Last week I went on a road trip to see my parents, and this week I had 3 midterms, so my ferments have been a bit neglected. However, the nice things about ferments is that they take very little upkeep, so even though I wasn’t as much of a helicopter parent this week, they continued fermenting, and some even reached their desired finished state! The perry vinegar and the bee pollen garum finished this week, and now I have lots of empty jars that I can begin to fill in the next few days.
The bee pollen garum, in my absence, had stolen the smelly crown from the squid garum this week. The whole room smelled uniquely ~cheesy~ from the bee pollen garum to the point where the person who came to fix our wifi asked what the smell was. The book did not give any warnings about the smell of the bee pollen garum, but they did however warn about the smell of a few other ferments, which has me a bit concerned that the worst is still ahead of me. The bee pollen garum itself doesn’t taste as strong as it smells, although it definitely has a distinct taste. I can’t quite describe it other than familiarly cheesy. It also underwent a very impressive change in during the fermentation process and is now a deep brown color.
Another delightful surprise of my return was that tamari had started to pool on the top of the misos. Tamari is a byproduct of miso fermentation that tastes a lot like soy sauce. Some of the gluten-free soy sauce you can buy in the store is in fact tamari. I poured off the tamari into little jars, but there isn’t very much of it quite yet, just enough to taste. It tastes delicious, which bodes well for the misos underneath!
While I was gone I was able to start to use my ferments in fun ways. I made potato salad using the gammel dansk vinegar and I made coffee kombucha glazed parsnips. Next week I have plans to start the butternut squash vinegar, and make a batch of citric barley koji with my new spores!
Ferments Complete: 11
Ferments in Progress: 5
Ferments to go: 158
Spoonful Suppers 
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