During my visit to New York, I had the opportunity to visit the testing laboratory kitchen of chef David Chang of Momofuku fame. My guide was kitchen lab director Dan Felder, a fellow fermentation geek. They have teamed up with Harvard microbiologists and have even been publishing scholarly papers on some of their experiments. They are doing a few things I’ve never tried, seen, or heard of. The most exciting was making miso from nuts and seeds rather than just legumes.
I sampled the flavors pictured above, and loved their rich flavors. Pistachio miso was my favorite. The nut misos were low-salt sweet misos, fermented for just a short time to avoid the oils going rancid. I don’t have recipes to provide, but I share this as inspiration for fellow experimentalists.
Another innovative project I sampled was koji, simply dried in a dehydrator and ground into a powder. They were using it with salt as a curing agent for lardo, and as a seasoning for fish. Koji has a distinctive sweet flavor that could be used to season many different things.
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Hi.
I am loving your book “The Art of Fermentation”. I am from Puerto Rico and we have different fruits, roots and vegetables that I haven’t seen mentioned in the book. So, I would like to keep you posted whenever I get delicious results from this foods. Love to see passionate people. Keep the great work!!!!
Please let me know how your ferments go!
Your visit with Dan makes me wriggle with excitement –I hope you figure out how to make the pistachio miso. And show me. I mean us