Pink Everywhere
Senegal 1998
Pink Lake is actually this pink color. It isn’t very deep as you can see from the women in the upper right. They are only in water up to their knees as they haul huge buckets of wet salt to shore. You know the salt is heavy. It takes two women to get the load onto one’s head. And it takes strong legs to get to shore.
I don’t know if the pink salt has a special flavor, but when I was in Taodenni, I was told that the Taodenni salt has a particular taste and the people of Niger, Nigeria and Mali prize that taste. They want no other salt. That’s good news for the Touareg who transport the salt with their camel caravans.
I brought some salt home and not long after, I had some friends to dinner. One woman was Ukranian and I was making borscht in her honor. I wanted my borscht to be special and hoped it would remind her of her mother’s cooking. Somewhere in the cooking, I got the idea to use the Taodenni salt, thinking that this would be the secret to making my borscht perfect.
As the stew neared completion and I began tasting, I noticed an odd taste, a not very delicious taste. What could it be? The meat was fresh, the stock was fresh, the vegetables were fresh, I’d cooked it at the correct temperature, watching over it every step of the way. What was it? Then it hit me. It was the Taodenni salt. It had given an odd taste to my borscht. Now my problem was to get rid of the taste. Somehow I managed, but I can’t remember how. I do remember throwing the salt in the garbage.