Hi everyone, welcome to pot luck food talks. Today we're going to talk about aspergillus orisaea sun. Yeah fermentation man. Fermentation crazy subject no? Yeah what's the deal with fermentations? Yeah what is the deal with fermentation? You know like a couple of months ago on Instagram I saw somebody like comment, I don't remember where it was but like under a food picture sort of like, oh why does everything have to be fermented?
Fermentation is the most overrated thing in cooking and I was like well that's just a really stupid thing to say. Exactly. That's just a really dumb thing to say. Exactly. Yeah it's just very uneducated because like fermentation is not just making like a soy sauce out of distilled habanero peppers you know, it's in so many things you know. So many things we take for granted like olives, wine, bread, chocolate, coffee you know like so many things.
Yeah cultured butter you know and I remember like I don't often comment on the Instagram posts you know or like I never start sort of like keyboard warriors sort of moments but I was just kind of like yeah it's just very uneducated and he was like oh well you know like I was like well you eat bread you know and he's like whoa but yeah but you know that being said I also get his point.
Fermentation has been I feel like a lot of people hide behind fermentation they're sort of like oh I'm going to lacto ferment this and put it I'm going to lacto ferment these blueberries and then you know they put it on a plate it tastes disgusting you know. It's just like with everything else it's a skill that you have to get right but it's a whole universe you know like fermentation is crazy crazy subject. Absolutely I mean it's like the universe of microbiology so it's as broad as it gets.
Yeah I mean things I like to do like at home I like to do my own kimchi but I mean I don't get crazy about it I buy bottle kimchi base and just mix it with napa cabbage and I make my own like that that style of kimchi. It's pretty cool another thing that I do is like fermenting my own cream like sour cream. Oh you really do? Yeah like with that's really nice like with kefir and just leaving it outside like for two days like in a glass and then you have like this fermented cream it's really nice.
Oh sorry I didn't realize I was talking to David Silbert you know. That's really cool man I haven't I've never tried that that's awesome.
One thing that I learned is to lacto ferment anything you just need to use two percent of salt of the weight of whatever you're doing you can use more but that's like a sweet spot in the level of saltiness and also the level of activity of the bacteria that fermentates the food your fermenting thing and for whatever to do sauerkraut or just cucumber pickles or whatever that's that's the amount of salt I usually use.
Yeah for sure me too I usually I always learned it was like between two percent and two point five I usually go for two point three percent for a lot of things just because I found that two point five sometimes it gets a little bit too salty and I two point three kind of works well for me but I also I use it for quite a lot of stuff I mean like if I make sauerkraut you know choucroute you know you can basically make out of almost anything
doesn't have to be white cabbage you know like we used to collect you know like broccoli leaves and stuff like that and just sort of like cabbage off cuts and then just like shred them all together like Brussels sprouts off cuts and then just make like a mixed cabbage sauerkraut and so easy because you just shred the stuff you weigh it you weigh out two point two point three percent of that weight you add it you crunch it you press it you let
it ferment it's just important that it doesn't get into contact with too much that's why you usually press it down let the liquid of the product rise up so it's submerged and like that you can do anything you know like right now at the restaurant we're doing this very simple tomato salad but out of from all the off cuts of the tomatoes I take those and I do the same thing I kind of like chop them I add just a tiny bit of garlic tiny
bit of like spring onion and like aromatics like a little bit of coriander and then I add two point three percent salt just mix it and keep it at room temperature for like a day at the moment it's a day because it's very warm and it just starts to lightly ferment really really quickly because of the onion and the the sugar and the tomatoes and stuff and it just becomes like a little bit sour and salty and kind of fresh and very umami
ish and then I hang that and I've got a fermented tomato water that I make a dressing with you know a vinaigrette and it's super super tasty and it's just like a super simple way of using fermentation to kind of superpower flavor you know I encourage you to try what I told you I don't know it's just if it's food safe to do it in a restaurant but like well don't worry we do a lot of things that aren't food safe I mean cream and 20 percent of its weight
with kefir or yogurt of any kind and I leave it two days outside of the fridge and then you have like this whole fermented cream it's really nice that's awesome yeah I mean I'll definitely give that a try because we get really nice raw milk at the restaurant and it can even you know like separate so you are you have like this what's the name of that whey like the yeah this water this liquid that and and also this like fermented butter
so if you if you if you're using cream yeah super nice and that with with some kind of chili man it's the best thing in the world oh really yeah like this ferment the dairy making like like a hot sauce out of it man like with so ever late with potatoes or arepas or this kind of things it's just the best thing in the world it sounds crazy it sounds
really good so we haven't spoken about mr. koji mr. koji yeah the the guy who the famous blacksmith that lives in the mountains what is koji it's a mold right I mean koji is you use a mold to make koji I mean koji is basically a starter culture I think you could say I have to be a little bit careful what what I say so that the fermentation freaks don't rip my head off you know but like I would say that koji is a starter culture that
you make and traditionally it's made out of rice and a fungus spore that's called aspergillus or as I that's basically just a mushroom and this mushroom it needs something to feed on and that's why you take rice you steam it you inoculate the rice with the mushroom the mushroom starts munching away at this rice nom nom nom just like yeah the Chinese buffet and then kind of like the rice gets covered in this like white fluff if everything goes
right it's the fungus comes taking over and then yeah which looks like actually if you if somebody doesn't know what's going on it looks disgusting because it's like this white velvet that you will find and forgotten oranges in your fridge growing in your rice and you then you have like this white carpet in your rice of white velvet it's like oh this is perfect this is exactly what we need that's basically what koji is yeah totally but that
that's actually an interesting point because it's kind of like it just really depends on your viewpoint you know of kind of like what what things are and what their purpose is you know because koji if you know what it is and you know what it can do and you don't see it as a bad thing like i think it looks really beautiful you know this like white fluffy rice like if it's made right it looks really amazing also because i know that it's
quite difficult to make koji right i've made it and then you have rice that's kind of like black and yellow and white and and you're like oh my god what is this it's like you're growing a fucking monstrosity in your yeah and it's fucking dangerous because you can get whatever kind of of crazy fungus mix with the whatever you're doing absolutely yeah it's it's really to be taken seriously like food safety is to be taken very very seriously
but yeah you know if it's done right it's very beautiful and just depends like how you look at it you know so by doing we haven't explained what it is so koji koji is one of the key ingredients of i would say of the japanese flavor profile that far i would go because it's it's the base of soy sauce miso sake and mirin which are all staple ingredients in japanese cuisine absolutely and and koji is the ingredient this what we just mentioned
this white velvet that grows around rice this fungus is the one that gave them key aromas like this i would say citrus aromas that we find or fruity aromas that we find in japanese soy sauce as opposed to other soy sauce that that are not as pronounced are because of koji these these flavor profiles and and also the flavors you you find in sake are also directly related to to this fungus so it's kind of like uh it's not yeah it's not directly
a yeast but it is used kind of like a yeast in order to ferment other things yeah yeah absolutely and it's um yeah it's like again it's like a whole universe you know like the flavor that you get from fermenting with koji is it's very hard to describe and it's very very varied you know it's very deep i mean i've had things that are very like uh like soy sauce you know if you've ever had you know a soy sauce that's of very high quality
you know and that being said there's many different types of soy sauce you know there's very light ones very nutty ones very sweet ones very dark ones very bitter ones you know absolutely yeah but um you know there's a there's actually a japanese gentleman here in berlin who ferments local ingredients in a traditional japanese way and he makes amazing stuff it's called mimi ferments and he makes a buckwheat tamari which is like just like
if you think of tamari you think it's like very dark brown often but this isn't like that it's like very sort of chestnut colored light brown and it's just super flavorful you know you could like you could zip it from a glass it's it's just so delicate and rich in umami i mean umami is really what we're talking about with these sorts of like ferments you know absolutely yeah yeah and it's it's so but at the same time it's so delicate you
know and it's um and the same thing with sake you know like the depth that sake can get with like the different yeast cultures and you know the flavor of the rice etc with then the alcohol added to it you know i mean not added as in you know externally added but through the process it's crazy you know it's a it's a whole science but for us as chefs you know it's um it it has broadened our tool cabinet immensely you know i mean at the restaurant
where i work you know we use koji to ferment a lot of things especially from a sustainability point of view we take leftover bread and we make a bread koji water which also tastes like soy sauce you know we've made really crazy stuff like we've taken cooked meat leftover on bones that we used for stocks and we pick off this meat and collect it and we ferment it and that's actually one of the things that surprised me the most because what came out
this like rest leftover meat koji water it tastes amazing like it tastes like super high quality soy sauce the sort of soy sauce that i've only seen in japan and it's like really hard to find like to buy outside of the country and it's like when you have something like that to work with you know it's like it it opens up a whole new world for you have you seen the koji onigiri that noma was doing in japan koji onigiri yeah what is it so you
know you know onigiri you know these like triangular rice cakes right yeah basically just rice that's like slightly seasoned with salt usually sometimes it's filled also they pack it into like this triangular shape and they like wrap a piece of nori around it right yeah yeah so it's kind of like round and a little bit wavy you know and so what noma did is they made a sweet onigiri but the outside is all koji it's just the white koji fluff
okay it looks super beautiful it looks like an onigiri that's completely covered in koji but the way they were making it is super crazy um i i got some inside information on this what they did was they had like a triangular mold and brushed like a koji paste onto it and let those molds ferment so that they would have the koji structure on the outside of the molds and then carefully with a spatula like take the molds off so you only have this
like triangular sort of like mushroom structure and then they would fill it and then wrap like a leaf around it and give it to you so you would bite into it and you would just have the cover of the koji and then inside the filling and what was the filling i'm not sure it was something sweet i think it was like ice cream or something like that okay that sounds insane super crazy yeah and i mean like it's also you have this like really
fluffy kind of nice texture on the outside kind of like a camembert you know yeah yeah yeah that reminds me of this rotten what was it rotten apple from mugaritz oh yeah yeah the penicillus apple was it apple or pear it was apple that was inoculated with um the blue cheese spore exactly have you tried it no it's really nice is it yeah i mean if you like blue cheese you will like it yeah and if you like apple maybe also you like it too
if you don't like blue cheese and like apple that won't work what what what did it taste like how was it like it tastes like blue cheese like that like yeah or like camembert exactly because i've tried different versions of it but yeah whatever um starter you're using and you can buy this starters online like camembert or roquefort whatever you just add it to milk and you have like a like a sauce with that taste ah cool yeah that's really
interesting yeah have you ever tried to make like um like have you ever tried to use a soda bug or like sort of self-carbonated beverages like making homemade ginger ale or these kind of things exactly yeah so you get the carbonization in a bottle by itself you know well for a while i i experimented a lot with kombucha so i did many things with kombucha i tried kombucha even with dairies or everything you can imagine how did that work with dairy and
you get like a like a strange yogurt thing good strange oh yeah yeah i mean like i would prefer some other types of yogurt i mean it was okay but i don't know if that has any kind of consequences because i was just doing this myself you know without any kind of microbiology supervision yeah but yeah i did like a ginger ale which was pretty fucking good i remember it was only ginger without peeling it with skin and everything and macerated and and
brown sugar like the browner the better like this moscavado types of sugars yeah and and i did kombucha with that with that ginger water that was pretty good cool that sounds really nice yeah it's uh it's super cool no it's like um when you get it right and when you sort of like bottle something up and it just like starts carbonating by itself like i think it's such a rewarding experience yeah yeah i was experimenting with that a lot um
when i was in mexico because i was really determined to make a non-alcoholic beverage pairing for the menu that we had and so i was getting all these fruits and you know like um different things and wanted to make all sorts of different stuff i was trying to make was and i was making kombucha and just like normal sodas you know and some of them worked super well we were fermenting beer also like we're making our own beer uh
loads of different things we're making um tepache tepache worked really really well tepache is also something that's just like a fermented beverage that's very common in mexico where you take pineapple with the skin on because the skin is off where all the yeast bacterias are oh yeah and you just put it in water with like sugar and like other things you know and it starts fermenting and becoming kind of sort of like sweet sour but then what
i did is like i took the tepache and i bottled it because i wanted to make it carbonate right and so how that works for people who who don't really know is that if the bacteria still have enough sugar to feed on after you put it in a closed environment the carbon dioxide that they produce can't escape and if there's the right if it's the right amount for the right space left in the bottle it'll kind of like get absorbed back into the liquid
and you have like a sparkling liquid as you can maybe imagine that can also be a little bit dangerous you know because if the pressure it obviously builds up pressure and if the pressure is too high the your bottle might warp or explode which is what happened to me like i remember i was i was experimenting with all these different bottles and some worked super well like the tepache was absolutely delicious i was so proud of myself like you
know when you have this bottle and you open it up and it's like and you pour it in it's like sparkling you drink it it tastes like fermented pineapple and like sugar and then you're like oh my god this is so refreshing it's so delicious and then i got kind of carried away and uh i remember we were closed sunday monday and on saturday i was checking the bottles i was like oh they're not quite ready yet and so i left them in the mexican summer
heat and sunday went past like sunday went by and i was like man it's really fucking hot and then monday started and i was like okay no i can't wait until tomorrow i have to go check on the bottles so i went i locked up the restaurant and i walked in and you could see the kitchen from like coming in from the dining room and i could see from like far away that the kitchen was just an absolute mess and when i got there i realized
that almost all the bottles had exploded and there was glass shards stuck in the walls and in the ceiling like a fucking shrapnel grenade went off you know and it scared me shitless because i was like fuck if this this could have gone off like in the middle of the service and then we'd all be dead or maimed or crippled you and everybody's dinner would be ruined um and that kind of made me stop stop a while so so yeah but the the ones that
turned out well they were really delicious but you have to you really have to be careful fermentation it can can be pretty dangerous because yeah especially if you don't know what you're doing so that there are a lot of procedures uh that yeah that are kind of safe but i mean you're always scared because you you're playing around with unpasteurized food you know like you don't know if i mean if you don't have a feeling with it or if
you're learning by yourself it can be kind of like scary you know like not knowing what you're doing yeah for sure just like just like foraging you know it's like if you don't know what you're eating like don't eat it you know that's like there were so many instances where it's like if you're fermenting something you're not sure what you're doing like it's it can be really dangerous you know if there's a mushroom on it like i remember one guy that
i'm not going to mention his name but like one guy i knew from the nordic food lab he was kind of like well if it's if it's white mold it's okay but if it's like black or green or yellow like maybe don't eat it maybe yeah maybe but um it can be super dangerous you know just like foraging is kind of like there's so many times where you pick something up and you think you know what it is and you eat it and it's just like even just like the
bite of a leaf like i remember i bit into something that i thought was sorrow once in spain when i was foraging and my whole mouth went numb completely numb i couldn't i couldn't move my tongue and it felt like there was like 15 needles poking in my mouth for like two hours i couldn't talk you know which was probably good for everybody around me but i haven't but for me it wasn't you know but yeah that's it for this week's episode of potluck food talks if you like what we're doing make
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