"...naked - standing here without a head of cabbage"
I heard about Sandor a couple of years ago when I learned about
making sauerkraut. Some photocopied recipes were being passed around
and many delicious and - admittedly – alien looking ferments were
bubbling away in our sun room. Our share house at the time went
through a real kraut craze around the same time one housemate, Alex,
coined the phrase "fusion cuisine" to refer to what was
really just combining everything we had left in the kitchen and
calling it dinner. Since then though I haven't made or eaten much
homemade fermented food - some beer here, pizza dough there but
nothing regular. So I was ready to receive a pep talk from public
educator and demystifier, 'fermentation revivalist', Sandor
Katz.
And he delivered. This talk, as well as being an introduction to
his new book "The
Art of Fermentation" was also a Q and A sessions which
ranged from "why is my yoghurt runny?" to "what's your
opinion of mass-produced kombucha?". And this spectrum just
about sums it up. As Sandor so eloquently put it - "we can't
reclaim our food without also reclaiming fermentation”. The
personal is political. That crockpot of vegetables in the kitchen
matters not only because it delivers a whole bunch of beneficial
bacteria to your gut but also because you made it. And you share it
with your friends. And they swap their kefir, bread, whatever and so
what is also being cultivated is community.
Sandor described his first fermentation workshop and what really stood out for him was a persistent and generalised "fear of ageing food outside the refrigerator". His observation and concern about those fears led to Sandor becoming a public educator who seeks to demystify fermentation. This focus really comes through in his book (what little of it I have delved into - it's big!) with lots of encouraging words like "don't worry", "don't throw it out yet" etc. And, personally, I need the encouragement.
"Fermentation, like all food production, was taken out of households and instead happened in labs, controlled by 'experts' in the interest of 'safety' and 'hygiene.....but sauerkraut & yoghurt don't have clinical trials!"
In his new book Sandor does not focus on exact recipes and
directions but broad principles which can be used to confidently
experiment with all kinds of ferments.
- - -
"...fermentation is a way to make foods more stable and more valuable. Milk to cheese. Cabbage to sauerkraut. Grapes to wine...ferments are the classic value-added products... (and) fermentation is central to a lot of the food we put in our mouths"
As Sandor was speaking I thought of all those times I had a huge
harvest of something (usually broad beans) which I would need to
preserve. Now you can bottle, dry or freeze beans but you can also
ferment them - with perhaps more interesting (and surprising)
results.
What really is clear is that these are vital skills (or perhaps a
better word is "approaches") for growers, or those in the
community of growers, who need to deal productively with a glut of
food and carry over supplies into the leaner months.
I could write forever about this, and I'm sure I'll return to it
as I seek out and sample ferments from this part of the world, but for
now I'll leave you with this - it's Sandor describing some Indonesian tempeh and, perhaps, (I think) a kind of benchmark for a sustainable and ethical food system...
"elaborate communities of organisms which self perpetuate very easily"
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