Fermenting Experiments
Last year, when we could travel the world freely, we found ourselves spending a week on this amazing and super well organized sustainability education center called Rancho Mastatal.
Check it out here, it was really inspiring for us and I'm sure it will be for a whole lot of you too: https://steempeak.com/permaculture/@senorcoconut/costa-rica-let-s-visit-a-sustainability-education-center
One of their main subject in sustainability is food, growing it through agro-forestry, permaculture and experimenting with all kinds of different ferments, both for conservation and health.
So as you could imagine, every meal was served with a choice of two or three fermented yumny goodness to pick from and that was when I got hooked.
Experimentation time!
I had had kimchi and sauerkraut before but there was also a very familiar taste in lacto-fermentation, something I still can't put my finger on but I know that I know it. Maybe it was something my grandmothers use to make.
So I had a few tries with simple cabbag, carrot and cauliflower ferments and I eventually got it just about right. The next problem to tackle was to not eat it all before starting another batch...
With this pandemic I decided to make more of it, more often. So, right now we have one in the fridge, a small jar of radishes going, a big jar of daikan radishes going and I finally tried a kimchi... courtesy of 
I used what we had on hand and so the recipe has been properly butchered but hey, it is an experiment and we're in the middle of an apocalypse!
We had a red cabbage, and I chopped it smaller than I should have, and as for scallions, I went out in the woods to get them ('tis the season).
We had an old piece of ginger that was just enough a bit of garlic and instead of fish sauce (wich I wish we had... I love the stuff!) I used Bragg's Amino acids, a soy sauce substitute made from soy. I'm not sure how the stuff isn't soy sauce, do you?
Probably not the best julian job, but I think that'll work 😁.
A couple hours later I mixed it all up by hand, the paste, the veggies and put it in a large jar.
Haha, doesn't look at all like kimchi but it smells really nice. I can't wait to try it.
Thank you for the recipe @Artemislives I will try again with the right ingredients eventually!
What has your experiences been like in your fermentation journey? I would love to hear from you.