I once sent an email question to local Seattle chef and foodie Greg Atkinson asking why it was that every savory recipe always calls for one to season to taste with salt and pepper. He was shocked at my question. I acknowledge that salt can bring out flavors. Pepper, though, has a spicy and warm essence that one can’t say always enhances the flavor of every dish. And yet it is added to every dish. Salt, too — in every recipe, sweet or savory.

I have long felt that the flavor of food is lost in what we put in it and on top of it. Take for example the humble hamburger. You take a nice piece of meat, put it on a good roll and start adding things. Mustard, ketchup, relish, pickles, onions, tomatoes, lettuce. Basic, right? Then there is the cheese. And if bacon and cheese are good together, why not put them on a burger? And avocado is good with cheese, so why not bacon, cheese and avocado? Blue cheese and mushrooms, some caramelized onions — they’re good together, but does that mean it goes on a burger? Where is the meat in all of this? What are you missing in the flavor of the individual ingredients when you put so many things all together? Not that you can’t mix things up into deliciousness; that’s the very essence of a good stew or tagine, a warming curry or the best sour cream pound cake.

I have a recipe for a humble little sorrel soup. It’s elegantly simple: for every four bowls of soup, saute two leeks in butter or oil, add four medium chopped up potatoes, two quarts of stock or water, and six cups of sorrel leaves. When the leaves cook down, blend it smooth. Top with creme freche and some chive flowers. Depending on the stock or broth I use, I usually don’t add any salt at all. I like to taste the bright sorrel and earthy potatoes. Salt isn’t necessary.

I get my eggs from chickens with names, all having a grand life at a friend’s farm in Duvall, WA. They taste divine. Like eggs. I don’t salt or pepper them, either. I may put them loosely scrambled on a piece of sourdough toast, or soft boiled on rye.

There is a fashion right now for salted caramels that, to me, ruins a perfect marriage of butter and sugar. And I don’t believe in salting watermelon, tomatoes warm off the vine, or radishes. It’s all getting to be too much: In today’s Pacific Northwest Magazine in the Seattle Times, there was an article about cooking not with salt, but on salt — slabs, bowls, whatever.

I am not the health police — although I agree that the amount of salt put in processed foods of any kind, and most foods that are packaged for convenience (like tomatoes and beans) is extreme and has adulterated the taste buds of a nation. And I don’t doubt that salt can enhance flavor. I just doubt it goes with everything. Does that make me a foodie heretic?