Just back from a relaxing two week summer holiday in France; the first week we stayed in a small village in Languedoc Roussillion and then moved onto the edge of the Camargue. From scoffing on cassoulet, eating bull salami, nibbling sweet tellines (small clams) to drinking buckets of rosé we were certainly well fed and watered!
Another key delicacy of the Camargue is the production of sea salt. I decided to drag the family around the Aigues-Mortes, Le Saunier de Camargue salt marsh. The kids were quite happy as we had to board a small train which whizzed us around. The salt marshes are extensive, covering around 27k acres and have been in production since before the Roman occupation. At the beginning of Spring when natural evaporation exceeds the amount of rainfall, the marshes are flooded with seawater by means of a system of canals and dyke’s. The brine then concentrates with 9/10 of the water evaporating through the effects of the wind and sun. The salt content changes dramatically from sea water at 29g/litre, to 260g/litre at the crystallisation phase. The 50 rectangular salt pools house the brine which slowly evaporates between April and September leaving a 9cm thick salt cake.
When we visited, the pools had an amazing pinky/red hue which looks very odd as you expect them to be white. The salt marshes put on an amazing light show changing colour from green-blue to ochre and then to dark red through the season. This is due to the only two species which manage to survive in such salty water, a microscopic algae “Dunallelia Salina” and a tiny shrimp called the “Artemia Salina.” The algae is the staple diet of the shrimp, but when the water becomes too salty the shrimp then dies. Now freed of its predator the algae begin to multiply dramatically. The algae secret carotene which gives the salt marsh plateaux its red hue. Carotene is responsible for the colour of many natural foods such as the orange in carrot, sweet potato and cantaloupe melon. Flamingos pink markings are due to their absorption of carotene contained in the blue/green algae in their diet. If flamingos were fed a carotene free diet they would be white!
The salt cake is then harvested by specially designed harvesters before the heavy Autumn rainfall. This method extracts very pure salt with a composition of 99.5% sodium chloride. The entire harvest of around 450k tonnes of salt is then stored in the form of a “camelle” which are huge salt mounds measuring 25m in height and over 400m long. The salt is then conditioned and graded before sale.
In the Summer, when the wind drops, thousands of salt crystals form on the water surface which are then hand-collected. This is known as the ”Fleur de Sel” and the very highest quality salt. The crystals are soft and irregular in size and melt on the tongue.
Now back in Blighty dreaming of the next sun-kissed adventure!
