The food is excellent;
everyone is praising the cook. Our Cameroon hostess is hoping to live in East
Africa one day; she has a Kenyan boyfriend.
“Your rice tasted
very good,” someone shrills, “what were the ingredients?”
Beaming. “I learnt
that from my Swahili teacher.”
“It is Basmati rice,
right?”
“Yeah.
“What ingredients
did you use?”
“Coconut and salt.”
At the mention of
salt, follows a long discussion regarding dangers of sodium. Actually everything
this excellent chef made has excessive salt. The chicken and duck are not only
immersed and seasoned with curry, turmeric and garam masala (those great
Asiatic spices) but tons of salt.
The beef and lamb
are soaking and swimming in a spicy, salty stew. The salad (meshed in egg mayonnaise, steamed
carrots, tomatoes, onions, garlic and cucumber) is God forbid- embroidered if not
dripping in salt. Salt is the super star here!
Salt decides piquancy, savour, feel, quality. Then there is chilli pepper. Pilipili. Or as they say in Spanish: picante, pimiento.
To damp the extremities of these hot flavours
almost everyone across this munching table drinks some kind of liquid: fruit
juice, beer, wine, water, tea. This habit of downing spicy and salty food with
liquids is so common to most people –that we have come to accept it as
“normal.”
Salt attracts water
and liquids- the more you take it the more grief, risk and perils to your blood.
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