THE CALIFORNIA COOK - It's white magic - A life-changing technique? Salt-roasting reveals profound, pure flavor.

What was quite possibly the single best dish I've eaten this year came to my table as a bleak white mound that looked less like food than some kindergartner's art project igloo. That it was wheeled with such ceremony through the dining room of Providence restaurant on a table-side service cart only added to the sense of surrealism. What in the world could this be?

With chef Michael Cimarusti standing by expectantly, his manager-co-owner, Donato Poto, used two spoons to crack the crusty top of the mound and lift it away, revealing two perfectly cooked spot prawns and releasing the most remarkable aroma of supremely fresh shellfish. After a quick trip to the kitchen for shelling, those prawns reappeared, drizzled with a little very good olive oil and a squeeze of lemon and sprinkled with sea salt.

I took one bite and had to close my eyes. Many dishes are good; some are excellent. A very few are truly profound, and this was one of them. It had the deepest, purest taste of shellfish I've ever experienced, like some distilled essence.

The fact that, as I've since learned, it's remarkably easy to make at home only adds to its magic.

Salt-roasting, essentially nothing more than baking something in a mound of salt, is a technique with ancient roots but a thoroughly modern result -- food that tastes clearly and intensely of itself.

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You can try this at home

You don't need any fancy equipment. You don't need days of preparation. You don't need a pantry full of exotic ingredients. With nothing more than a roasting pan and a box of salt, you can create moist, richly flavored dishes that derive their complexity not from complication but from concentration.

The first thing I tried to salt-roast at home was fingerling potatoes. I moistened some coarse salt and buried the potatoes in it. On a whim, I chopped some rosemary into the salt. I roasted the potatoes until a knife slipped into them easily, about 25 minutes at 400 degrees.

I lifted off the salt crust and brushed away the stray flakes that clung to the potatoes. They didn't look all that different from regular roasted potatoes. I took a bite. The flavor was amazing. Not only was there the strong, minerally overlay of newly dug potatoes, but there was also a gentle, almost haunting, fragrance of rosemary. Despite having been cooked with 2 cups of salt, the potatoes weren't too salty.