Starter Culture

Harry Colley

Photo by George Voronov

Starter Culture

Fermentation is basically the process of turning sugar to alcohol using yeast, but it can also occur using lactic or acetic acid bacteria, mould or the wonderfully named SCOBY (Symbiotic Community of Bacteria and Yeast). Common foods to ferment include milk (making yogurt and kefir), tea (kombucha), soybean (tempeh, soy sauce), cabbage (sauerkraut, kimchi) and other vegetables. It’s a live, active, bacterial process giving fermented goods a distinctive tang, fizz or sour taste as the food hovers between fresh and rotten.

In Dublin, chefs at the Fumbally were one of the first players in the fermentation game, operating a bit like a starter culture in the city; many ex-Fumballers moved on to ferment elsewhere. They use lots of fermentation on their menu and they run a pickling workshop every month in their Fumbally Stables space. I chatted to Fumbally chef and ‘With Relish’ podcast host Harry Colley, whose interest in fermentation was sparked by the Nordic Food movement and the significant impact of kimchi on Korean culture.

Harry taught himself about fermentation and experimented with the techniques of Sandor Katz. He used many of these in the pop-up he had a few years back with fellow chef Cúán Greene (now working at Noma). What attracts Harry to the process is the ability “to be purposefully able to manipulate food, without heat, just with time and salt” allowing you to “make more of what’s around you”. He often cooks with lacto-fermentation techniques which use salt, or a salt solution, to ferment produce. The Fumbally also have live sourdough cultures, milk and water kefir grains, and kombucha SCOBY to keep them busy.

Photo by George Voronov

Its ‘liveliness’ means that fermentation is different to other kinds of cooking processes. You’re working with active cultures so there can be a bit of uncertainty. The sourdough, SCOBY and kefir grains require some maintenance and feeding, almost like a bacterial pet – so while these are all things you can teach yourself to do at home, are you ready for the commitment?

Harry explains the challenges.

“I’m not into baking or pastry at all. That requires you to measure and be precise. But when you bake you don’t really know that it’s worked ‘til you’ve eaten it. There’s a certain amount of that in fermentation as well. You can invest loads of time and care in these things and at the end... Meh.... That can be disheartening. You’ve got to push through that.”

In terms of health benefits, the buzz in recent years has been about true probiotic foods — the top shelf or class A’s of the fermentation repertoire with extensive claims made for their healing properties both physical and psychological. Probiotics bring a range of benefits to digestion, and as it’s a healthy gut flora it can be anticancerous, anti-inflammatory and help with all kinds of immune and nervous system issues.

Harry sees these health benefits as “kind of a happy coincidence”, but at the same time he gets the unique properties of probiotics.

“I often think of fermentation as this kind of pre-digestion. It’s digestion outside the body, breaking down and making things bioavailable.”

Can kefir, kimchi and kombucha restore a gracious harmony to our insides? Like many new food trends, claims for health benefits can be overblown [I’m looking at you, Hemsley sisters]. I asked Harry if the health lifestyle hype around fermentation bothered him. He says, “I think that’s fine. It’s just the way it goes”.

“Anything that you hand over to marketers they’re going to ruin in a way, or present an image of the kind of people that should be fermenting.”

There’s a strong DIY aspect to fermenting, you kind of have to figure it out by experimentation and get in with your local starter culture dealer to score your SCOBY or your kefir grains. It’s a little bit clandestine.

Like any scene, proprietorial elements can creep in. In many ways it’s a strong and supportive community but as with any slightly esoteric knowledge, some people are more generous than others. Harry says, “The internet is full of really nice people but there are also some people who maybe aren’t that happy to share their knowledge”. He thinks the wholesome earth mother associations can lead people to take fermentation a bit too seriously.

“There’s a lifestyle around it and I think that can be prohibitive. There’s a smugness. I’m not really into that.”

If you want to try, don’t let the mystification or the moralising put you off. It’s true, water kefir is tricky enough to manage, and sourdough is also pretty needy. But I can attest to the resilience of milk kefir, as my wellneglected grains continue to multiply in spite of pretty poor parenting skills on my part.

Finally, while Harry takes a more easy-going approach than some, he does say fermenting requires a bit of self-sufficiency.

“If you are someone who relies very much on recipes and if you aren’t able to stray from that, it might not be the best thing for you yet.”

So why not grow your own?

Lacto-fermentation requires not much more than a jar and some salt and starter cultures, which can be tracked down fairly easily on the black market. Trust us; your gut will thank you. And hey, if the prospect of doing it yourself gives you the heebie jeebies, drop into Fumbally for a sample of the good stuff.

headstuff.org/with-relish thefumbally.ie