ON FACE value, fermented food doesn’t sound all that appealing – after all, you’re essentially leaving things to ‘go off’ before they’re ready to eat.
While food writer Mark Diacono has now embraced a love of all things fermented, he wasn’t always this way.
“Like most sane people, I always had a healthy disregard for anything fermented, and the chances of it possibly making me ill,” he says.
For the uninitiated, fermentation is when beneficial bacteria is encouraged to grow in food or drink – transforming the taste, and traditionally used as a means of preservation.
Diacono first dipped his toes into fermentation when a friend gave him a sourdough starter (what he calls “the safe end of everything”) and soon he was “messing around, making the odd sauerkraut”.
The real lightbulb moment came after Diacono got home after a run. “I loathe running,” he says, “I was dying on the sofa when I got in – the radio was on, and somebody was talking about our microbiome and how they were absolutely convinced in a relatively short time, we would come to see this internal world of microbes as enormous and significant as outer space. This is an invisible world that we couldn’t comprehend, even though it’s right inside us and has so much influence over our physical, mental, every part of our being.”
This struck a chord with Diacono, who felt like up until then he’d imagined his internal workings like “a load of bicycle inner tubes attached with a hot water bottle in the middle”. That’s when he really started looking into fermented food and drink – rich with good bacteria, it is thought to improve your digestion and potentially your overall health, too.
With a bit more research, Diacono found out just how much he’d been missing. Fermented food isn’t a huge part of our diet in the West, but it’s been used in Eastern countries for years – think kimchi, miso and natto. There are a few reasons why it’s traditionally been much more popular in Eastern countries – it could be because many of these places have hotter climates, so in the days before refrigeration, there was more of a need to preserve food without it spoiling.
“It’s no stretch to say we’ve [the West] been richer than a lot of the other parts of the world, and with that, we get access to sugar and we then get a very sweet tooth,” Diacono muses.
“We desire sweet things – and at the expense of sourness and bitterness.” He also suggests richer countries have had the “luxury” to be put off by fermented foods, as people have had the ability to eat things fresh.
And yet there’s absolutely no reason to be grossed out by fermentation. Diacono wants people to realise we actually eat it “all the time, anyway” – listing bread, beer and wine as “ferments that we’re happy with”.
If you’re a newbie to fermentation, Diacono recommends starting with drinks: “There’s no acclimatising to the joys of water kefir or kombucha – it’s just straight lovely stuff, and it immediately has an impact. I was quite stunned. I’m really not one for lining up my crystals and all that business, but I immediately found when I started drinking fermented drinks that weren’t alcoholic, I really felt like there was some uplift in my resting state. I would be quite happy to be disbelieving about it, but I couldn’t deny the fact it was there.”
Diacono says once you’ve “broken the seal” of fermentation, you’ll “find yourself galloping after” more and more recipes – particularly when you discover, like him, the joys of making things yourself.
“That’s a lot of what I love about fermenting things. The more I do from scratch (within the limits of time and everything else) the more I feel like I’m not just giving myself fuel,” he says thoughtfully.
“There is a joy to the process, and there’s a pleasure in things like growing your own food and being part of it. We outsource so much in our lives – I’ve got no interest in how a car works, but some of the fundamentals of life – like feeding yourself – I get a lot of pleasure out of.”
And once you’ve mastered drinks, you’ll soon find yourself racing to try the umami fizziness of kimchi, and even some more unusual recipes – such as Diacono’s garam masala cherry tomatoes (“as if they are full of sparkling water and sherbet”, he writes). Just maybe steer clear of fermenting bananas – while Diacono advocates for almost any kind of fermentation, he says with a laugh: “Definitely don’t put banana anywhere near a fruit kimchi, because it’s just the worst.”
Ferment by Mark Diacono is published by Quadrille, priced £12.99. Photography by Mark Diacono. Available March 3. Below are three recipes for you to try at home...
GARAM MASALA CHERRY TOMATOES
(Fills a 700ml jar)
Ferment time: Up to two weeks, or longer for the brave
1tbsp cumin seeds
1tbsp ground coriander seeds
1 tbsp fennel seeds
6 cardamom pods, seeds only
2 cloves
625g cherry tomatoes, washed and stems removed
400ml 5 per cent brine
Method:
Lightly bash the spices to encourage them to release their scent and flavour. Fill the jar with the tomatoes and add the spices. Pour the brine to within no nearer than two centimetres of the rim. To make the 5 per cent brine, use five grams salt for every 100ml water. It is easiest to dissolve salt in hot water, yet ideally the brine should be cool when poured over the ingredients. It helps to dissolve the salt in a quarter to a third of the water as boiling water, stirring vigorously, before adding the rest as cold water. Secure the lid and leave to ferment out of direct sunlight in a warmish place, lifting the top at least once a day to release any pressure, and inverting to encourage the spices to mix. After five days, taste a tomato: it should be salty sharp spicy, slightly fizzy and delicious. Give it a few more days if you want the flavour to develop.
PAD THAI
(Serves 4)
For the kimchi (fills 1 litre jar and takes minimum five days to ferment):
90g fine sea salt
2 Chinese cabbages, about 1kg, shredded
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
5cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
2tbsp Korean chilli flakes
2tsp fish sauce
2 carrots, grated
5 spring onions, thinly sliced
For the pad thai:
200g flat rice noodles (dried weight), or use 600g ready-cooked flat rice noodles
1tbsp tamarind paste
3tbsp fish sauce
1tsp sugar
1–2tsp chilli flakes (or use fresh chilli)
2tbsp vegetable oil, plus extra for the noodles
300g diced chicken or tofu or prawns
1 onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 eggs, lightly beaten
40g cashews or peanuts, roughly chopped
Bunch of spring onions, thinly sliced
150g kimchi
200g beansprouts
To serve:
mall bunch of mint, leaves roughly chopped
Small bunch of basil (ideally Thai basil, but not essential), leaves roughly chopped
More fish sauce, to taste
More chilli flakes or chilli sauce, to taste
1 lime, cut into wedges
Method:
For the kimchi: In a large bowl, rub the salt thoroughly through the cabbage, and allow it to soften and form a little brine for an hour or so. In a small cup, make a paste by combining the garlic, ginger, chilli flakes and fish sauce. Using a colander, drain the cabbage so that you retain some of the brine in a bowl. Combine the carrots and spring onions with the cabbage, and stir through the hot fishy sauce. Add a little brine if you need to loosen the mix. Spoon the kimchi into a jar, pressing down well to exclude air bubbles. Use a freezer bag part-filled with water to keep the vegetables submerged and seal the jar. Allow the kimchi to ferment for five days at room temperature. The kimchi should have a pleasingly sour taste. Leave to ferment in the fridge for a few days (or weeks) if you prefer it sourer. For the pad thai: If using dried noodles, cook them according to the packet instructions, then drain and toss in a few drops of oil so they don’t glue together. Make the sauce by combining the tamarind, fish sauce and sugar in a small pan; bring to the boil to dissolve the sugar. Add the chilli flakes or fresh chilli to taste and put to one side. In a large pan, ideally a wok, heat the vegetable oil over a high heat. Add the chicken (or prawns/tofu) and the onion and stir-fry for eight minutes, until coloured and just about cooked through. Add the garlic and beaten egg to the pan for the final two minutes of stir-frying time. Add the noodles and stir-fry for a further three minutes, making sure that the chicken is cooked through. Add half the nuts, the spring onions, kimchi and beansprouts and fry for a minute to combine. Stir through the sauce and cook for a minute longer before removing from the heat.
To serve, sprinkle with the remaining nuts and all the herbs. Add a splash more fish sauce/chilli if you fancy and serve with the lime wedges. Add a dash of kimchi.
KOMBUCHA
(Makes 2 litres)
Ferment time: 1–2 weeks
2L water, ideally filtered, as chlorine can inhibit fermentation
1 heaped tbsp tea of your choosing (green, black, white etc)
160g sugar
1 SCOBY
2tbsp starter kombucha
Method:
Boil the water and pour over the tea, leaving it to brew for 15 minutes or so (less or more will affect the flavour, so experiment to your taste).
Clean a large two-and-a-half litre jar with boiling water. Once clean, pour the tea into the jar, straining out your chosen tea leaves. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved. Leave to cool completely before adding the SCOBY and starter kombucha.
Cover the top of the jar with a muslin (cheesecloth) or clean dish towel and fix with an elastic band, leaving in a light place, but not direct sunlight, for about 10 days. The amount of time is dependent on how warm your room is and how sour you like the kombucha, so keep tasting to find the right point. Two weeks is suggested for those that need a ballpark time frame.
Decant the kombucha into two one-litre ceramic flip-top bottles, retaining the SCOBY and a little of the kombucha. In the jar, the SCOBY will live indefinitely, and will kickstart your next batch. At this point you can drink it or do a second fermentation to add more fizz and flavour. If you decide to do a second fermentation, you will need something sweet to allow the process to work its magic successfully. This can include juice or fruit. A reasonable ratio of kombucha to juice/fruit is around 6:1. Have some fun and add ingredients like mangoes and mulberries, or even herbs such as lemon verbena, hibiscus leaves, star anise, fresh ginger or turmeric. Leave the kombucha to ferment for two to three more days.
