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We had a fun and informative visit in Yunlin Count

We had a fun and informative visit in Yunlin County, Taiwan with a young woman named Jenny and her family, members of the Douliu Bamboo Production Cooperative. They harvest bamboo shoots, and ferment different parts of them in different ways. The two styles we learned about were dried fermented bamboo shoots made from the tender tips, and a fermented seasoning (jiang) made from the fatter, fleshier part. After harvesting and showing us how they ferment the bamboo shoots, they served us a gorgeous meal, with bamboo shoots in every dish, served on and in bamboo, in a bamboo hut that looked like a bamboo shoot. Full thematic consistency!

We were there at the end of the season, and Jenny found a few shoots still tender enough to harvest, by listening to the sound from hitting the shoots with her cutting tool. Her father deftly removed the fibrous outer layers and the tough joints, and separated the tips from the fleshier parts.

The tender bamboo tips are split in half and boiled in water for an hour. Then they are drained and pressed under a heavy weight to ferment, with no salt or added water, for at least 2 months. Jenny says the longer it ferments, the better it tastes. After fermentation, the bamboo shoots are dried in the sun for 3 or 4 days, leaving them extremely shelf stable. They must be soaked in water before using, and are often braised in soy sauce and cooked with pork.

The bigger, fatter pieces of the bamboo shoot stalks are salted raw with 20% salt (by weight) and no water, then heavily weighted and fermented for 2 months. After fermentation, these can be sliced for use in stir-fries, or further fermented into jiang, a fermented seasoning.

Jenny showed us how to ferment the jiang. We arranged pieces of the salty fermented bamboo shoots in jars, leaving a cylindrical space in the center of each jar. Then we added 2 big spoonfuls of a soy koji and sugar mix into the center of each jar. The ratio of the mix was 3 parts soy koji to 7 parts sugar. Then the jars were filled with lightly distilled (20%) mijiu (rice alcohol), to ferment for a year. Similar techniques are used here in Taiwan to ferment jiang from tofu, pineapple, winter melon, and more.

We learned how to make fu cai, partially dried hea

We learned how to make fu cai, partially dried heads of mustard greens, when we visited James's farm in Miaoli, Taiwan, where we toured his big field of geh cai, a heading variety of mustard greens, and saw his family making fu cai with them. After wilting the whole heads in the sun and an initial one-week brining in a 6% brine, the heads are removed from the brine (which is discarded), cut open at the core to expose the center, shaken to remove as much liquid as possible, and sun-dried on straw for day. Then they are stacked in a wide open vessel, with an additional 3% salt, and heavily weighted for about 5 days. Then the heads are removed from the vessel and spread on fresh straw for another day in the sun, and the brine is discarded. After a day of drying, the heads are restacked again, with another 3% salt, and weighted for another 5 days. After three or sometimes four repetitions of the fermenting and drying process, the shrunken mustard green heads are packed (without additional salt), and compressed (by standing on them) into a sealable vessel (we saw this in a plastic barrel lined with a big plastic bag). The vessel is turned upside down for the heads to ferment for at least 2 months, and up to 2-3 years.

There are so many different types of pickled veget

There are so many different types of pickled vegetables here in Taiwan. It's taken me a while (with some tutoring from @paopopnpickles and @marajaneking) to understand the distinctions among them, which can be somewhat blurry, and sometimes very regional. After my travels in China in 2016, and in my book Fermentation Journeys, I wrote about pao cai, which is fermented (or sometimes vinegar pickled) vegetables, typically eaten raw. In an earlier post I wrote about cai bo, aged daikon radishes. We've also been learning about suan cai, fu cai, and mei gan cai.

Suan cai (photos 1 and 2) is the most straightforward style, simply brined vegetables. James, a Hakka farmer we spent an afternoon with in Miaoli, covers his mustard greens with a 6% brine. Jane, who makes literally tons of nappa cabbage suan cai for use in her hot pot restaurant in Tainan, dry salts the cabbage at 1-1.5%, backslops with about 5% juice from a previous batch, and adds a special ingredient: sorghum grain leftover from fermenting sorghum wine and vinegar. She heavily weights the cabbages to force juice out. Suan cai can be made with a variety of vegetables, though sometimes different suan cai vegetables have different names.

Fu cai (photo 3) starts like suan cai but then is partially dried. In my next post, I'll detail James's method that we saw at his place in Miaoli.

Mei gan cai (photos 4 and 5) is dried fermented mustard green leaves, first fermented like suan cai, then dried enough that it can be preserved for years. Mei gan cai needs to be soaked and rinsed before use. Typically it is cooked with meat, and very delicious!

On our fermentation tour of Taiwan, we have visite

On our fermentation tour of Taiwan, we have visited two different small artisan producers of Taiwan's distinctive black soybean soy sauce, Royal Jade @lafite.jane in Pindong and Yu-Ding-Shing @yds_amberiver in Yunlin. Each of them is making a number of different styles, each style with a distinctive character, and all very delicious. Most of the supermarket soy sauce here, as in the U.S., contains additives such as MSG, coloring, and artificial flavorings to keep prices low. Traditional soy sauce takes time, and in our contemporary world, time is money.

Royal Jade grows their own soybeans, and has a small laboratory set up, to produce their own starters. They are producing some Japanese-style shoyu, using yellow soybeans and wheat, along with Taiwanese-style soy sauce using black soybeans and no wheat.

The biggest surprise to me at both places was that they grow their qu/koji for the Taiwanese style soy sauce for up to a full week, until the beans are completely sporulated.

One distinctive style of soy sauce at both places is from the bottom of the fermentation vat, richer and saltier than the soy sauce from higher up.

At Yu-Ding-Shing, they are making soy sauces that incorporate fruit: some with pineapple and some with kiwi. They cook their soy sauces at the end of fermentation over wood-fire, contributing more distinctive traditional aromatics to the sauce.

All soy sauce is not the same. Tasting so many different styles side by side illuminated how varied the flavors and textures can be.

Scenes from a pickle stall. At Chiayi East Market,

Scenes from a pickle stall. At Chiayi East Market, we met Mrs. Wu, a third-generation pickle-maker and vendor, whose family has sold pickles there for 80 years. She kept giving us tastes of her varied, tasty pickles, between her steady stream of other customers. Whole cabbages, bamboo shoots, long beans, mustard greens, cucumber-like squash, celtuce, radishes, different styles of fermentation and different lengths of time. Our friend Dennial observed that most of Mrs. Wu's customers are older, and he fears that younger Taiwanese people are losing the taste for all these pickles.

We spent a very memorable afternoon in Yu Le Count

We spent a very memorable afternoon in Yu Le County, Taiwan, visiting with Vika Cina and her daughter Ibu, of the Bunun indigenous group. We harvested vegetables from their garden, and they showed us how they ferment them into a pickle they call lat ah, and then they made us a lunch that was one of the best meals we have eaten on our trip.

They translated "lat ah" for us as "pounded raw spicy vegetables." The bulk of the pickle was mustard greens, and they said they sometimes use radish greens instead. They harvest the entire above-ground portion of the plants, with the base to hold them together. They hang the greens in the sun for a day to wilt before making the pickles.

The greens, seasonings, and other ingredients are all pounded together in a big wooden mortar, using a big wooden pestle. They added the ingredients to the mortar in the following order, pounding each to crush it a bit before adding the next:
1. Ginger roots with skins
2. Garlic cloves
3. Chilis
4. Wilted mustard greens, added as handfuls of whole wilted plants
5. Cilantro
6. Seeds of Chinese sumac, which are gently sour, and a little salty
7. Douchi, fermented whole soybeans
8. Salt
They do not follow any fixed proportions, but they are quite generous with the seasonings.

We helped pound the vegetables and seasonings until they were juicy and well-smashed together, and the mustard greens developed a dark green color.

Then Vika Cina transferred the vegetables to a narrow-neck vessel, and we pounded more. After a few batches they were all pounded, and she covered it all with some water in which sticky millet had been cooked. She pressed down to get the vegetables and seasonings submerged under the millet water, then sealed the vessel by elegantly tying a leaf around the top. Lat ah is a relatively short-term pickle, fermented for one day to one week, then refrigerated (buried in the earth for preservation in the old days).

The lat ah we ate was chopped before serving. It was zesty and lovely, with a firm texture and bright flavor.

The lunch they shared featured millet cooked into a delicious paste, hibiscus, squash, corn, sweet potatoes, winged beans, peanuts, pork, and more. A feast!

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