Taking a break on an escort boat during a canoe race in 1999, paddler Nancy Gove noticed crystals of sea salt sparkling on her arm. "I remember tasting them and thinking, ‘Mmmmm, that’s really good,’" she recalled. "It was unlike any salt I had eaten before from a shaker."

So began Gove’s fascination with the product that today is her livelihood. She read everything she could find about salt, and after living for 20 years on Molokai as a wood sculptor and part-time taro farmer, she decided to turn her attention to revitalizing the Hawaiian practice of salt making.

"In the 18th century, Hawaii was a main port of call for explorers from Europe," Gove said. "The Hawaiian kings owned all the salt that was produced, and they traded some of it for cloth, liquor and other goods that the ships carried. It worked out well because crews needed salt to preserve food for their voyages. As time passed, Hawaiians found it was cheaper and easier to buy imported salt than to make it."

Thus, in the ensuing decades, salt-making traditions were almost lost. During her research, Gove learned that France had rejuvenated its salt industry by promoting salt as an artisan product. That sparked her interest in creating a new niche market that would re-establish the value of Hawaiian salt.

In 1999, Gove started Hawaii Kai Salts (now Hawaii Kai Corp.) as a commercial salt production company and played a key role in its development over the next six years. Through the company, she was able to obtain state and federal grants that enabled her to experiment with equipment and learn how to make salt the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the state Department of Health deemed safe to be sold to the public.

Gove left Hawaii Kai Salts in 2005 and founded Pacifica Hawaii Salt two years later. Today, Pacifica Hawaii produces about 45,000 pounds of salt annually, thanks to the vision of Gove and her five partners who are hands-on with making salt, running certified commercial kitchens and managing packaging facilities in five locations on Molokai.

"I felt this company needed to be community oriented," Gove said. "It has the potential to grow with multiple local subcontractors: salt farmers that have day jobs, caterers with certified kitchens to prepare our salt recipes and other people to handle tasks such as bookkeeping, graphics, sales, marketing and shipping. I oversee operations and continue to do the research and development, which is based at our main office in Kaunakakai."

There, Gove also "grows" salt, as she likes to calls it, and leads a 45-minute tour that explains the process. Participants get close-up looks at 43 pans containing salt at various stages of evaporation. During the summer, it takes just a day or two for the sun and breezes to transform 10 gallons of seawater that has been filtered and purified to bottled-water standards into 3.3 pounds of salt; this time of year it takes three to five days.

In addition to pure salt, Pacifica Hawaii offers products with flavorings that, like salt itself, have a long shelf life, including red alaea clay. "Hawaiians use alaea salt as a medicinal because the clay has high iron content and is known to draw out toxins," Gove said. "We harvest alaea rocks from remote areas on Molokai, bake them to sterilize them, then grind them into a fine powder that’s mixed with pure salt. Visitors on the tour touch and taste alaea in its raw form while I explain how alaea is harvested and processed to food-grade quality to make our Blush Alaea salt."

Pacifica Hawaii’s salts are also flavored with balsamic vinegar, raw sugar, cabernet wine, red chili flakes and Koloa Rum from Kauai. Black Lava is a blend of salt and medicinal-grade "activated charcoal," a natural supplement made from coconut shells incinerated at temperatures exceeding 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. The company smokes its limited-edition Kiawe Smoked Gourmet Sea Salt in small batches with kiawe wood for 12 hours.

Like wine, each salt product goes best with certain types of food. Gove recommends Blush Balsamic for salads, pastas and complex sauces. Blush Alaea complements fish, pork and smoked dishes well. Koloa Rum is a great finish for steamed vegetables, ice cream and chocolate desserts.

Gove cooks with salt every day. "I have an advantage because all of our salts are at my fingertips," she said. "I don’t have one favorite; all of them are my favorites."

When time permits, she enjoys surfing the Internet for recipes that call for salt and appreciates when customers share their discoveries with her. Recently, she received a call from a woman who bought Black Lava from a shop in Kona.

"She went to a restaurant, ordered toast and sprinkled Black Lava on it," Gove said. "She said it was delicious — better than butter and jam."

Pacifica Hawaii’s customers hail from as far away as Japan, Germany, Scotland, Norway and Australia, and Gove is savoring the company’s success.

"From a one-woman show, Pacifica Hawaii has grown into a wonderful business that is thriving because of the hard work and dedication of many individuals and families," she said. "We all want to import income and export quality products, and are excited and thankful to be able to do that making salt, reviving an ancient tradition, on Molokai."

ROSE’S ROASTED VEGETABLES
Courtesy of Rose Nunogawa

Wash and halve the following:
8 Brussels sprouts
4 small red potatoes

Wash and cut the following into 2-inch pieces:
2 medium-size carrots, peeled
8 asparagus stalks
1/2 cauliflower
1 zucchini
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper

Put vegetables in a plastic bag and mix with 2 teaspoons of Pacifica Hawaii Blush Balsamic salt. Sprinkle garlic powder and black pepper to taste on top. Coat vegetables with 1/2 cup of olive oil and let sit for 20 minutes. Spray a baking sheet pan with nonstick cooking spray or place parchment paper on it. Remove vegetables from the bag and place them on the pan in a single layer. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, then broil for 5 minutes. Serves 6.

Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi is a Honolulu-based freelance writer whose travel features for the Star-Advertiser have won several Society of American Travel Writers awards.