Cultivating Cultures: Exploring Fermented Foodways

Photo's of Thailand

2011-06-11T11:38:00.003+01:00

From Bangkok to Ko Chang, a photo essay on why I am digging Thailand.

My Lumphini Park neighborhood in Bangkok. It was so hot and humid the camera lens started to fog.

Fried morning glory doused in fish sauce and chilies.

Yen Ta Fo- a noodle soup full of all sorts of things from fish dumplings to tofu to ingredients I have yet to familiarize myself with. This particular bowl is from a street vendor on Sukhumvit road, per suggestion of Austin Bush, by way of his amazing food blog.

Fried squid on Khao San road at about 1 am.

Assessing said squid with characteristic sweat stain from messenger bag, 1:15am.

During bus ride to Trat, we stop at a roadside market/restaurant, where I gesture to a tasty looking mysterious curry dish...delicious of course. I taste basil, lemon grass, and whoah chillies!!!

Trat is actually a pretty little town, but this picture was taken from my room while they were spraying the streets for Dengue Fever and it looks quite eerie.

Why I loved Trat...

Fried rice from the Trat Night Market indicated in the previous picture.

The pier in Ao Bang Bao, on the southern tip of Ko Chang. My hotel is lost in the hubbub somewhere out near the left end.

Bangkok is Fishy

2011-05-30T16:45:00.003+01:00

I woke up in a sandstorm. Having camped out on the rooftop to see the stars, by four in the morning my mattress and sleeping bag were soaring into the dessert as I ran for the cover of an outhouse. Twenty four hours later my plane descended towards the glistening rice paddies of Thailand and then the glowing skyscrapers of Bangkok.

The View from Lumphini Park

In the airport the Indian customs official looks up at me, and then back down at my passport photo, then back up to me, and back down. Something is wrong. Could it be my hair? It’s long in my passport photo, but I cut it so I wouldn’t have these kinds of problems. Or maybe it’s something to do with my VISA?

“You have lost 10 pounds”

“what?!”

“Since this photo, you have lost ten pounds”

“oh! Yeah…haha”

He stamps my passport and hands it back to me. At first I am skeptical, but later in front of a mirror I notice that after 11 months of traveling I now bear a slight resemblance to Christian Bale in the Machinist. Better gain some weight in Thailand. Of course, this is not exactly a herculean task. Between mango with sticky rice and coconut chicken curry (marinated with the ubiquitous kefir lime, chili, basil, galangal, and lemongrass), I have returned to my passport photo weight in under a week.

Crawling out of the river in the Park

Bangkok is hot this time of year, and nowhere more so than the slum of Klong Tuey. But it is here where one of the biggest fresh food market in all of Thailand (maybe all of Southeast Asia) does a brisk trade. Whether you are in the mood for fried insects or spiky fruits which are clearly the first wave of an alien invasion, there will be row upon row of producers offering stacks, piles, buckets and bags for fewer thai bat than you can believe.

Fruit invasion at Chattuchak Weekend Market

Today I got a guided tour through the Klong Tuey market by Kun Poo, a local chef who has started her own cooking school in the slum (nicknamed “cooking with Poo”). What I am looking for specifically is Pla-Ra, an indispensable ingredient in northeastern Thai (especially Issan) cuisine made of fermented fish. For a hilarious introduction, check out this ad for the Thai post office. In case you didn’t know, the Thais are crazy about their fermented fish, even when it’s consumption poses a huge health risk. I missed it at the market, but when Poo hears that I am interested she runs to get her stash so that I can put it in my green papaya salad.

Me and Poo discuss Pad Thai

Most Farangs (foreigners) are less than excited about eating fish that has been rotted on purpose, but it’s why I am here. In the next few weeks I hope to follow Pla-Ra, and it’s more refined counterpart Nam-Pla (fish sauce) from bowl to boat. Which is why next week I will be cruising down to the eastern coastline to search out the factories where this stuff is fermented (often for a year or more!) and maybe even jump on an anchovie fishing sloop. We’ll see. For now, I am sampling liberally from every street vendor and hotel café where fermented foods are on the menu. You heard the customs man, I need to gain some weight...

Fish massage in the Night Market

(The expression on my face would reflect equal parts me being ticklish and experiencing extreme fear of being eaten alive)

High enough for ya?

2011-05-23T17:21:00.004+01:00

Wachan is a small village perched over a canyon way up on the Nubra Valley side of the Ladakh range. How small is it? My host informed me that three people lived there year round. Looking around his kitchen I spied him, his brother, and his elderly mother. Yup, that’s it. Did I want to see how they brewed chaang? Of course…

Wachan was just one stop on my recent week-long wander through the Nubra Valley. Located northeast of Leh, Nubra is a majestic river valley carved by the confluence of the Shyog and Nubra rivers. To get there, you have to take a share taxi over Kardung La, the dubiously self-proclaimed highest motorable pass in the world at 18,630 ft. I didn’t throw up, and that was an accomplishment.

That little house is Wachan, The Hundar Druk

By traveling this route, I was unwittingly reenacting a centuries old migration, whereby traders from the southwest –carrying wool, barley flour, marijuana, etc.- would make their way slowly up and over the endless glaciated peaks and passes of the Karakoram spur down into Xianchiang, China, to sell their wears in towns along the silk route. The mountains that rise majestically up from this alluvial plain support the Siachen glacier (largest outside the arctic?), the battle field between India and Pakistan which stretches all the way to K2.

Me and my Favorite Travel companion...Kamb

For five days (one day of travel on each end) I scrambled up scree slopes and threaded my way through endless seabuckthorn -nature’s own razor wire- to find myself peering down the prehistoric valley, the towns like tiny green jewels strung along the azure thread of the Shyog river. When thoroughly coated with butter, Tagi Kambhir - a Ladakhi bread which resembles a thickish pita pocket- is a perfect meal for hiking. Take two steps, now two breaths, now two bites, two breaths, two steps, rinse and repeat…

A Spunky Amale shows me how she brews Chaang

Wachan Chaang, A recipe:

1. Take a sack of barley and boil it for three hours

2. Let sit until cool

3. Add four yeast balls purchased from Leh Market

4. Let the Chaang “sleep” for four days

5. Drain off water and bingo, barley wine that is good for up to three weeks. Drink liberally with tsampa (extra barley flour).

Barley Storage beneath the floor

Hipti La? Not Possible

2011-04-23T08:37:00.007+01:00

24 feet is the distance at which, if a human were to fall, they would have a fifty percent chance of survival. I mulled over this fact as I took a break to catch my breath and peer down to Hipti, a town maybe 2,400ft bellow. Then I picked up a numb foot and drove it into the snowy slope ahead of me, slowly making my way across the expansive bowl which separates the Mangyu la (a 14,000ft pass) from the Hipti la (another 14,000 ft pass). It was day two on a five day trek from Alchi to Lama yuru.

Mike, my trekking partner, was a 43 year young sailor, surfer and music enthusiast from Philly. He carried in his backpack: a sat phone, GPS, topo maps, cliff bars, wet wipes, etc. I carried: a non-functioning water purifier (you did test it before we started right?) and several novels. But I spoke 30 words of Ladakhi, so I considered it an even partnership.

The trip began in Alchi, a tiny village on the banks of the Indus dotted with 11^th century Buddhist temples and the pinkish-white blossoms of apricot trees in full bloom.

Alchi

The man who ran our homestay smiled patiently and with a dismissing wave, shook his head “Mangyu la, Hipti La, not possible”. In our defense, this is the kind of pittying, you-helpless-foreigner reply that often greets such modest and wholly accomplishable tasks such as walking into town (not possible), digging a hole (not possible), or doing anything for yourself ( definitely not possible). In retrospect, I wish he had jumped to his feet, pointed his finger at us ominously, and declared in a mysteriously amplified vibrato “You are idiots! If you attempt such a feat of ignorant naivate, your future holds naught but endless scree slopes and icy butresses, each foot-fall will be more uncertain than the last, your bones will ache and your head will spin, you will go through many high calorie energy bars without reaping sustained levels of capability so advertised on the packaging! DOOM, DOOM, DOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!”. But he didn’t…and so the next morning we set off bright and early for Mangyu.

At about 12,000 feet or so, Mike and I found a tiny spring, sending forth what we assumed was a miniature stream of pure Himalayan glacier melt. Pleased with our good luck, we filled our water bottles, and despite the out of order water purifier, toasted to the fresh taste of clear clean mountain waters. Just around the next bend we discovered the partially buried pipe from which our “mountain spring” had flowed out through a leak. When we reached the opening of the pipe, two dzhos (half cow half yak) stood perfectly content, munching hay and relieving themselves gratuitously into the little stream. When Mike got sick two days later we blamed it on the chow Mein.

The Mangyu La

We finally proved our host in Alchi wrong by reaching the Hipti La at about six thirty in the evening.

The Hipti La

Cold and stunned by how exhausted we were, we descended towards the village of Tar at a reckless pace. It was pure luck that the first house we came to in Tar happened to be a homestay. That night, as we drank chaang by the cooking stove, Mike looked over at me, and with a silly grin he muttered “That was one of the hardest things I have ever done”. I nodded sagely and allowed my cup of chaang to be filled again.

Changshul blessing

In the morning, planting began. Thus, we were privilege to the planting ceremony which is supposed to bring good luck in the coming season. Mixing Tsampa (barley flour) with chang, the family made an offering of several large dough cones, each topped with a bit of butter. Then, every person (including Mike and I) was anointed with a dab of this chang-shul, and sprinkled with Tsampa. The son was adorned with a full face mask of changshul, and after being coated with an auspiciously exorbitant cloud of tsampa, led the team of Dzho’s around the field as they pulled the plow behind them.

DIY

Later that morning we climbed out of the canyon which separates Tar from the Indus, and pulled ourselves across the fat green river in a basket suspended from a cable. Then it was on to Lama Yuru, another pastoral village with yet another 11^th century monastery perched on cliffs above. Naropa came through here on his travels and meditated in a cave, still preserved within the monastery’s walls.

Monastery at Lama Yuru

Here, Mike got sick, so instead of hiking over the Prinkiti La, we caught a cab to Wanla, which, surprise surprise, is a picturesque little town with an 11^th century Gompa high up on a spire overlooking the valley. The next morning Mike recovered, so we set off up the Prinkiti La, a barren labrynth of tight canyons, pock marked with the tracks of goats and snow leapords.

Exhausted but happy, I am back in Leh for the day. Lassi's are on the menu. More to come the next time I can get an internet connection.

Some photos of Ladakh

2011-04-09T07:14:00.003+01:00

View from Takmachik

Walking to the bus

Chaang?
(tastes like corn chips dissolved in apple cider)

My host family with Takmachik in background

Reading Railroad

2011-03-08T14:24:00.006Z

During a ten hour train ride from Ahmedabad to Udaipur I was able to dig into some excellent Indian literature. Here are a few of the books that I am juggling between Kindle and paperback:

Amitov Gosh: The Hungry Tide (audiobook)- a novel set in Sunderbans area south of Kolkatta, uber articulate, good for 10hr train rides through sparse scrubland.

Arundhati Roy: Listening to Grass Hoppers- New Delhi novelist’s non-fiction essays on Democracy, Progress, and Nationalism, again uber articulate, depressing but fills you with righteous indignation.

Ramachandra Guha: Makers of Modern India- historian provides intro to selected writings of influential Indian politicians and philosophers, Gandhi and beyond. It’s shear size makes me grateful that I am not trekking at the moment.

Amartya Sen: Development as Freedom – Indian Nobel laureate in economics argues that freedom is both the end and means of development. The articulateness in these books is stupefying, and this is no exception. To balance this out, I have been switching back and forth between these titles, and two equally substantive, if not as expressively eloquent, textbooks on microbial ecology (intro to theory and lab procedures).

Anand-Amul-AAU

2011-03-08T07:08:00.004Z

Anand is a smallish town (pop 200,000) in southern Gujurat which just so happens to be the center of the Indian Dairying Universe. In 1947 Dr. Kurien started the AMUL dairying cooperative in Anand, and through his influence, this model swept the country in the “white revolution”. Now, AMUL is one of the worlds largest dairy cooperatives, processing over 500,000 liters of milk per day. On a recent visit to Anand, I got to visit the AMUL plant along with the Institute of Rural Management, and the Microbiology Department at the Anand Agricultural University. At AAU, I the good fortune of meeting Dr. J. B. Prajapati, coordinator of the Swedish South Asian Network for Fermented Foods (SASNET), and head of the lab at (get ready, take a breath) ICAR Niche Area of Excellence Functional Fermented Dairy Products with Synbiotics, Department of Dairy Microbiology, SMC College of Dairy Science, Anand Agricultural University (or…ICARNAEFFDPS,DDMSMCCDSAAU). It was awesome…

Isolating Cultures

To begin with, two of Dr. Prajapati’s graduate students showed me around the lab. In one room: the CO2 chamber where they cultured anaerobic strains of probiotic lactobacilli bacteria. In the next room, the High Performance Liquid Chromotography apparatus used to analyze the metabolites produced by those cultures. Imagine a weirder and much geekier “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (Max and the Microbe Mill?) except that the stuff in the test tubes won’t turn you blue, just improve your digestive health and possibly boost your immune system. I couldn’t believe it-there were actually people who were more excited about the science of fermentation and probiotics than I was. When my guide showed me his freeze drying set up for packaging commercially available probiotic bacterial strains my heart skipped a beat, and when a student explained how she was doing her thesis on a probiotic whey drink with a mix of bacteria and yeast cultures I had to be resuscitated.

Me and Dr. Pajapati

After lunch in the mess hall, and the full tour of the Ag college, I got to sit down with Dr. Prajapati for a brief history of SASNET and a general survey of fermented foods in India. SASNET is a network of researchers who meet biannually to promote the study of fermentation and its connection to human wellbeing. From what I can tell, they have their work cut out for them. The list of fermented foods that have originated in the subcontinent, or have successfully transplanted here is stunning; Handwo, Khaman, Dahi, Dokla, Dosa, Idli, Jalebee, Kulcha, Bhaturar, Warrie, misti-dahi chaas, uttapam, bhallae, vadai, chaang etc… and this is not including the hundreds of regional variations, or the over 10,000 different kinds of ferments that Dr. Jyoti Tamang has catalogued across the Himalayas. Which is pretty exciting, considering my plans traverse this geography from Rajasthan to Kerala, and K
olkata to Laddakh.

Khaman

Finally, Dr. Prajapati had to say goodbye. But, to top it all off, I got to hop on the back of a motorcycle and visit the market for some tasty Khaman (fermented gram flour, fried with spices, sprinkled with cilantro)-a specialty of Anand. Then it was back on the bus to Ahmedabad, to catch a train to Udaipur early the next morning. Which is where the story will pick up next time.

Dosa dough spinner

P.S. I wish I could recall the names of the two graduate students who graciously served as my guides and interpreters. They were fantastic and I can’t thank them enough, though unfortunately anonomously.

Interlude... Fermentation Fugue

2011-03-03T08:29:00.003Z

I arrived in Ahmedabad almost two weeks ago. One of the fastest growing cities in the world, this sprawling metropolis of 4.5 million is the largest population center in the state of Gujurat-a territory in West India with a per capita GDP more than twice that of India as a whole, and with more people than California, Washington, and Oregon combined. In other words, it is big, and loud, and busy, and did I say loud?

Getting to know the city can be tough. To explain why, I need to cite a well-known neuroscience experiment referred to sometimes as the “kitty gondola study”. In this study, researchers manipulated the ability of kittens to explore their environment and found that the ability to process visual information was contingent upon the kitten’s agency. In other words, if a cat is unable to explore it's environment through its own volition, the visual cortex develops abnormally. Even if the freedom-deprived cats are put in a sling coordinated to mimic a free partner's movements, those ‘gondola kitties’ are unable to develop the fully functional visual cortex’s necessary for spatial reasoning. Analogously, I find it impossible for me to know a city, to perceive its atomic units and their logic, until I have navigated it under my own direction. This makes Ahmedabad a bewildering place for me. The city is nearly impossible to walk through. Perched in the back of a rickshaw like a human version of the “gondola kitten”, my mental map of the city undergoes daily permutations something like an urban Rubics cube.

So, for the last few days I have ditched the rickshaw as much as possible and taken to the crowded streets by sandal. Most walks have been unplanned and haphazard, but this morning I was able to participate in a guided heritage walk through the old walled part of the city. Ahmedabad is divided in two by the Sabarmati River. On the east bank lies the old city ca. 1400, a warren of interconnected neighborhoods known as Pols (ie: house). With ancient terraces (girded in mythical elephant-dragon-lion figures hand-carved from Burmese teak) overhanging narrow alleys, the old city is markedly different from where I spend most of my time here- the bustling broad-laned sprawl to the west of the Sabarmati. However, there is an underlying rhythm to life that unifies these disparate arrangements of space, and it has a sound track.

For me, space is intricately linked to pace, and I am beginning to orient myself to both by way of sound. Ahmedabad starts it’s day like an old car, increasing noise with motion. Put. Put. PUT!. With the highest density of two-wheeled transportation in south Asia, the symphony of horns begins at six, builds till 10, and crescendo’s until after midnight. For a few moments in the evening, when the sun goes down, the speed of the city downshifts audibly. Roadside temples open up, people crowd around blocking traffic, and the music(?) begins- drums, gongs, symbols, bells- so loud it hurts. Then it is back to random firework explosions, cows mooing, and the constant undertone of a million differently tuned rickshaw horns. In a funny way, my spatial perception of the city- it’s distances and volumes- grows and shrinks in coordination with the landscape’s musical score.

Now I measure the distance to Gandhi’s ashram on the Sabarmati by tamber and tempo. At ten in the morning, it is ten minutes of soft rickshaw rumble. By mid-day, it is a twenty minute free jazz solo by a Million Mediocre Miles Davis Mimics (car horns), and at sunset the full band has taken over, but the length of the song depends on how many people are getting married along the way (nightly wedding processions gleefully take over entire roads, with the groom riding on horseback to his brides home, accompanied by a marching band and firework tossing mobs).

At Gandhi's house

In the unification of space, time, and noise, all of this is but a prelude to the real show (as far as I am concerned). Setting the stage for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. This post is long enough as it is, so I will leave the gustatory highlights of my experience thus far until next time. But, as a preview I can tell you that the Thali has rocked my world, and that fermented foods of mention include Dosa’s, Idli’s, and Dahi. For now though, I can tell, by picking up on the intro to a tune I have titled “Slight Lull in Mobile Saxophone Burping”, that I have to go to lunch.

Fufu...Sans Fingers

2011-03-02T17:17:00.003Z

I am not sure if Fufu is fermented, I have heard that it is, but I had a hard time identifying the point at which it was left to ferment. However, it is an essential part of Ghanaian cuisine, and it was so much fun to make, I thought I would include it anyway. As the title suggests, I did not leave any of my fingers in the Fufu, but it was close. Here’s how it works. Cassava and plantain are peeled, chopped, boiled and placed into a mortar. All well and good. Now here is the important step, take a six foot wooden pestle and beat the hell out of the dough until it is a delicious mucusy dumpling. The skill comes from the person sitting close to the mortar, whose job it is to fold the just pounded dough so that the pestle can land in the center, making a pocket for the next fold. Rinse, and repeat at as fast a pace as humanly possible. During an awesome five-hour cooking course, the owner and chef at the Nice N’ Rich chop bar scolded me as I lightly dabbed at the dough “Harder. Harder. Harder, come on damnit, be a man.” Fed up, she demonstrated how it should be done, while I flipped the dough and tried to cross myself at the same time.By the time the fufu is ready to eat, you are drenched in sweat, and you love every ounce of starchy carbohydrate that is packed into that little ball.

When the bees come, we use DDT...how do you like your sample?

2011-03-01T13:12:00.003Z

With great thanks to my friend, guide and interpreter, Jackson (on right in photo), here is a trip to a palm wine distillery up in the hills behind Cape Three Points, by the numbers. Two: workers present. Two hundred: palm trees to cut down. Roughly three: months for the entire operation before everything is loaded up and moved to a new location. Four: how many days the sap ferments in large blue barrels before being distilled. Twice: distilled, like whiskey. Fifty: the gallons in each unit of sale. Ten: roughly the number of gallons distilled per day? Eight: the number of ounces it seemed like I was given to taste of the raw sap. Zero: the number of bees in that sample…

I Never Met a Ferment I Didn't Like...Except

2011-03-01T12:53:00.003Z

…Kenkey. Which is a shame, because on paper this little cornball is so cool. Ghanaians make several types of this indigenous ferment depending on geography and ethnicity of the producer, each differing slightly in substrate and fermentation time. Essentially, Kenkey is fermented maize dough, which is rolled into a fist sized dumpling, wrapped in banana leaves, steamed, and sold on every street corner from Accra to Takoradi. Eaten with fried fish and a spicy sauce, the starchy nugget has a distinctly artichoke-like aroma, and a firmer consistency than its phlemier cousins, fufu and Banku. So what makes Kenkey so cool? Well, first it is nutritionally dense. Richer in protein than other staples like cocoyam, cassava, or plantain, maize dough also provides the bulk of many Ghanaian’s Calorie intake in the form of carbohydrates. Like oatmeal, a breakfast of Kenkey will keep you going right through to late lunch or dinner. For low-income workers in Ghana, this is an economical way to start the day. The economics of Kenkey are also beneficial on the supply side. Maize is the most commonly produced cereal in Ghana, and most maize is consumed as Kenkey. Kenkey producers are predominantly women, working on a cottage industry scale, which means that sales of this dough-ball go directly to supporting a systematically disadvantaged demographic. Finally, the microbial ecology of Kenkey fermentation lends itself to my geeky tendencies. Starting out with a veritable jungle of filamentous fungi, yeasts, molds, and bacteria, a selective process occurs by which yeasts and lactic-acid bacteria come to dominate the mix, becoming integral to the development of acceptable organoleptic qualities (how it tastes).

Unfortunately, for me, Kenkey’s taste is exactly what makes it unappealing. Perhaps with time I could develop my pallet to appreciate the Terroir of Ghanaian Kenkey. After all, I didn’t always appreciate wine either. What we need is a Robert Parker of fermented maize dough…or a Kenkey with high ABV. I will be looking forward to both…

My source for the information on the nutrition, economics, and biochemistry of Kenkey is the wonderful chapter: Kenkey: An African Fermented Maize Product, by Mary Halm, Wisdom Kofi Amoa-Awua, and Mogens Jakobsen in The Handbook of Food and Beverage Fermentation Technology, CRC Press, 2004.

From Ireland to India by way of West Africa

2011-02-16T22:24:00.006Z

For the last six weeks I have been teaching nutrition and biology at a rural school in Ghana. During those six weeks, the people I met taught me to appreciate the fantastic fermented foods of this area of the world, including Kenkey (maize dumpling), Banku (maize and cassava dumpling), Gari (cassava paste) and distilled Palm wine. My experience with each is elaborated below. But first, some context…

I flew from Ireland to Ghana with a stop in Egypt (luckily a month before the protests began). We took off from Egypt, headed for Accra, and I settled in for some pre-arrival study…“Kenkey is an indigenous fermented product commonly produced in Ghana…” I got about halfway through the chapter on maize fermentation when we reached cruising altitude, and I promptly threw up. A disappointed gentleman sitting next to me offered a consoling napkin and switched seats. By the time I got past customs I was shaking and shivering. I had arranged for someone to pick me up at the airport, but they had found something better to do, so I assessed my situation and took decisive action (just like they tell you to do in every survival handbook). However, I did exactly what they tell you not to do, I got into the first taxi I could find and told them to head to the only other hotel I could think of (I was invited to go drinking at the bar by some nice Canadians on the plane). Short story, I got better, I got on a bus (eventually), and after a few days of tro-tros and a long walk on a back road... I was at the gates to Trinity Yard.

Road from Akwidaa to TYS

The Trinity Yard School clings to a forested hillside a mile and a half from the village of Cape Three Points. In a single room schoolhouse, a thatched hut on the beach, or a covered patio overlooking the ocean, students learn English, social studies, and the craft of Kente weaving. For five weeks I taught classes in math, biology and nutrition.

the classroom on the beach

The Beach

Math class

Rory Jackson, the founder of TYS, his extended family, and all of the people who support Trinity Yard have created a positive learning environment for a group of young Ghanaians. The students were awesome. Through them I was able to learn the ins and outs of Ghanaian food and I loved being a part of the school. I learned to surf(ish), I learned to make red red (beans and plantain), I found out that weaving Kente cloth is hard work, and that mixing Banku is even harder. I am grateful to all of the people who made my stay in Ghana a memorable experience, I hope to be back some day.

Here are a few short descriptions of my experience with the fermented foods of Ghana.

Banku:

I’ll start with my favorite. Banku is a dumpling made of fermented maize dough and usually cassava as well. The corn is soaked for 24 hrs, then wet milled and left to ferment for 3-4 days. After that, it is packed into mounds and then sold to consumers as in bricks of clay-like flour (see pic below). The cook at TYS, would take a handful or two of this, along with some cassava flour and enough water to dissolve the mix, and heat all of the ingredients in a big pot on the charcoal stove. Using the special Banku stick, Monty, Dorothy, and whoever else that needed a workout would stir the Banku as it got more and more viscous. When finally the dough resembled a gelatinous version of mashed potatoes, sometimes half an hour later, the Banku was scooped and molded into fist sized dumplings and eaten with salsa, fish, or stew. The predominant cultures isolated from Banku include molds and Lactic Acid producing bacteria, which give it the slightly sour tang (Beuchat, 1983). You eat Banku like fufu, snipping off bite sized pieces between your middle and index fingers, and then using this little dough ball to scoop up some sauce or stew.

Its late, so more later (Kenkey, Cacao, Palm Wine)...s

Quick holiday update

2010-12-29T14:16:00.006Z

‘Twas the night after Christmas

when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring

Except for me because I was writhing in a feverish hallucinatory netherworld

My girlfriend and I had been planning our magical Irish Christmas since October and it was nearly flawless. We sipped hot cocoa and watched a snowstorm blanket Dublin. My friend Ciabhan invited us to his dad’s Christmas Eve party, which was complete with Gaelic Christmas carols and a tree decorated with real candles (equal parts beautiful and terrifying). Back at home, we made our own tree out of a pizza box (less impressive, less flammable), went ice skating, drank mulled wine, and shared some great meals. The day after Christmas we made plans to travel to the Aran Islands. We had visions of hiking along the stone walled paths, along the cliffs swirled in fog and legend, and then popping into the pub for pints and ballads. Then my body temperature made a swift sprint for 103*f (Not in the initial plans). We swapped our island adventures for snotty tissues and cold compresses, and after two nights of sweating like I was doing pushups in a sauna, I am happy to report that I am back in the 98’s! Just in time to start my Malaria meds, woot woot. I have two more days left in Ireland, enough time to rescue this holiday visit with my significant other. Then it’s on to Accra! Hope everyone is having a healthy holiday season. More updates as soon as I can get a good connection in Ghana.

Pre-Christmas

Post-Christmas

New Pictures of Galway

2010-12-11T15:28:00.002Z

They are on my Picassa web album, which you can access by clicking on the slide show to the right.

Getting Into The Set

2010-11-30T21:28:00.003Z

Howard holds the syringe delicately, letting two drops of rennet fall into the milk he has been warming on his stove. He breaks his concentration, wipes a few drops of perspiration from his brow, and looks up at me, “So…um…that’s about it, for eight hours or so”. Howard makes his own cheese and bread, and I have hiked out to his remote hillside in Co. Galway to learn a bit about how he does both. But, like so many things, fermentation requires short bursts of work, with long stretches of time in between. So, while we are waiting for the cheese to set and the sourdough starter to get going, we go check out the mini hydro-electric project Howard and his son have set up to provide energy for his house. Then we chop some wood, feed his herd of Scottish Highland cattle (about five of the beautiful orange hairy kind with big horns), and go set dancing. Wait…what? That’s right. The cheese and bread will be left until the next morning, but tonight is Monday night, and it’s time to go set dancing. A lot like contra dancing, set dancing is a form of folk dancing in which you twirl a lot…a whole lot... and then switch partners, and twirl again. Besides referring to how milk curds form when making cheese (they set), a 'set' has two meanings in the dance context, it is both the number of people in each basic unit of the dance (4 couples), and the name of the dance: the Connemara Set, the Claire Set, the Caledonia Set etc.

Before we leave Howard teaches me the basic step in his dining room/kitchen, and I nervously tap out the rhythm of the jigs, reels, polka’s and hornpipes that make up each set. However, when we get to the town hall, the teacher (luckily this evening was half dance, half class) makes it her personal mission to make me a passable participant. I like to think that I took to it like a duck to water, but it was probably a result of the teacher who kindly followed me around, firmly shoving me into place and shouting out the steps for each figure “Now Cross up! Settle down Max! Now Move! Not NOW! NOW!”.

It was a ton of fun, and as I took off into the freshly falling snow the next morning (with a bit of sourdough starter tucked into my jacket like an old 49er), I thought to myself “If this is how the Irish occupy themselves while their food is fermenting, then they need all the high calorie bread and cheese they can get!” So a big thanks to Howard. Tomorrow it is off to Co. Cork, where I have an appointment to meet with a goat farmer/cheese maker on a tiny island off the coast.

Perusing the great inter-web

2010-11-25T11:17:00.002Z

Just found this fantastic one page summary of why small scale food fermentation is important. It's a bit dated, but all of the content still holds true. Check it out here: http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/9812sp3.htm. Coming soon: a post about the regional cheeses and breads of Ireland.

Emerald Isle

2010-11-23T21:28:00.003Z

After Terra Madre I collapsed into the back seat of my parent’s rented car, letting them ply me with loving affirmations and smoked salmon as we took a week long road trip around Ireland. After four months abroad, it was great to see them again. True to the Watson philosophy, my mom and dad joined me in pursuing my project, though considering the nature of my subject, this didn’t require much arm twisting. Starting in Dublin we took a tour of the Guinness factory and ate dinner at the Messrs McGuire brewpub. In Galway we visited Sheridan’s cheese mongers (now my favorite shop) and a tiny fish-smoking company perched out on the edge of Ireland, way up in Connemara; a moonscape of mountains, marshes, and craggy coast. We finished our trip with a few days in Cork, where we went by the Ballymaloe cooking school, dropped in on the English Market (an old covered market in cork city), and toured the Jameson Distillery. After the week was over I said goodbye to my parents again and headed back to Galway.

Terra Madre

2010-11-23T18:25:00.002Z

I have been putting off writing a blog post about Terra Madre because the experience was overwhelming. If I had done nothing but gone to TM this year I would have a backpack full of stories. First of all, getting to and away from this event were odysseys in themselves. Then there were all of the amazing people I met, from my two roommates (a farmer from Pennsylvania, and a marketing entrepreneur from DC) to the welcoming contingent of farmers, chefs, grad students, etc. from British Columbia whom I ended up spending much of my time with. Add in the odd 50-100 other fascinating characters who introduced themselves while waiting for lunch, or in the line to the bathroom, and about 1,000 different producers at the Salon De Gusto, and then round up. When you mix in the various presentations, tastings, conversations over dinner and at various food stalls…whew, you can see my problem. A narrative is difficult to achieve.

Highlights:

Tasted: smoked cheese and mead from Poland, approximately a bajillion samples of cured or fermented meats from Italy, some Mexican mescal, some Yak cheese from Tibet, white truffles in Ea-taly, and lots of good wine.

Sat in on an incredible presentation by World Watch on their new Nourishing the Planet initiative, got to see a bit of the Irish and Indian regional meetings, met a bunch of people from Vermont etc.

On the last night of the conference I hung out with the friendly BC contingent. We got dinner and then tasted wines in the Enoteca until it closed and they had to kick us out (my friend informed me that one of the few others getting kicked out with us was Alice Waters). When we were walking out of the Salone, one of the stands was celebrating another successful year by blasting ‘we are the champions’ by Queen. People in suits and other business attire were standing on tables waving glasses of wine and ‘singing’ at the top of their lungs. An excellent finish to what my friend titled ‘summer camp for foodies’.

I have posted some photos to my Picasa page, which you can access through clicking on the slideshow…

London...again!

2010-11-20T13:53:00.006Z

I stayed a week in London before heading to Italy for Terra Madre. While in the city, I spent significant amount of time furiously pedaling a one speed rented bicycle, weaving between double decker buses and retro-taxi’s, chasing after my friend Leighton- fellow beer-hunter and expert urban-jungle pub guide. Leighton's passion for ale began in earnest last year, when he worked for a craft-beer distributor in NYC. However, he recently relocated to London and I was more than happy to be his incentive to explore the culture of real ale on this side of the pond. From the Cask Pub and Kitchen to the Harp, we explored every cask ale pub Leighton could think of, and even a micro-“if I ever saw one”-brewery fitted snuggly into an arch bellow a railway. By coincidence, my only official appointment in London turned out to be the next arch over, an office/distribution center for Neal’s Yard Dairy. There, on an uncharacteristically sunny morning, I met Bronwen Percival, a buyer for the company with a compendious knowledge of cheese-making and an infectious enthusiasm for its minute sensory details. I had seen Bronwen present a paper on farmhouse cheddar making at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery in July, and since I was back in London I decided to drop her a line. Fortunately for me, she took time out of her busy schedule to show me around a little bit. Check out the pictures here and on the slide show.

You Down With NCYC?

2010-11-08T23:44:00.000Z

Having taken the train from Edinburgh to Norwich, riden the bus from Norwich to somewhere near the research park, hoofed it several miles the rest of the way, obtained my security badge, toured the laboratory and gotten the run-down of the place from collection manager Chris Bond, curator Dr. Ian Roberts finally unlocked the door and allowed me a glimpse of what I had come all that way to see: The United Kingdom’s magnificent National Collection…of Yeast Cultures.
“So… that’s it huh?”
“yup, you can see why it’s not much of a tourist attraction”.
About chest high and again as wide, the National Yeast Collection bears an uncanny resemblance to the humming gray plastic icemaker at my college job in café Opus- except that this little puppy doesn’t use ice, it’s pure liquid nitrogen.

Dr. Ian half-not-jokingly suggested that there is probably more bio-diversity in that little box than at the Norwich Zoo. And he is probably right. The NCYC holds over 3,400 different strains of yeast from common brewer’s yeast strains to pathogenic opportunists from the world over. The NCYC plays an interesting role, straddling the divide between commerce and public service. They preserve strains of yeast for posterity-running all sorts of genetic assays to classify each strain- but also delivering cultivated strains upon request (for a reasonable fee) in order to sustain themselves economically. The collection even serves as a fungal swiss-bank of sorts, providing a secure place to store proprietary strains- keeping them safe from an unforeseen microbial disaster back at the brewery.
The collection may be impressive to the microbial-collection amateur like myself, but a little research reveals that it is small beans compared to the massive collections at UC-Davis ( Pfaff collection: 6,000 strains of yeast), Peoria, Illinois (USDA’s ACCR collection: 95,000 strains including all microbes), or Utrecht, Netherlands (CBS: 50,000 fungal strains). Right now, they don’t have the capacity to classify every strain possibly collected (often discoveries of possible new species come in bursts, like finding over 200 different types in the guts of a termite or something). However, they are situated just across the street from a world class genetics laboratory, and The Collection may soon set up an automated system (looks like a large humidifier) which would allow them to increase the speed of analysis exponentially. Who is submitting new strains for classification? The most interesting source I heard of was from a scientist who had revived (using unknown techniques) an ancient strain of yeast from clay pots believed to be fermentation vessels found at an archealogical site in Ecuador.
In case you are wondering, the NCYC adheres (as do many collections) to the convention on Biological Diversity, which recognizes certain rights for countries of origin and strives for equitable distribution of benefit from the collection of genetic resources. As our knowledge of biology burgeons, and our subsequent control over its processes becomes more précising, institutions like the NCYC may come to play important roles in the negotiation of public versus private ownership of genetic resources. They also might help us make cooler beers. Probably both.
If you want to know more about the NCYC, a well written and scrupulously researched article by David Quain appeared in Brewer and Distiller magazine. You can find it here http://www.ncyc.co.uk/BDI_article.pdf. For another interesting take on the science and business of yeast collecting check out the chapter on Yeast Wranglers in Ken Wells’ book “Travels with Barley”.

Scotland

2010-11-04T16:04:00.000Z

I want to start this blog post by warning you that it is really too long to be a blog-post. It is also full of amateur theorizing and the action fizzles out a little in the middle. So if you have a meeting to get to or a class to attend, feel free to skip around. Otherwise, here it is…

Printed on the cover of my journal- in bold white against the diary’s fire engine red- is the moniker “Keep Calm and Carry On”, a slogan originally intended to prop up British morale during World War II. While this phrase remains my motto, the winds of panic recently filled my sails, casting me to the shores of Scotland, down the English Isle to London, and finally to Ireland (where I have at last found the time to update my blog). I will explain why I am in Ireland (instead of Ghana) in another post, but first, how and why did I venture back to the UK? The gale began when my friend asked me how I was managing the 90 day limitation for staying in EU countries under the Schengen Agreement. I deftly countered with “huh?” and “Schengen what-now?” If I still wanted to attend the Terra Madre conference in Italy, I had one week to leave France. After five weeks at the vineyard, I set off early Monday morning for sunny Edinburgh, (fermenting expert).

This is how I found myself in one of the most hauntingly beautiful cities in the world with but one obligation: to seek out and explore the fermented food which most embodies Scottish identity. I was looking for a food or beverage whose history was inextricably intertwined with that of the Scottish people and the place itself, something ancient and indigenous, but also a substance which now bears the markings of scientific, technological and industrial innovations. After all, Scotland has had a disproportionate effect on the development of industry and science in the west. From Adam Smith to David Hume (and for those who have studied physics: Maxwell, Watt, and Kelvin) Scotland has been the home to paradigm exploding economists, philosophers, scientists, and some darn good poets. Considering these criteria what else could suffice but the Water of Life itself: Whiskey.

Whiskey, the fluid fire which loosens the screws constricting body and mind, might not be directly responsible for such free thinking as Hume or Adams, but as Robbie Burns (lived in Edinburgh) once put it “Freedom and Whisky gang thegither”. “Not so fast”, you might say, whiskey in Scotland is no revolutionary force, it is a moral failing, it has been the nurse and curse of an oppressed people, it has long cushioned a political-economic order which both fails the vast majority while enabling the privileged few! Or, you might believe, as David Daiches (also lived in Edinburgh) has articulated "The proper drinking of Scotch whisky is more than indulgence: it is a toast to civilization, a tribute to the continuity of culture, a manifesto of man’s determination to use the resources of nature to refresh mind and body and enjoy to the full the senses with which he has been endowed."(1969). Whiskey, like so many other fermented foods, opens possibilities in human thought and action which force us to pose moral questions, to negotiate those distinctions and contradictions which lie at the heart of modern life: tradition versus innovation, power versus sovereignty, enlightenment versus intoxication.

With such heady thoughts in mind, I wandered up the street from my hostel and accidentally struck gold when I stumbled into The Scotch Whiskey Experience. More than a sweet band name, this ‘experience’ is really an adult Disney World, mixed with a splash of museum. It begins with something like the Scottish version of the tea-cup ride, only replace the tea cups with barrels. Now, cut away one half of the barrel to allow the rider a view of a holographic ghost (of a fictional 18^th century distiller) which guides you as you spin through gigantic models of tanks and casks, explaining the process of whiskey making from malting to fermenting to distilling to aging. Following this harrowing adventure, the SW Experience includes an informational video complete with complimentary scratch and sniff comparison sheets that allow you to smell the different aroma profiles for each of the four different whiskey regions in Scotland. Then pick one you’d like to try and sip it while perusing the largest collection of Scotch Whiskey in the world (purchased from a Brazilian pharmaceutical CEO, this is a pretty remarkable collection). Some interesting tidbits:

Every second some 39 bottles of Scotch Whiskey are sold around the world.

Whiskey brands often mix many different types of single malt scotches to create a unique and balanced “blended” whiskey. Like wine or cheese, single malt’s have different flavors every year and in order to maintain a consistent taste profile for the blend, distilleries have to employ a master blender. It takes upwards of 15 years to become a true master blender, and if a company employs more than one their proprietary knowledge is so great that they are often not allowed to travel together.

Adding water to whiskey helps release aroma, and when professional judges taste whiskey they water it down to 20% abv.

The ‘experience’ was similar to my wine tasting class in Bordeaux, combining history and attention to developing a discerning palate. But, by the end of the tour I was left with the feeling that I had been suckered again. This was clearly a slick production-the brainchild of a marketing genius- an ‘experience’ deserving of the travelers favorite problematic disparagement “inauthentic”. I later rethought my position, but at the time I was determined to get underneath what I saw as the tourist-varnish, so I diligently pursued a conversation with the bartender (an actual whiskey fan) who gave me a tip “you want to see a distillery? Head up to Edradour in Pitlochery”. So early the next morning I boarded the train bound for the highland hills where I expected the ‘real’ Scotch Whiskey experience to be waiting.

From the railway station in Pitlochery, the Edradour distillery is a two mile hike. The path winds along wooded lanes and fields dotted with the occasional grazing sheep. That morning the fog rolled out of the valley and the sun’s rays pierced the receding tide of downy fleece, offering glimpses of the towering mountains girding the valley below. The distillery itself is charming. Located in the same farmhouse facilities it started in over 150 years ago, it is the smallest distillery in Scotland and still only makes 12 barrels a week (it makes in a year what most distilleries make in a week). The collection of houses straddles a burbling brook and the distinctive smell of biscuits (from the fermenting yeasts of course) wafted across the grounds on a light autumn breeze. I think I was even humming as I approached the tour guide.

The tour began with a two minute documentary video and thirty seconds in I felt my quest for an ‘authentic’ whiskey experience slip away. A syrupy montage of taster’s choice moments, afternoon sunsets, soothing voice over narrative, and lots of shots of men in overalls, this piece of propaganda (which I have discovered to be ubiquitous on distillery tours) struck me as so bluntly nostalgic that even Martha Stewart would have puked. Over 100,000 visitors pass through Edradour a year, and it shows. From the beautifully redone tasting room with some of the best graphically designed informational posters I have ever seen, to the spacious gift shop (where the tour finishes of course), this place knew its market and knew how to sell. I was disappointed at first, but as I read through the panels in the tasting room a new concept dawned on me. I was not experiencing the ‘varnish’ hiding a true or authentic age old tradition, I was actually encountering the very heart of the process by which traditions are created, interpreted, re-interpreted and sustained. Furthermore, these trappings of the advertising world were not covering up the real meaning of whiskey for the Scottish people, as if this were a static and essential relation, no what I had here was the refined techniques of cultural transmission by which communities continuously recreate and re-affirm the meaning of an artifact. Perhaps I was even participating in the making of meaning itself!

Looking back with new perspective, I thought how the video at the beginning of the tour communicated more than just nostalgia. The combination of images, music, and narrative assured the viewer (whether successful or not is another question) that despite changes in brewing, distilling and distributing technology, the timeless quality of distilling whiskey was ensured by the continuity of practices and values with those of the good old days. One look at the old copper stills, the ancient Oregon pine washbacks, and the medieval barns housing the distillery confirms this assertion. However, this claim becomes problematic considering that the distillery was once owned by Pernod Ricard (one of the largest alcoholic beverage companies in the world) and only recently bought by an independent bottler in 2002. In all respects the business is fairly modern, most strikingly so in a business plan which emphasizes the contemporary commitment to a diverse array of value added products. Thus, claims for authenticity are necessary to set this small producer apart, and these claims are anchored on one hand by tradition and on the other by the careful selection of scientific explanation.

Nowhere was this message more skillfully crafted than in the informational panels lining the walls of the tasting room. With titles like “Why Whiskey Tastes Like it Does” and “Single Malts-The Tasting and Sensory Experience” these aesthetically stunning posters appropriated science and tradition, melding them into coherent arguments for quality and resolving (or eliding) the tensions I just mentioned. For example, they explain how the surface area of the copper still impacts flavor by acting as a catalyst in certain chemical reactions, precipitating certain flavor/aroma compounds from the boiling wort. Details were glossed over for brevities sake but exact measures were included and scientific names/terms of art from organic chemistry (such as ester, ketone, and aldehydes) littered the prose. My favorite panel explained that, “Fermentation is an important source of flavours: higher alcohols, fatty acids and esters are all formed during the fermentation process” and went on to describe how the boiling wort produced more fruity esters at the beginning of the boil and more aromas of biscuits, porridge, and leather near the end. Probably the best example was the panel on tasting whiskey which calmly assured the consumer that “a complete whiskey tasting follows a logical and traditional (italics mine) sequence- colour, nose, body, taste and finish, each stage revealing more about the whisky being assessed, building progressively to a satisfying climax”. The message being: drinking whiskey is neither immoral nor insensible, rather there is a logically coherent narrative, which, if practiced correctly is both historic and natural. Thus, the moral tensions of drinking alcohol (intoxication) are resolved as well.

I left the tiny distillery enthused by my newly formed idea of what an ‘authentic’ whiskey experience could be. As I wandered down a different, but equally pastoral trail back to Pitlochery I thought to myself: Is the role of whiskey in society more complex than such ‘experiences’ portray it to be? Of course. Is there is a ‘more authentic’ role for this ferment in culture than what I had seen? Again, maybe, but this was starting worry me less, and as I got back on the train to carry me home to Edinburgh I am pretty sure I was humming again.

P.S. I wanted to look up what some famous Scotts had said about whiskey, and I found quite the collection of witticisms, not all of them appropriate. Here is also a great whiskey site. Check out this video of a master blender doing his thing…highly entertaining if not unbelievably silly…

Midnight Chickens and Other Thoughts

2010-09-27T22:08:00.001+01:00

There are times in your life when you just have to laugh in sheer disbelief of where and what you are doing. Do you know what I mean? These are the times that require you to reflect on just how you got to this strange and wonderful moment, and yet refuse a rational explanation of cause and effect. I had just such a moment the other night, riding atop what appeared to be a giant mechanical chicken sailing calmly over a sea of vines. I was surfing a wave of future wine under the kind of full moon which you can sense even when you are turned away because it pulls mysteriously at the hairs on the back of your neck, summoning the tidal origins of human life. It was one of those kinds of moments, and what can you do, I laughed…

It was the end of the first day of the harvest. The giant mechanical chicken was not actually a chicken, but rather a mechanical harvester that appears avian as it lowers itself onto a new row of vines to begin collecting grapes. While they may be the most salient technical artifact I have observed, the mechanical harvesters are only one part of the web of scientific and technological tools and practices which enable this sort of winemaking. Before the mighty mechanized hens pluck the green orbs from their sockets, years of research has gone into developing this plot of land, miles of wire trellising have to be skillfully erected, a myriad of chemical treatments are purchased and applied, and teams of experts have conferred their knowledge onto those pruning, planting and maintaining each plant. Similarly, after the grapes are shaken off the vine they are poured into a tractor trailer, hauled to the chai (winery in French), destemmed, pressed and fermented; all processes that have been honed by the précising principles of scientific discourse, both material and methodological. A fully trained oenelogue oversees the project and is always on call, sulfides and enzymes are added in measured dose, and once the grapes lose touch with the vine they are caressed by stainless steel and plastic polymers (or recently Kevlar) until that juice hits the bottle.

Bruno Latour once described picking up a hammer as reaching into a folded garland of heterogeneous times and places, and I would like to extend this metaphor to a bottle of wine. The wine contained in that sturdy glass tube holds together disparate years of toil and soil as tightly as it does the hundreds of places its contents could be argued to have originated. The next time you pick up a bottle of wine at the store, try imagining all of the various requirements which made that bottle possible. You could start with the physical, chemical, and biological since they are innumerate. Next, the materials harvested, mined, melted and forged. The knowledge of viticulture and viniculture gained, traded, passed and stolen. And finally the mixing of all of this knowledge and material goods in the actions, the seeding, weeding, packing and unpacking which allow you to hold exactly one perfectly whole bottle of Pinot Gris in your

hands. Cool huh? Or, you can just enjoy the wine…I have been doing both!

This morning I had my first few hours assisting with the actual fermentation of the harvest in the Chai. We measured the initial concentration of sugars and proteins in the must, checked the temperature in all of the tanks, and even pitched the yeast for a few batches. For the rest of the week I will be doing the same. Check out some of my pictures for more visual meditations on the techniques and technologies I have been encountering.

Next up, I head to Edinburgh, Scotland, to check out mead, whiskey, cheese and more!

The Harvest Approaches

2010-09-18T19:10:00.000+01:00

For the last couple of weeks I have been hanging out around a vineyard in the Central Loir region. The vineyard owner has been incredibly generous, showing me around his vineyard and explaining everything that goes on here. The plan is for me to observe/participate in the harvest (the vendage) and then to stay on for another week or two shadowing the person in charge of monitoring the fermentation. What incredible luck! I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect fit for my project.

While machines are usually used for the main harvest, this morning we had a small pre-harvest by hand. Because the winemaker wants to use only the wild yeast to ferment his organic wine, we harvested two buckets of grapes, which will ferment for a week before the full harvest is brought in. This miniature batch will provide a good medium for cultivating the wild yeasts found on the grape skins, functioning as a sort of sourdough-starter for wine. After picking the grapes, we drove down to the cooperative where we stomped them, pressed them by hand, and filtered out the stems and skins. Now we wait…

After crushing and pressing by hand all morning, I got to see the harvesting machine for the first time. I have to admit that I was skeptical at first (being seduced by the romantic image of communities eternally banding together, vendage after vendage to bring in the harvest by hand). When I asked the winemaker why he harvests by machine, he cited several reasons. First, it is cheaper. In order to harvest the amount of grapes he does every year in the same time as the machine, the vineyard owner would have to hire sixty to seventy people, and with labor laws the way they are in France, that is no easy feat. Second, its more flexible. If the weather is bad in the day, you can harvest at night. This is harder to coordinate with sixty to seventy people and in the small village where the vineyard is located, it would be a challenge to find that many willing to do this work. Third, it may even be better for the eventual quality of the wine. The way the machine harvests the grapes is by shaking the vines, causing only the ripest grapes to fall off. With manual labor, each picker has to know how to tell which grapes are ready to be harvested and which to leave on the vine, a process fraught with error.

I am excited to see how the harvest works. I have been told to expect long hours, short naps, endless coffee, and an air of camaraderie. I learned today that I will also be forced to get over my pet-peeve of having sticky hands. Nothing is sticker than freshly squeezed grapes. Can’t wait…

Update

2010-08-28T13:46:00.001+01:00

I am currently in central France jettisoning, according to volume and mass, any and all objects that do not pertain to my immediate survival. Pants? I have two, I don’t need three… Why the hell did I bring this 101 tips to better water color book!? Items also on the list include one shirt with pockets ala “Indiana Jones meets Gary Larson entomologist”, and possibly all three pairs of shoes.

It has been five weeks since first arriving in Paris, and a lot has happened in that time, so I am going to make this blog-post a greatest hits of sorts.

Bordeaux: Meryl and I Attended the Ecole du Vin for a class on tasting wine. We educated our palates using fifty or so little bottles of purified aromatic chemicals – including those for fruits, spices, leathery tannins, etc- each of which is present to a greater or lesser degree in Bordeaux wines. This was a fascinating class, not only because it was informative and nose-opening, but also as an example of how taste is cultivated. There is definitely something interesting going on with neuroscience of taste-perception and the socio-economic implications of a school for wine tasting run by the industry itself (our teacher was a vineyard owner), but that will have to wait for a dissertation or two. We also had a guided tour of two vineyards in Blaye, on the east bank of the river Gironde. These were fun introduction to the area and I hope I get to go back to explore it a little more.

St.Emilion: This is a small town just outside of Bordeaux where Meryl and I rented bikes for the day and rode around the countryside stopping to talk with vintners and taste their wines. One winery even had soil samples on display from the several different vineyards they owned. This added a convincing visual element to the notion of Terroir which is so essential to the economic and sensorial qualities of Bordeaux wines. I left my card in hopes of returning for the harvest. Talking with an older vintner, I was surprised to hear him say that if he were young again, he would learn English.

Pau: At the foot of the Pyrenees, this town is a great starting point for exploring the ferments of the Basque region. Along with Biarritz and Bayonne, Pau is a major center for the history and commemoration of craft-produced chocolate in France, and there is even a Route du Fromage which highlights farms and fromageries producing a range of cheeses in the protected Ossau-Iraty region. However, at the time I was unaware of the significance of the town for chocolate and lacked a car (necessary to follow the route du fromage), so I went up into the mountains for a day and vowed to come back to this area better prepared.

I returned to Paris, and after saying goodbye to my girlfriend, I used up my last day of Eurail pass to travel to a small town in the Correze region. I have been living here for three weeks, practicing my French, reading up on the history of French ferments, and even visiting a Boulanger to bake bread with him for a day or two (my next post will go into this in more detail). I am leaving here in a few days, probably headed to Dijon, but we’ll see!

Paris

2010-08-28T11:10:00.000+01:00

My girlfriend joined me for a few days in Paris, whereupon my ability to communicate with the French people was enhanced ten-fold. Here’s how it worked. I would walk in to a boulangerie with purpose and charm, greeting the proprietor with a hearty ‘Bonjour!’ Naturally, the good mannered Boulanger would ask me something completely incomprehensible in French, at which point I would smile and look over at Meryl nervously. After a significantly awkward pause, Meryl would explain that I was a complete idiot and that she would take a baguette. This began to happen less and less as time went on (I’m pretty sure) and one morning I even completed the entire transaction myself, in flawless French. As I strolled out onto the Champs D’elyse, radiant with my Boulanger-etiquette victory, I looked back at the waving baker with a big smile and shouted ‘Bonjour!’…so close…

On the cheese front, my friend and host, Anne Horowitz was adamant that we have a taste-off between a decent industrial Camembert and a raw milk artisanal version. While the pasteurized version curled my nose hairs with its delightful stench, I have to admit that the raw-milk version was earthier, more putrid, and had more distinct flavors. The putridity was really emphasized when, three days later, Meryl and I stuck the raw milk Camembert in my backpack for a picnic. The cheese settled in my pack right up against my back, and after a sweaty morning of trekking through hot and humid paris streets, what we had left at lunch was liquid toe-jam. Pidgeons dropped from the sky when we opened the bag. The aroma of toe is not an original sentiment and neither is it unsubstantiated biologically. The poet Leon-Paul Fargue called it “les pieds de Dieu” or “Gods feet”. This heavenly heady aroma is attributed biologically to S-methyl thiopropionate, a product of the metabolic breakdown of protein by Brevibacterium linens, a relative of Brevibacterium epidermis which breaks down protein between your toes to produce that foot smell (Dyer, 2004; Paxson, 2008).

At this point you may be thinking, “ewe, I hope he stops there”, but guess what, it gets better. Not only do we have bacteria in our digestive system, on our skin and in our sebaceous glands (yeast in these glands is a cause of dandruff), our cells are actually outnumbered ten to one by the microbes we carry around with us. An average person has 10¹³ human cells and 10¹⁴ microbial cells, in other words, 90% of our cells are microbial! Worse than that, our DNA is outnumbered by the DNA of our “friends” by 100 to 1 (Gill et al. 2006). Taking into account more and more of these findings over the last year has made me sympathetic to what professor Heather Paxson has dubbed the post-Pasteurian ethos (Pasteur, the French guy responsible for germ theory of disease and pasteurization). In her article Microbiopolitics, Paxon describes the outlook as moving “beyond an antiseptic attitude to embrace mold and bacteria as allies” (18). While recognizing that a consensus on this anti-antiseptic nutritional outlook has not yet been achieved in the scientific/medical community, this is what gave me the courage to try a bite of the soupy mess before ditching it for a delicious Roquefort from a fromager in the mouffetard. It was a good choice…

Sources cited:

Paxson, Heather (2008). Post-Pasteurian Cultures: The Microbiopolitics of Raw-Milk Cheese in the United States. Cultural Anthropology, (23)1, pp. 15–47.

Dyer, Betsy D. A Field Guide to Bacteria. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.

Brussels II

2010-08-22T18:09:00.000+01:00

While in Brussels I had the opportunity to visit the last brewery in the city which still produced spontaneously fermented Lambics. The Cantillon Brewery is not in the heart of town. It doesn’t have a steel and glass façade with a commemorative walkway or a landscaped entrance. It is south of the old city, in a mixed commercial/industrial/residential neighborhood. The building is entirely unremarkable and the entrance is an almost unmarked garage door across from a large open area overgrown with tall grass. But once inside, I found an idyllic scene. The family that owns and operates the brewery was gathered around several open wooden crates filled with apricots. They were de-pitting the fruit which would later be blended with lambic to create their “Fou’foune”. I even got to taste an apricot right off the knife. The woman who offered it to me is the last living direct descendent of Paul Cantillon, the brewery's founder.

The self acclaimed “last traditional brewery in Brussels” started nearly 100 years ago and still brews over a 1000 hectolitres of beer in equipment from the 19^th century (figures from brewery pamphlet). What makes Cantillon interesting for me, is that all of their beer is spontaneously fermented. This type of fermentation is a window into the past, as before the rise of modern carefully controlled brewing techniques, all beer was spontaneously fermented. Thus these brews may be the closest thing we can currently taste as to what the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians drank thousands of years ago (sans hops which are a more recent ingredient).

In a small loft above the top floor of the brewery, lies an enormous copper cooling tun where the beer is exposed to the unique microflaural ecosystem which has developed on the walls and in the spider webs of the Cantillon brewery for the last century. The beer is inoculated with wild yeasts which give it the complex sour flavors that lambic beers are famous for. After the tour I worked up the courage to ask a pressing question:

Me: “Because your product relies so much on the local bacterial and fungal ecosystem, I was wondering if you have noticed any change in the last half century or so as more and more international travelers make their way to Brussels, bringing with them their own bacterial and fungal ecosystems.”

Brewer: “Nope”, “wait, did you bring in bacteria with you!” (I’m pretty sure the second bit was a joke. Answering this question in the positive could be bad for business, so I assumed that the brewer was avoiding the subject. Looking back though, I wonder if he was being earnest with me? Perhaps the changes are too subtle, or maybe indigenous species have evolved to fit the geographical/biological niche so well that they crowd out any foreign competitors. Brewing only happens between October and April, when the climate is cold enough to cool the beer quickly and this might effect microbial competition as well. As I am just speculating, I will leave this an open question, and if a microbiologist or a brewer out there has any explanation please don’t hesitate to leave a comment!

Whether or not the beer at Cantillon has changed, it is still mind-bendingly fun to taste. A product of hundreds of different fermenting agents, the tart acidic flavors are so different from the tastes in commercial ales and lagers (these almost always have carefully controlled inoculations and fermentations by only a single species of brewers yeast).

Brussels

2010-08-20T22:49:00.000+01:00

Crammed into a bench behind a long wooden table, I sat among a few other brave sweaty Belgians and squinted at my Lambic, focusing on the intricate patterns of light refracted through this bubbling beverage. The oppressive afternoon rays drenching the inside of La Morte Subite were reflected and amplified by the bar’s enormous mirrors that frame its hallowed hall. Like so many before me, I came to Brussels for the beer. The olives were a surprise.

Home to both NATO and the EU, Brussels has a reputation as an international city, and this cosmopolitanism is supposedly reflected in the many cuisines that mix and mingle on the streets and in the markets. Thus, one blustery Thursday morning, I set out to see if I could find some kind of fermented food in the Moroccan market suggested by my guidebook. Making my way past raw meats, dried fruits, and fresh fish, I finally spotted gold. Well… green really, and black and red and various other hues. Piles upon piles of olives…Olives with garlic, olives with lemon, olives drenched in chili sauce and olives from Yemen (I don’t think that’s accurate, but it completes the suess-ambic meter) and you could try every…single…style… I went for the mixed green (young) and black (ripe), with garlic, oil and cilantro. So into the backpack went a handful and a half, to be enjoyed later in the company of Belgium’s other special ferments: bread, cheese, chocolate and beer.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, the olives, and the chocolate in my backpack were not such an odd couple. Reviewing my favorite FAO report of all time (you don’t have one?) I found that both products require proper fermentation to achieve a palatable taste, and both are spontaneously fermented. Raw olives contain Oleuropein, a glucoside compound –sugar and something else- which has a bitter taste and is toxic to bacteria. In order to remove this compound, raw olives are put in a lye solution which removes the offending compound, but also pierces the skin, allowing easier access for bacteria to get in there and do their thing. Olives also share with cocoa the wicked sweet factor of being spontaneously fermented, a class shared by such awe inspiring products as kimchi, lambic beers, and pretty much every ferment before the eighteenth century. Thus, the party in both cocoa and olives is, shall we say, a mixed crowd. Lactic acid producing bacteria compete with acetic acid bacteria and yeasts galore. Who knows how many different species are invited. Though well attended, these parties usually don’t end well for the party-goers, coming to a sudden and violent finish either in roasting (all cocoa) or pasteurizing (most olives). However, this party, like many others, isn’t over, its only ever postponed. As soon as you take that olive out into the fresh air, there is a whole sea of anxious opportunists ready to rage.

I didn’t want my own personal quadruple wrapped microbial get-together to be crashed by any unsavory characters. So I moved the whole thing into my micro-floral "living room", combining the event with an ongoing affair in the form of a raw milk cheese. The party went well.

Next up, a visit to the cantal brewery, where spiders rule and they have realized my domestic dream: a beer swimming pool in the attic.

Reference note: My favorite FAO report of all time, and source for the informative portion of this post, is: Fermented Fruits and Vegetables. A Global Perspective, Mr. Mike Battcock and Dr. Sue Azam-Ali. FAO United Nations, 1998.

Antwerp

2010-08-05T18:14:00.000+01:00

I am currently in Pau, a French town within the Pays Basque region sitting at the edge of the Pyrenees. I clearly have some work to do updating this blog, and so here is the first installment. More to come soon... Antwerp/Mid July: In Antwerp I had an incredible host, whose brother took me out for Mussels and Frites on the river Scheldt. After lunch, we attempted to visit the Brewershuis museum, but it was closed for repair. This museum is housed in a building that, while never a brewery itself, used to provide the many breweries on “Brewers Street” with water (the most important ingredient in Beer!). At one time there were over fifty brewers in the city of Antwerp, but due to the crushing effect of two world wars, strict permit regulations, the declining popularity of top fermenting ales, this number slowly dwindled over the years until presently there is only one. Luckily, the DeKoninck brewery is still going strong. Started in 1827, this brewery was originally known as “The Brewery of the Hand” and its label still retains the image of a left hand. The hand is an icon in Antwerp, according to local lore, a giant who used to live on the river would charge people a toll and if they didn’t pay he would cut off their hand and throw it into the river. However, the hero Brabo, having slayed the giant, cut off the giants hand and threw it into the river (hooray), thus the fantastic statue across from the town hall and the severed hand that graces the glass of every delicious De Koninck brew.
If this isn’t appetizing enough, according to the local custom, before you drink a De Koninck it is a tradition to knock back a double shot of cheesy yeast water, drained off the barrels at the end of the fermentation. This shot has the consistency similar to sour milk with a metallic aftertaste that wafts up the back of your nasal cavity heralding the possibility of lunch’s triumphant resurrection. In other words, not something I would have with my beer every day. Despite the taste, I must admit that the yeast shot brought out earthier and more malty flavors in my next sip of beer, and this taste experience was so unique that I would rate it a “worth the effort” with a probable “try it again in a year”. Legend has it that this shot is also good for fertility, though the number of rituals in Antwerp (including walking under a well endowed statue, etc…) to increase fertility lead one to believe that perhaps the level of alcohol consumed in the past has not been all that helpful on this front… In fact, my generous host, a lawyer, explained that at one time it was illegal to pay workers in cash due to their propensity to spend it all at the pub before getting home.
Among the numerous anecdotes told by my host, two stories surrounding bread stood out. The first story is about bread and the law. Apparently at one point the wise city fathers of Antwerp decided that there were too many different kinds of bread in Antwerp, thus the city needed an Official Bread to reduce the confusion. Having decreed that such-and-such was the Official Bread of Antwerp they decided, naturally, to tax it. Of course, as soon as it was taxed, none of the bread bakers made the Official Bread of Antwerp anymore. Instead, each baker added their own twist to the bread, thereby multiplying the perfusion of bread styles exponentially. Though there is still many styles of bread in the city, our host suggested that today there is one bread that may be the most popular, and its name, translated literally, is “Rye, Damn it”. The second story is about bread and men. According to our friend, every Sunday hundreds of men saunter in to the village squares to get a paper and a loaf of bread. Our host jokingly described how dutiful patriarchs in this great migration of men, making extended pit-stops in café’s, are not motivated by such worldly desires as learning the local gossip, but are instead inspired by the noble thought that they are fulfilling their fatherly duties, obtaining news of the world and sustenance for their family!

After a few days in Antwerp, it was on to Brussels...

America to Antwerp by way of London, Oxford and Brugge

2010-07-21T19:13:00.000+01:00

On the top floor of the Brouwerij De Haaf Moon, five stories above the pungent fermenting barrels below, I am struck by an errant pearl of wisdom thrown by an unlikely pitcher.

“This is the half moon!” bellows our tour guide, Antoine, as he makes an enormous “round-the-world” swirling gesture, part of an interpretive dance inspired by the motion of a beer being poured into its appropriate glass. He looks contemplative as if meditating on a zen-koan, “and then you take a deep sniff to bring in the aroma that is being pushed up by frothing beer, and… Whop!” He makes a motion of his hand towards his moustache which nearly sends him off his feet “Culture!” At that moment I realized that I had come to the right place. In fact, this was my fifth or sixth revelation in as many days, but having already sampled both the double and the triple, I was fortunate enough to be fooled into enjoying the warm feelings of first discovery all over again.

London

Flying out of NYC it was 105 degrees Fahrenheit, and thankfully when we landed in London it was only 30 something in celcius. My gracious host suggested I leave my front and back-packs at his office and check out the city, so I did just that. A haircut and every monument/bridge in London later, I found myself in a pub. Stepping confidently up to the bar, I told the young bartender all about my Watson fellowship and asked her if she felt that the preservation of cask-fermented “real” ales in Britian was a welcome return to a traditional fermentation technique that had been slipping away as modern tastes had shifted in the past twenty years towards cooler, more carbonated, lager type beers. I looked into her face expecting the radiant glow of recognition and acceptance. Instead I found confusion and concern “So…you want a beer or something?”. Heading back to my table with a proper ale I decided that my pitch needed some more work.

Two days later, however, I found myself surrounded by scholars, chefs and 200 other professionals and enthusiasts gathered at Oxford to celebrate the holy transformative powers of fermentation. To put it in a way that would not sedate a London bartender, the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery rocked my world.

Oxford

The theme at this year’s symposium was Smoked, Cured and Fermented. Headlined by talks from Sidney Mintz, Harold McGee, Sandor Katz, Fuscia Dunlop, and Ivan Day, it was a star studded event (according to the international fermentation fan club, which is admittedly smaller than my rural public highschool). Over the course of several incredible fermented feasts (Irish, Norwegian, and Cantonese) I was able to meet with my fermentation idols and talk about my upcoming adventure. On one occasion I sat down across the table from a woman who had fascinating stories. At the end of the meal I asked her if she was a food writer, at which point the person to my left kindly informed me that this was Claudia Roden, recent winner of the James Beard prize in food writing. A similar experience to asking Bob Dylan if he likes folk music.

My presentation with professor Naomi Guttman went well. We gave a short talk about our paper “Sausage in Oil”, a collection of interviews with Italian-American families who still make dry-cured fermented sausages in Utica NY. Fermented meats were a popular subject (fish, sausage, Iberian Hams) but the list of fermented foods also included yoghurts, bean curds, porridges, breads and more.

Best of all, the conference was diverse in expertise and experience. I met young chefs, enthusiastic microbiologists, fellow passionate DIY fermenters and historians/anthropologists who re-affirmed my seeming obsession with all of the dimensions of externalized digestion (fermentation). Surrounded by all of these generous, fascinating, and brilliant comrades, I had found my people and they had brought cheese. What more can you ask for? From Oxford it was on to the English countryside where I stayed with friends just outside of Manchester.

Near Manchester

In this pastoral setting I was introduced to the sausage roll and I will never be the same. I also visited the highest altitude pub in England “The Cat and the Fiddle” (of hey diddle diddle fame) and toured Haddon Hall, a proper English manor. Like all English manors of sufficient size and nobility, Haddon Hall had once had its own brew house, though it had been destroyed some years ago. Exhausted from touring, we retired to a pub/inn in Bakewell where I conducted more research on “real” English cask ale. The India Pale ale is a specialty of the brewers in Bakewell. This heavily hopped beer style was invented by the English when they had to ship barrels of beer all the way to India without it spoiling. The extra alpha-acids provided by the hops preserved the beer as it was shipped over seas for months at a time (a narrative coincidence in that I myself hope to be preserved during my trip to India this spring).

Cask aged ales, or “real ales”, as some call them, are traditional English beers which have to meet several qualifications. They must be never frozen, always casked, stored in the basement of the pub at around fifty degrees, and served without extra carbonation by being pumped up to the bar by large taps. As an American, the beer tastes flat and slightly warm, but I have learned that at this temperature there is more aroma vaporizing at the surface of the beer, and less carbonation to confuse the tongue, making for an overall taste experience that is one of a kind. Sadly, I had to leave my gracious English hosts after only a few days and set out for Belguim, the mecca of wild fermentation brewing, the sticky palace of pralines (chocolate is fermented before it is dried), and the home of my new favorite ferment: the Belgian waffle (actually not sure if it is, can't get a straight answer).

Brugge

In the birthplace of the French fry, and the land where my breakfast centers around nutella smothered toast topped with Dutch chocolate sprinkles, I am not only learning, I am growing as well. First stop: Brugge. Just outside the walled-in city, I stayed with an artist who had the eye of Salvador Dali and the face of Sam Elliot (he has had his poetry published alongside Keruouac in the Trans-Atlantic Review, but he also appears in the acknowledgements on the inserts to more than a few famous rock and blues albums). Having been dropped off in this beautiful little city I was determined to see the brewery, the museum of chocolate (and the one of French fries too), and as many waffle shops as I could stand. This brings me back to the aforementioned fifth floor of the Half Maan Brewery. One waffle deep, my cheerful guide Antoine is finishing every joke with a righteous fist-pump and a triumphant “Ha! Joke!”. We ascend to the rooftop where we see that the brewery is situated between the monastery and the old hospital. In the middle-ages monks were the ones brewing beer and taking care of the sick. Not coincidently, at that time brewing was one of the best ways to provide safe drinking water because it was not only boiled, but also the alcohol made an inhospitable environment for much of the pathogenic bacteria. Perhaps coincidently, the new aging and bottling plant for the only brewery left in Brugge just so happens to be across the river in the same building as the new hospital.

To put it lightly, the chocolate museum was a huge disappointment. I expected decadence; life size cathedrals of cocao, fudgy waffles the size of dinosaurs, the entire cast of Seinfeld set in gleaming cocobutter. But no, what I got was fifty flights of stairs, and uncomfortably warm carpeted studio apartment with too much text and a trilingual cartoon cocao bean that I was ready to rip off the wall. To be fair, my expectations were really at fault. The museum was an informative place with excellent artifacts from ancient meso-america and a life sized chocolate statue of president Obama. I think the most profound part for me was the map of world cocao production which indicated the amount of cocao grown for each country. Cote d’Ivoire topped the list, with Ghana a close second, something I had thought I knew, and was now confident that I have to explore when I get there. Overly stimulated and underly-hydrated, I sought refuge under the umbrella of a café on the main square and found comfort in another tropical ferment which has permeated the culture in Belgium, coffee (more on this later). Having enough of the main town, I returned to my artist friend’s home and set out for Antwerp the next day.