoning for pretty much everything, she confesses — Duguid again draws on her myriad influences in these recipes. “I like the notion that there are solutions to similar food preservation problems in different parts of the world. Everyone just goes about it in different ways,” she says. She loves the juxtaposition of Korean kimchi jjigae and Polish kapusniak in the book, a lush photo of the two fermented soups taken in her own kitchen, side by side.
At root a home cook happy with simple meals, Duguid recommends the potato, Brussels sprouts and salt pork (or pancetta) dish in the book as an easy starting point, or bucatini with bottarga. It’s the ice cream recipes that really surprised her, though. “I’m not an ice cream person,” she says. “But when I developed the tamarind-miso one with chocolate chips, I thought: This is something I would eat.”
Another departure from her usual flexible approach in the kitchen, “The Miracle of Salt” nods to the need for precision when preserving. Duguid suggests readers use a jewelry scale for small amounts, and a regular kitchen scale, with the comforting admonishment, “You’ll find it relaxing to be able to rely on exact measurements.”
Some of the recipes in the larder section require time more than anything else: homemade miso, Georgian ajika and salt pork aren’t exactly fast food. What if those experiments fail? Duguid recounts telling herself, “Well, there will be a bit of food wasted. But I’ll have learned something, and I’ll be able to pass it on.”
Lerner-Frank is a former oratorio singer and Canadian diplomat, now a food and travel writer based in Montreal.
