Spoonful Suppers

In the corner of the main room of my apartment (affectionately called the multipurpose room, because it is our kitchen, dining, living and laundry room) there is a small round brown table that my housemate found on the side of the road. This table is where we eat, work, sit, and now, ferment.

There are 3 jars staring at me as I write this (sitting at the aforementioned table). To start off my fermentation marathon I decided to begin with the familiar. The first two ferments that I started were Kombuchas; Coffee Kombucha and Maple Kombucha (made from maple syrup). These will be ready in 7 days and are very low maintenance. The contents of the final jar on our multi-purpose table is Gammel Dansk, water and apple cider vinegar, in an attempt to make Gammel Dansk vinegar.

If you, like me a month ago, do not know what Gammel Dansk is, allow me to stumble my way through an explanation. As far as I can tell, it is an herbal liquor from Denmark, however it also may be bitters? I don’t know what the difference is. The Noma book alludes to the idea that it may be an after dinner drink, like a digestive, yet the wikipedia says its is drunk with breakfast. It is alcoholic (38%) and smells a little like mouthwash, and tastes like “all the chemicals you don’t want in your body,” according to my housemate. I am honestly a bit concerned that this vinegar will taste like what it tastes like pre-ferment and I will be left with 2 liters of something I don’t want in my mouth. I suppose thats a problem for two weeks from now.

In order to adventure into the ferments that were much less familiar to me, I had to dip my toe into the world of molds. For someone who is familiar mostly with fermenting vegetables, alcohols, vinegars and kombucha, the golden rule has been as long as there is no mold, you are in the clear. However, this week I found myself attempting to grow mold in a styrofoam cooler on the floor of my bedroom. The basic steps for growing Koji are to steam a grain, inoculate it with the mold spores and keep the inoculated spores at just the right temperature and humidity to grow the mold.

Almost immediately things did not go according to plan. I do not have a steamer in order to steam the barley, so I improvised using some foil and a sharp knife. Shockingly, this method was imperfect and the grains cooked at different speeds, depending on their relation to the nearest knife slash in the foil. The book warned about not overcooking the grains so I think I may have undercooked them out of an abundance of caution, although the cookbook did warn against that as well. Nevertheless, I continued in the process and shook koji spores all over the grains, causing large green clouds of mold spores to waft up towards me. This lead to several hours of googling if mold can grow in your lungs if you inhale spores. The internet did not seem to know, so if you don’t hear from me next week, the koji got me.

Somehow, the mold persisted and I successfully (although not perfectly) grew some koji. I used the majority of this koji for yellow peaso (miso) which is settling in nicely to the corner of my room (its home for the next 90 days). I will use the rest of the koji tomorrow in my squid garum (similar to fish sauce).

My obstacle for this upcoming week will be to figure out how to keep my garums at 140 degrees. I intended to use a heater belt, but in my trial run with water it was only able to keep the water at 110 degrees. I might employ another rice cooker for the first garum, but once my roommate is back in town I’ll need to be a bit more creative. A trip to good will may be necessary in order to make room for my ferments. Priorities.

Ferments Complete: 1

Ferments in Progress: 5

Ferments to go: 168