The Essential Book of Fermentation (45 page)

Juice of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon crushed or ground coriander

1 clove garlic, mashed through a garlic press

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

½ cup filtered or spring water

In a small bowl, mix all the ingredients well and pour into a zip-top freezer bag. Add the tempeh and zip the top closed.

OPTIONS:
Here’s a chance to get creative. Sake, barbecue sauce, mustard, lemongrass, ginger, tamarind sauce, rice vinegar—all these and more can be used to flavor tempeh. Be selective and restrained.

Natto

Natto—a Japanese fermented soybean—is an acquired taste, to say the least. Jennifer Harris introduced me to it by saying, “You want to try something really nasty? It’s sticky and stringy and smells weird, but I love it.” I reasoned that some really stinky cheeses like Esrom, Limburger, and Roquefort are among my favorites, so I gingerly tried a few of the fermented beans. The flavor wasn’t as strong as the odor, but the texture of the beans’ sticky, stringy surface was off-putting. Yet the more I learn about natto, and how it’s been favored in Japan for at least two thousand years, the more intrigued I am.

The microbe that turns soybeans into natto is
Bacillus subtilis
—a soil bacteria by nature that can persist through extremes of environmental hardships. It withstands the heat of cooking, drought, high salinity, extreme pHs, radiation, and solvents. Studies over the past century have shown that it can strongly stimulate the immune system and encourage the production of white blood cells, and it figures in the production of substances toxic to cancer cells. From World War II on, the bacteria was marketed in America and Europe as a remedy for intestinal and urinary tract infections, until cheap antibiotics came into use. The difference was that
B. subtilis
didn’t wipe out the gut’s ecosystem the way antibiotics do. But most people weren’t thinking about the state of their intestinal flora in the second half of the twentieth century. Today we are, and hence the resurgence of interest in natto, not only as a remedy for illness, but as a very healthful food. Natto contains high quantities of vitamin K and vitamin B
₁₂
. Vitamin K is much more than an aid to blood coagulation. It has many important effects in the body, including strengthening bone structure. There are several variant forms of vitamin K, but the most healthful is vitamin K
₂
—menaquinone—and that’s the variant found in natto—up to ten times the concentration found in spinach and other leafy green vegetables. Vitamin B
₁₂
, found in meat, is hard to come by in vegetarian and vegan diets, so natto may be an important source of this essential vitamin. B
₁₂
is involved in the normal functioning of the brain and nervous system and in the formation of blood. It’s also involved in the metabolism of every cell of the body, especially affecting DNA synthesis and regulation but also essential fatty acid synthesis and energy production.

It’s possible to make natto at home. I’d advise looking for a source of commercially made natto in a health food store or Japanese market and try it to see if you’re intrigued enough to make a batch. If you are, you can use a few tablespoons of the commercial natto to start your own ferment, find spores at alternative pharmacies, or order spores of the bacillus from www.culturesforhealth.com.

As with winemaking, cleanliness is important so that your soybeans are colonized by
B. subtilis
and not other, opportunistic, bacteria. Sterilize your utensils for ten minutes in a boiling water bath. You’ll need a food thermometer (sterilize it by wiping it down with alcohol rather than boiling it, then wiping off the alcohol with a clean paper towel), a stainless-steel or enameled cooking pot, a Pyrex or ceramic casserole dish, a colander, and some kind of enclosed or insulated space that you can keep warm, such as an oven or a picnic cooler. A lightbulb will provide enough warmth, but make sure the space is roomy enough that the hot bulb doesn’t touch the sides. Note that the process takes several days.

Makes about 2 quarts of natto

1 pound small organic dried soybeans

2 to 3 tablespoons sterilized (boiled and cooled) water Pinch
B. subtilis
powder or 2 tablespoons commercial natto ¼ teaspoon sea salt or pickling salt

2 teaspoons Sucanat (whole cane sugar)

1.
Wash the soybeans well, then soak them for 24 hours in four times their volume of water. Drain them and rinse them well. Cook in a pressure cooker using your heaviest weight for 30 to 40 minutes or boil them gently for 4 to 6 hours. The soybeans are done when they can be easily and thoroughly squished between thumb and forefinger.

2
Mix the sterilized and cooled water with the natto powder or commercial natto, salt, and Sucanat. Stir together to incorporate.

3.
Drain the soybeans and spread them evenly in the casserole dish, then sprinkle the beans evenly with the natto mixture.

4.
Cover the casserole dish with aluminum foil. Poke three or four holes in the foil with a knife to allow air in and out. If no air can exchange, the natto will become very strong smelling. Allowing too much air will allow the beans to dry out and the natto bacilli will stop working. You have to maintain humidity in the casserole dish.

5.
Place a lamp without its shade with a regular 100-watt incandescent lightbulb in the oven. Don’t turn on the oven—the lightbulb will provide heat. Set an oven thermometer and a moist kitchen towel on a rack away from the lightbulb. Then place your casserole with the natto in the oven. Maintain the temperature at 100ºF and maintain humidity by an occasional spray of distilled water—just a quick spritz away from the lamp onto the moist towel. Maintain the heat and humidity for 24 hours.

6.
After 24 hours, remove the foil and stir the beans. If the bacilli did its job, the beans will become a bit sticky and stringy. It should not smell or taste sour. Place the beans in a covered container in the fridge for a few days. If all appears well, try some. Use a few for the next batch. For longer storage, natto fermented soybeans freeze well.

7.
If the beans have soured or you see mold growing, discard the batch and start over. Like any fermented product, some batches will be better than others. Be scrupulously clean, and chances are, your next batch will be fine.

CHAPTER 15

Fermented Beverages

Water Kefir

Water kefir grains

Milk kefir grains look like cauliflower and metabolize the lactose in milk, but there is another, closely related, symbiotic combination of bacteria and yeast that works in sweetened water. Folks who can’t tolerate any kind of milk products, vegans, or others who want to avoid milk can get the benefits of kefir from these water kefir grains. Many of the bacteria and yeast in water kefir grains are the same microbes that inhabit milk kefir grains, but they have adapted to use sucrose and maltose rather than lactose as an energy source. It’s possible to wash either type of grain and use it in the other type of kefir, but it may take a while and several batches before the microbes that utilize the new kind of sugar proliferate enough to give the grains real fermenting proficiency in their new surroundings. You’ll get a faster water kefir ferment if you start with water kefir grains, either from a friend or your local Fermenters Club, or bought from www.culturesforhealth.com.

For water kefir, I dissolve a couple of tablespoons of Sucanat—natural and organic cane sugar—in 2 or 3 cups of water and add this to a quart jar holding the water kefir grains, which are small, translucent lumps. I add half an organic lemon to give the water kefir a nice citrusy flavor. You can also use just lemon juice or a piece of dried fruit, as long as it’s unsulfured. The water kefir sits covered like the milk kefir with paper toweling held tight with a canning lid band in the cupboard next to the milk kefir. After 2 days, or 3 days at most, I drain off the water kefir and store it in the fridge. Now I discard the lemon or dried fruit, then prepare a new batch with the same grains. These grains also reproduce, and, like the milk kefir, extra grains can be frozen. In fact, they reproduce quite easily. When I first got my water kefir grains, they measured about ¼ cup of the translucent blobs. I’ve already frozen two freezer bags’ worth, and the grains in the fermenting quart jar now fill the jar half full—about a pint of grains. It’s time to freeze at least half of them.

If you want a particular flavor of water kefir—say black raspberry—cook the berries on the stove gently, until the juice runs, then strain and catch the free juice. Allow this to cool to room temperature and add it to the kefir in the fridge. If you want to have it fizzy, don’t put it in the fridge, but cover it with a jar lid screwed down tight with a band and let it sit on the kitchen counter for another day or three, depending on the ambient temperature in your kitchen. The higher the temperature, the faster it will become fizzy. When bubbles have formed, return the jar to the fridge. Besides rendered berry juice, you can add other fruit and herb flavorings by pressing the juice from cherries, grapes, melons, or citrus, or put in grated ginger tied into a cheesecloth bag or a bouquet of mint leaves tied by the stems. Drink this up within a few days because you’ll have more water kefir coming and because fresh fruit juices have a relatively short shelf life.