Edible Blue Ridge Fall 2010 : Page 33
O, ARE THESE PICKLES?” asks an eager student, lifting the sau-cer of tangy cucumber slices to her face for closer examination. “I call them pickles, but I’ve added no vinegar,” says Dawn Story, the expert and artisan “pickle”-maker who is leading this fermentation workshop in Charlottesville, as she moves on to portion out samples fromthe next glass jar: “fiesta kraut” with carrots, cab-bage, radishes, and bell peppers. “What I make are pickles by way of being fermented, which is basically the controlled decomposition of food,” she explains as she un-screws the lid on yet another prodigious glass jar—this one filled with gorgeous pink ribbons of cabbage and flecks of caraway that have trans-formed into “ruby kraut”—thus liberating a pleasingly piquant aroma. “Fermentation relies on good bacteria, and keeps bad bacteria at bay.” Still, like “regular” pickles, ferments have a powerful zing and slightly vinegary flavor —some vinegars are, after all, fermented themselves. But foods pickled with vinegar are different in that they don’t have the important good-for-us bacteria found in ferments. Fermented (aka lacto-fermented) foods are considered “living foods,” meaning they contain probiotics like lactobacilli, which regulate the beneficial microorganisms in the human gut—and which lend lacto-fermented foods their “lacto” prefix. “They help maintain healthy digestion, which among other things supports a strong immune system,” says Story, who has been known to down shots of the juice from ferments to restore electrolytes and for a pick-me-up. It’s her version of a Red Bull. Of course, pickle-juice shots aren’t for ev-eryone. And, frankly, neither are fermented foods. But if you enjoy the tangy, bracing flavors of sauerkraut or kimchi, delving into the world of ferments is a journey worth tak-ing—a journey that will bring you to almost every region of the globe. Fermentation expert Dawn Story. Take that kimchi, for example, which is such a staple in Korea, the average citizen eats 75 pounds of it each year. The composition can vary, but in the United States at least, it is usually a melange of fermented cabbage, rad-ishes, carrots, ginger, garlic, plus spices, includ-ing a kick from red pepper flakes. Head down to El Salvador, and you’ll find a fermented cab-bage salad called curdito, which is traditionally served with cheese-or meat-filled papusas. Or travel to India for some fermented cauliflower, a delicacy known as achar tandal. “I think people are drawn to these seem-ingly strange foods because there is something inherently familiar about them,” says Story, who has her own alliterative line of fermented foods called Farmstead Ferments, available at RelayFoods.com, the Forest Lakes farmers’ market and Anderson Carriage FoodHouse in Charlottesville, and by special order. “Practi-cally every culture around the globe has been fermenting foods as part of their culinary his-tory since the beginning of time.” Still, you don’t have to go farther than your own pantry to find ferments: wine, beer, chocolate, olives, sourdough bread, cheese. All of these staples rely on microorganisms— be it the yeast used with beer and wine, or the whey with cheese, or the naturally oc-curring microflora used to turn cacao beans into cocoa. These microscopic helpers do the dirty work for us, adding flavor and nutrients through a method of food preservation that seems straight out of 10th-grade biology. ne forkful of the ruby kraut, and the back of my throat tingles as if I’ve just eaten a tangy grapefruit. I like that sensa-tion—as well as the subtle flavors of caraway and dill that rouse the tongue—and I keep on eating. The astringency comes from the lactic acid that forms when the “good” bacteria break down the starches and sugars in the vegetables. “Fermented foods are ‘pre-digested,’ which makes nutrients readily available to the body,” says Story, filling another jar with chunks of apple and shreds of red and green cabbage, a new combination she hopes will prove as addictive as her others. “They also help you to digest the foods with which you EDIBLE BLUE RIDGE FALL 2010 | 33
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