Week 2- Fish Guts in my Front Seat
You would think that the worst thing about blended squid would be the smell, but it’s not, it’s the texture. This was the week that I decided to get the gross shit over with, and oh boy did the gross shit live up to my expectations. I made squid garum; the Noma book’s take on fish sauce. Fish sauce is made of whole fish that are blended and left to digest themselves in salt. The stomach acid and enzymes break down the flesh of their own bodies over many months and make the yummy brown stuff you put in your fried rice. Squid garum is made similarly, however the squid enzymes are aided by koji enzymes in the Noma version. The koji, as you may remember from last week, is a light green color, while the blended squid was a deep purple. After I mixed it all together with a brine, my squid garum is not very appealing to the eyes, nor is it particularly appetizing.
In order to continue making my apartment as smelly as possible, I started the black garlic all over again. The first time I made it, the crock was way too hot and it burned my garlic and ruined a kitchen towel. The second time around, I was older and wiser. I grabbed my sisters old rice maker, that happened to be the rice maker that occupied our childhood home, and sat it just outside my apartment door in the parking lot. Alas, I was foiled again. The rice cooker was too cold, and only kept the garlic at 120 degrees, leaving it at risk of growing botulism toxin (a neurotoxin that can be fatal.) Another 10 heads of garlic went into the compost. Before I subject more innocent garlic to my methods, I’m going to have to test my next, and hopefully final, system a few times.
After feeling defeated by the not-so-black garlic, I started to become retroactively concerned about the other ferments that were bubbling under my roof. Was the miso really okay or did it need another blend? Was it too dry? I decided that the answer was yes, and pulsed the miso through the blender a second time to make it more smooth and added a bit more brine just in case it was, in fact, too dry. I decided that there was no downside to that, and if anything, it might help it ferment better because the enzymes are more intermingled.
The next victim of my fermenter imposter syndrome was the shoyu that I made earlier in the week. I had inoculated cracked, toasted wheat and yellow peas with koji spores on the 6th. After 24 hours, it did not look like the mold grew much, in part because I think the mixture was quite dry, and also because the recipe recommended keeping the mixture cooler than a normal koji. By hour 48, I don’t think the mold had fully grown or penetrated the peas. However, I still mixed the peas in brine and hoped for the best. Now, however, I’m thinking its not worth just hoping for the best with a ferment that takes over 100 days. I don’t want to get to the end and realize it’s all wrong. So I have decided I’ll start all over again next week.
All in all, this week has been a week of treading water. Two steps forward and one step back. One small bright spot was a finished ferment; the maple kombucha finished on the 13th, and I bottled some of it with quatre epices (cinnamon, ginger, cloves, white pepper and nutmeg), in order to make a cocktail. The rest I will simmer down into a syrup.
This upcoming week, I have plans to make the second attempt of shoyu, the first attempt at breadso, and the perry vinegar. If all goes according to plan, I will be chilling in miso and shoyu land, where I don’t have to make another for 3 months.
Ferments Complete: 2
Ferments in Progress: 6
Ferments to go: 166
