Bacalao, Ricotta salata and a salt caramel tart

Getting salty

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A Private Chef is read by well over four thousand of you in over ninety countries worldwide. That’s quite remarkable, thank you to every one of you, especially so, for putting up with my tardy scheduling.

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West Berkshire May 2025

‘A day without an argument is like an egg without salt’

Angela Carter 1940 - 1992

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All things salty

Another long one today for you, and here are the recipes that I promised you earlier this week. Here are three salty recipes. Salt cod from scratch, cured and dried at home flavoured with lemon and thyme, Ricotta salata a salted cheese you can easily make, made from a fresh batch of soft, pressed ricotta, and a rather wobbly, salt caramel tart.

There’s also a salty take on a conversation that I had this week.

Apologies in advance

I’ve waded into a debate on plagiarism that I stumbled across this week and having given my two penneth worth and having been put firmly in my place by a real author, one who is a big cheese let us say, moving forward I am not entirely sure I ‘m allowed even share recipes with you anymore as I understand it, as its entirely possible that another chef might inadvertently use the same recipe as I do and accuse me of plagiarism.

If for instance, I use six egg yolks in my bearnaise along with a couple of packs of butter, a splash of tarragon reduction, and a dash of sugar, it has been suggested that unless I have something new to say then I shouldn’t share the technique, unless I can credit the original creator.

Should I check through my cookbooks to see if they’ve credited Escoffier?

If you wanted my recipe for a loaf of sourdough for instance, then it’s been said that I shouldn’t share it with you as my ratios are probably identical to hundreds of other bakers, and as it’s not something original then there is no purpose in sharing so it seems.

How odd.

I get it that Pierre Koffman’s Trotter as an example is his and his alone. That is undisputable, and no one in their right mind would attempt to pass it off as their own without due credit, but recipes for custards, loaves of bread, biscuits and vinaigrettes formulated on the stained pages of notepads, passed though word of mouth by cooks, building blocks that every cook has tucked away in their brain, where do they sit?

I was almost tempted to scour the back catalogue of the highly respected author to see if I might find any combination of ingredients that could have possibly been combined before, but I’m not a recipe writer or food influencer and therefore I don’t feel that I count in all this. If ever a publisher takes a chance on me then I’ll assume a miracle has happened, though we have a new Pope so I shouldn’t discount this idea and I’ll cross that bridge if ever I’m fortunate enough to be in that situation. I am simply a chef with decades of burnt knuckles, bollockings, and sore feet behind me.