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Cultures and Ferments
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Fresh Asparagus, Purple Carrots, and Garlic as the base for an kimchi style ferment. Vegan version, although fish sauce is always an option, just like fiery spices. There are no fiery spices in this.
It’s the season when asparagus is available in markets. Wild asparagus gets foraged this time of year in the Northern part of the US well, along with fiddlehead ferns, mushrooms, and other things.
Asparagus has somewhat of a bad reputation. It’s smell a little woodsy and like dirty hay if not properly treated, although some people like that directness. Salting it down s for kimchi, or any of the ways we prepare it removes that while highlighting the vegetable’s unique taste.
Asparagus curing in a sagohachizuke bed with some dried shiitake mushrooms. It’s important to remove water from ingredients not just to concentrate their flavor, but also to increase access to the enzymes in the koji based bed. If you can’t deal with an ongoing fermentation bed that requires maintenance – although this one can live in the fridge and requires only a weekly stir – make some amasake (sweet koji) or use bottled shio koji with the ingredients that you have.
Asparagus Ways
For our month long series of events on Sundays this June for Asian and Asian American Cultures and Fermentswe recorded videos on using asparagus, domesticated or foraged, in several ways.
How to make Asparagus Kimchi, Asparagus Chawan Mushi, Stir Fry Asparagus – the videos describe techniques, and ingredients. They includs recipes. Their point is that they encourage no waste, use of local or readily accessible and inexpensive ingredients, and are pretty easy to make.
Our videos try to include vegan, or vegetarian versions, but we are not against using anything that will deliver taste, and nutrition based on available ingredients – even ones that are not organic. If can only access or afford celery, for example, or foraged fiddlehead ferns – they work.
Knowing the techniques of cooking, fermenting, and culturing – and when to apply them – sometimes simply by just salting or soaking ingredients down before rinsing and using them in a recipe, allows you to make tasty things that look great, and are nutritious.
If you have, and know how to use liquid salt koji (shio koji) from a bottle you can take fresh asparagus or anything else really, and improve its taste. You don’t have to make it yourself.
And, frozen or canned ingredients, even ones that contain ascorbic acid or citric acid, for example, are often great workarounds if you can’t get anything fresh or local within your budget range.
Cultures and Ferments
The Cultures and Ferments events and videos are part of a Cultures.Group Annual Membership. You can watch any videos for as many times as you like, whenever you like, as an Annual Member. Each month the passcodes change for both old and newly released videos. We’ll email them to you when they do.
The price of an Annual Membership is $75 only until June 1. Then, it’s $150 for 2023, if there any slots available. Membership includes event invitations. Participation involves no additional fee, and is offered first to members.
You also gain borrowing privileges to our huge library of books, scientific papers, etc. We require at least 48 hours to respond to requests, and can only lend you what we can access.
We now also have a Substack account to which you can subscribe to receive links to at least 5 videos a month, as well as written material that is available only to subscribers: https://culturesgroup.substack.com.
The Substack subscription is $12 a month.
Both annual members and paying Substack subscribers receive emailed invites to events. Annual Members that have not RSVP’ed seven days before any event are not guaranteed a space. When there are open spaces for an event we post notices to our non-paying substack subscribers, and social media account followers.
Annual Membership 2023
Ferments and Cultures
($75 only until June 1, 2023) Annual Membership includes access to every event in 2023, and all available archived and new videos from now until the end of 2023. January 1 to December 31, 2023. Plus all events and videos of the last ten years as they are edited.
Discover sun-fermented soy sauce-making and application with third-generation black soy bean sauce maker Ozzy Hsieh, brewer at Yu-Ding-Shing and Founder and Chef of Future Dining Table.
Yi-Cheng Hsieh (Ozzy) is the third-generation black soybean sauce brewer of “Yu-Ding-Shing”, Taiwan. He is also the founder and chef of “Future Dining Table”, a series of food events connecting local farmers and consumers with vegetarian/plant-based cuisine, using Yu-Ding-Shing’s artisanal black soybean sauce.
Besides promoting black soybean sauce brewing culture of Xiluo, Taiwan, Future Dining Table aims to introduce the terroir of Yunlin county (Midsouth Taiwan), inviting experts from different fields to lead discussions about agriculture, placemaking, and regional revitalization. The ultimate goal is to make Taiwanese black soybean sauce worldwide.
Register Now, Watch Later
Get your tickets at KojiCon.Org and make sure you tune in for sessions from experts who are dedicated to keeping traditions alive, transferring knowledge, and saving delicious, nutritious, culturally significant techniques that are in danger of being lost.
Don’t worry if you can’t attend all of these amazing virtual sessions live – all presentations will be recorded and available for a full year after the conference, along with content from Kojicon 2021 and 2022!
Yellow Farmhouse is committed to community building and inclusion and offers different ticketing tiers to Kojicon to provide access for as many people as possible.
Connecticut Residents
Thanks to a generous sponsorship from CT Humanities, we are also offering free Kojicon 2023 registration to residents of Connecticut and for teachers working in Connecticut schools. Register at the link in our bio or at kojicon.org.
Kojicon 2023: Preserving the Past, Fermenting the Future runs from February 20 to March 5 and is presented by @yellowfarmct, an education center on a working farm in Stonington, CT, and @ourcookquest, Co-Author of Koji Alchemy.
Soirée-Leone – Wild Shoyu Made with Wild corn koji spores Deepa Reddy – Fermented Bajra (Pearl Millet) Kambu koozh Kartik Sinha – Winter Pickles and the Salt Satyagraha Christine Krauss – Yubeshi (Redux) Wade Fox – Maillard, Miso and Mushrooms Erica Carson – Koji based Fruit, Nut and Seed Lebkuchen|Ishan Sengupta – Kasundi, West Bengali Mustard Condiment Sean Doherty- Salt Risen Bread with Maine Grains ¿Adonde? Lab – Chestnut Miso, Shio Koji Salt Percentages Corey Bullock – Barley koji made for Red Bean Meju, Wood Fired Eggplant Amino Sauce with oat shoyu koji Dawn Woodward – Rhubarb Rye Galette, Rye Sourdough Bread, Two Variations, Estonian Style Rye Sourdough with Oats, Beets and Beet Kvass Ellie Markovitch – Sourdough Tortillas, Sourdough Primer: How to feed your mother, How to make pita bread, English muffins and a basic country loaf, Alua (Corn Kvass), and Brazilian Fermented Rice Cakes Kenji Muramoto – Oatzuke, Umeshu, Rhubarb Umeboshi paste Priya Mani – Vethal, Yogurt Fermented and Dehydrated Vegetables Ken Fornataro – Mustard SourDosa Pickles
Kambu Koozh
Ferments and Cultures
Annual Membership includes access to every event in 2023, and all available archived and new videos from now until the end of 2023. January 1 to December 31, 2023. Plus all events and videos of the last ten years as they are edited.
