Don’t judge a book by its cover. Never judge salt by its color.
This is a lesson I learnt early in my childhood, one evening after school, when the maid left a tray of fresh-cut fruits on the table. This was a routine we were not too fond of. That day, it was a little different because we noticed a pink colored powder sprinkled over the apple slices. My brothers, who were of the age when boys spend all their energy and creativity on making the grossest possible remarks on edible stuff, were unstoppable.
“What is this stinky thing on my apple? Eww”
“It looks like your pink pony’s powdered pink blood”
“I think the maid is poisoning us and Ma hasn’t noticed yet??”
Amidst many such remarks, I stretched my arm across the table to grab a bowl for the grapes because I could not risk eating apples with the grunting voices and piggy faces of my two brothers around.
After a while, Ma walked in and asked us the same questions as everyday.
‘‘How was school?’’
‘’Did you finish your tiffin today?’’
‘’I think you should also take a carrot to school like your brothers, it’s good for your eyes...’’
and then suddenly, a new question ‘’Why has no one touched the apples??”
This was unexpected. Yes, really. All three of us were so lost talking about school and friends and teachers, we did not realise Ma would notice we hadn’t touched the apples. As she extended her arm to grab a slice, my kid brother intervened. “Ma, it’s dirty, it either has pink powdered blood over it or it could also be poison...don’t eat it.” As amused as Ma was, she stared at my elder brother, knowing well that only he could implant such crazy thoughts in his head. Taking a bite, she said, ‘This is just salt. It’s pink in color because it is Black Salt.”
Looking at each other’s faces, trying to act like we knew this, my elder brother and I faked ‘coolness’ and our expressions said ‘yeah, we were kidding all this time’ to my younger brother. At the same time, with the same attitude of coolness, I picked a slice of apple and bit into its crunchy juiciness, allowing the subtle tangy flavor of the black salt and apple to awaken a new taste bud on my tongue, making me love it but leaving me a little confused with its smell since table salt never really had a smell.
The following few days, weeks, and months after this, black salt became an ingredient I tried adding to everything I ate/drank as often as possible. It was almost like an experiment, it seemed to me like this was a magic ingredient that made any dish a little tastier without dominating its flavor. I added black salt at dinner time to the salad on my plate, and I loved it. I added it to the sambar, okra, potato gravy, raita, kebabs, tikkas, chats...every dish that was tasty but could get tastier.
Which is probably why I never added it to milk. Milk was never tasty except when it had a few dollops of ice-cream mixed in, thus making it an ice-cream milkshake. And even though I did not know how to cook at that time, I knew that anything that needs to be mixed with ice cream to make it tasty, is not capable of getting any tastier than that.
So yes, milk aside, I added black salt to my orange juice at breakfast time. To coca-cola, pepsi, and any other aerated drinks on the rare occasions that I drank them. I managed to unintentionally but successfully gross out my brother the day I added black salt to our favourite ‘instant maggi noodles.’ Well, I should have known better. Some things like instant noodles are better left untouched because they are so perfect already. This I realised after many many years of making infinitely unsuccessful alterations to maggi.
My obsession with black salt has diminished over the years, but not ended. I no longer add it to my drinks or curries. Yet, I often find myself squeezing some lime juice in a bowl, adding black salt to it and dipping my salad into this mixture for every bite I take. My craving for spicy and tangy food is abnormally higher than that of most Indians, so very often I have this mixture with green chilli when the entree’ (especially when I cook) isn’t as hot as I wished.
As a spice that has low sodium content* compared to table salt and is rich in iron and lots of other vitamins*, black salt has long been ignored. It blends well with most Indian and Mughal dishes and is known to relieve various stomach problems, heartburn and flatulence.** My favorite ingredient, black salt has made me live on a healthier diet by lending its light flavor to many fruits, vegetables and chutneys that I eat more often ever since the maid sprinkled this pink powder on the apples that evening.
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