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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!

Selfie in the qu (koji) room at the TTL kaoliang (

Selfie in the qu (koji) room at the TTL kaoliang (sorghum liquor) factory in Chiayi, Taiwan.

One preserved vegetable ferment that I keep encoun

One preserved vegetable ferment that I keep encountering here in Taiwan is cai bo, preserved daikon radishes.

At an epic lunch one of our first days in Taipei, at Shin Yeh, we were served a scrumptious and gorgeous "Three Generations" Radish Soup, featuring fresh daikon along with two-year-old cai bo, which was still white, and five-year-old cai bo, which time darkened to black.

Today, a farmer we met called his black eleven-year-old cai bo "black gold."

A few days ago we met an old guy, Chen Guan, who walked everywhere with bare feet, and explained to us the process he uses for making cai bo:

Wash freshly harvested radishes and sliced into thick strips.

Salt radish slices with 2-5% salt, pack them into a crock, and ferment overnight.

Dry the radishes in the sun for the day and discard any liquid in the crock.

That evening, repeat. Pack the radishes back into the crock for the night, then dry them further in the sun the next day, discarding any liquid.

In case of rain, keep radishes in the crock for the day, and add a little more salt.

Repeat this day-drying, night-packing a few times, until the radishes are pliable and flexible.

You can eat cai bo at this stage, or pack into a crock to age. According to Chen Guan, they can be aged for as long as 30 or 40 years!

We visited Tiyansu Pawtawan @tiyansu_pawtawan, a y

We visited Tiyansu Pawtawan @tiyansu_pawtawan, a young farmer of the Amis indigenous group in rural Taitung County in Taiwan. He showed us how he learned from his grandmother to make silaw, the Amis style of pork fermented with rice (which he grows). His silaw is delicious! Raw, its taste was reminiscent of cured ham. He also served us some smoked with hay, which was even tastier. He demonstrated the first step of the process, and described the subsequent steps he follows. Here is Tiyansu's silaw method:

1. Tiyansu was meticulous about sanitizing his hands, tools, and vessel, and even briefly torched the meat in an effort to destroy any rogue bacteria introduced during butchering and handling.

2. His family typically uses pork belly, but sometimes uses other cuts. Tiyansu says any cut can be used. He sliced the meat into pieces around 2cm/.75 inch thick, but said you could cut it to any size you like.

3. Salt meat. For 2.4 kilos of meat, he uses 300 grams of salt, 12.5%. Tiyansu massaged the salt into each piece of meat, until all the salt had dissolved into the meat. Place salted meat in a jar, pressing to eliminate air pockets, and leave for a week.

4. After a week, drain all the liquid that the salt has drawn from the meat. Soak and steam sticky rice. By volume, start with about 1/3 as much rice as meat. Once the rice is cooked, layer it with the meat in a vessel. Tiyansu does this while the rice is still warm, pressing down on each piece of meat to bring it into contact with the rice. When we asked about adding herbs, he said that his village traditionally does it with just rice, but that some other places use herbs as well.

5. Ferment the meat and rice for about a week, then store in the refrigerator. When I asked how they stored it pre-refrigeration, he said they kept it cool buried in the earth.

6. Enjoy silaw raw, or smoked, or cooked.

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one layer of radishes

Published September 22, 2013 at 407 × 576 in Takuan – the transformation of a radish.

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