Meeting Minutes
Torch Club of the Fox Valley
9 May 2019
Touchmark
Notes taken by: Mary Flanagan
Attendees: Karen Bachhuber, Sue Bennett, Nancy Bodway, Brian Bushaw, Dave Debbink, Marcia Debbink, Mary Flanagan, Paul Freiberg, Erik Hanson, Jean Jepson, Barbara Kelly, Bill Kelly, Jude Kuenn, Mary Poulson, Richard Schoenbohm, Jan Smith, Kris Stahl, Bob Swain, Peter Thiel, Scott Valitchka, Donna Weis
Guests: Lisa Campbell and Mark Thiel
BUSINESS MEETING
Paul called the meeting called to order at 5:58 pm.
The 4/11/2019 meeting minutes were motioned, seconded, and approved.
Treasurer’s report: Barb reported that as of 5/2/2019 we have $2858.88 in the account after reimbursing Donna $200 for her attendance at the IATC conference last year. The report was motioned, seconded, and accepted.
Unfinished business:
1. Bill passed around a signup sheet for next year’s presentations.
2. Jude reported that an email survey will be sent to members asking for their date preferences between July 13 and July 27 for the magical mystery tour they are organizing.
3. Paul asked members to suggest other possible venues for our meetings. We know we can get Wilders. Stone Toad is affordable but does not have availability on Thursdays. Pullman and other venues want a guarantee of spending way over what the club would ordinarily spend. Fox Valley Technical College was suggested again, but the distance needed to walk to the room might be too much. Richard suggested we use Touchmark again for our next meeting and then decide if we need to try other venues. Barb suggested we have the tables rearranged next time to provide a better discussion format. Barb also mentioned that one of the cons for holding it at Touchmark was the ability to recruit younger members.
4. The Appleton Library recommended 10 to 12 books based on the topics that Lisa and Peter recommended for Helen Thiel’s memorial from the Torch Club. Barb said they will contain our usual book plate and we will be able to see them at our next meeting.
New business:
1. Barb said that Leotta Esther, one of the founding members of the Fox Valley Torch Club has invited her to bring a group up to her cottage near Princeton in July.
Announcements:
The summer party at the Kelly’s house and garden will be on August 8.
Brian announced that the 2019 Senior Art Show opening reception at the Wriston Art Galleries at Lawrence University will be on May 24 at 6 pm. This is the first time that 100% of the artists exhibiting are women.
Jan announced that the current exhibit at the Bergstom Mahler Museum of Glass is “Reflecting Perspectives: Artists Confront Issues of Diversity and Inclusion.” The exhibit includes pieces by artists that deal with social issues through their work. It features the Lynched Tree by Joyce Scott. She received a MacArthur Genius Award and will be speaking at Lawrence in September. A fund raising event will be held featuring a dinner prepared by both a Native-American and an African-American chef. There will also be wine tasting and classical guitar.
The business meeting was adjourned at 6:24.
PRESENTATION
At 7:01 Brian presented:
A Few (Million) of my Favorite Things: Fermentation in our Food
I should preface this all with the fact, as you are all aware, that I am not a dietician, I am not a scientist, and I am not a professional chef. I fancy myself more of a gourmand which is a fancy word for a chubby drunk. Claude Reins’ Captain Renault would suggest that makes me a “citizen of the world.” I cannot vouch for the health benefits I’ve researched or say that I have specifically encountered any perceivable benefits from making or eating fermented foods and drinks, but I can say I’m a pretty happy person and eating and drinking are my favorite things to do that I will talk about in mixed company.
How many of you had wine or beer with dinner? Presumably—and this is anecdotal—when we talk about fermentation people will first think of beer, maybe wine, and there is nothing wrong with that. Slainte! If I’m being honest, until six or seven years ago that is probably all I would have thought of…well, except for gin…clearest of the clear…God how I love it. Beth and I owe the beginning of our relationship to the false courage of that clear botanical spirit and what we lovingly call our “gincident.”
But I digress.
Until six or seven years ago, maybe ten, the notion of fermentation as anything other than an abstract concept meant nothing to me. Then I got a cookbook called “Momofuku.” Momofuku was and is the flagship restaurant of a Korean American Chef in New York City named David Chang. It is a fancy noodle bar and it’s the best. One of the first recipes we made from it was homemade kimchi. I loved it. It was spicy, garlicky, funky, and all the rest. I was not making it right, but I LOVED it. I became obsessed with Korean food for a while (this is a common problem for me—combustible passions that fade when something new comes along). I still love it, it’s just not the ONLY thing I want to eat. Well, maybe.
I want to see a show of hands: how many of you pickles in your fridge? Bread in the pantry? Cheese, yogurt, sour cream, salami, vinegar, soy sauce, chocolate, coffee? How many of those things do you think of as products of fermentation? Thinking about some of those items, they are borne of ancient rituals that humans have been performing since the dawn of history, but we have largely relegated them to factory production.
As I said, I love wine and beer. Love them. I’ve tried my hand at making both. I’ve worked in the industry of selling and promoting both, but I really want to focus on food today. In this context, fermentation is the transformation of food by various bacteria, fungi, and the enzymes they produce. To that end, it is a transformation in which sugars are converted into acids, gases, and sometimes alcohol, transforming raw or cooked foods into a more preserved state and giving them complex, unique flavors. Like most other things, this brilliant “discovery” was born of necessity. Refrigeration, pasteurization, and other means of preserving were not around.
I’m going to address this particular fermented food in a minute or two here, but thinking about Korea, from whence Kimchi originates. Korea is part of northeast Asia, and the winters can be quite brutal. As the land is mountainous with few fertile plains, food preservation is incredibly important. Early Koreans ate salted vegetables in order to aid in the digestion of grains, as grains back then consisted only of barley and millet. Preservation became something of an art that was not only limited to pickles, but all sorts of vegetables.
We’ll get to this in more detail later, but I want you to think about what raw cabbage or cooked cabbage tastes like, and then I want you to think of the buzzy zing of fresh sauerkraut or kimchi (if you are familiar with it) when you put them in your mouth. Completely different animals, all wonderful, but the complexity of those fermented foods makes them almost unrecognizable as their original elements.
Likely you know how beer or wine are made, the fermentation process involves yeast (be they wild [as in lambic beers or natural wines] or introduced by the producer) consuming the sugars in the malts and grape juice, and creating alcohol as their “waste.” With regard the the fermentation of food, at least those I’m going to talk about, we’re going to discuss wild fermentation rather than fermentation by inoculation. Inoculation is essentially the introduction of yeast to kickstart the fermentation process rather than allowing the food/beverage to be fermented by wild yeasts and the natural flora present on the vegetable/fruit/grain.
KRAUT CHI
A very basic (not easy, but a basis) concept here is Lacto-Fermentation. Lacto-fermentation refers to food fermentation using lactic acid bacteria, thus it applies to most all vegetable and dairy ferments. Lactobacillus is a salt loving organism that thrives on the brine created by salted vegetables. Common Lacto fermented foods are things like kosher dill (aka Sour) pickles, sauerkraut, and kimchi. These ferments are anaerobic—they are made without exposure to oxygen. They are submerged in a brine and the Lactobacillus feeds on the salt brine and ferments the veg. The salinity of the brine kills off the harmful bacteria that allows the fermentation to occur without the food actually rotting.
I want to focus a bit on Kimchi because its history is so lengthy and has evolved such that though we think of a particular type—the Napa Cabbage or Baechu Kimchi—but it can, and has historically been made of different vegetables and included different flavor enhancers.
(57 B.C.E. – 668 C.E.)
Although early Koreans were quite good at making fermented foods, the earliest kimchis were much different than how they are today. There wasn’t any red pepper, as it had not yet been imported from the Americas. Cabbage was not often used, and most kimchis were radishes dipped in paste or salted in brine.
(918 – 1392)
As new vegetables were brought into Korea, preservation methods diversified to pine mushrooms, large radishes, cucumbers, leeks, Indian mustard leaf, bamboo shoots, and the famous Chinese cabbage. The poet Lee Kyu-bo wrote the earliest known record about kimchi during this time: “Preserved in soybean paste, kimchi tastes good in the summer. Whereas kimchi pickled in brine is served as a good side dish during the winter. When the root of the Chinese cabbage grows larger in the ground, it tastes like a pear, especially after the first frost in the autumn harvest season.”
(1392-1910)
Kimchi continued to rapidly expand during Korea’s most stable dynasty (Joseon). It was also around this time that chile peppers and sweet potatoes were introduced to the art of kimchi, totally changing the fermentation methods and appearance of the dish. Clever cooks also began adding animal proteins such as pheasant and fermented fish (many recipes call for the addition of brine shrimp to encourage the fermentation process as well). The kimchi most people are familiar with, called Tongbaechu kimchi, was invented after 1800 C.E., and quickly became the most popular style. There were 92 different types of kimchi by 1827. Today, there are over 200.
Thinking about kimchi—often made of cabbage—might cause one to consider Sauerkraut. Sandor Katz, who is something of the American prophet of the “Culture of Cultures,” calls the lacto-fermentation process the “kraut chi” process. Sauerkraut and kimchi are largely the same thing with different ingredients. While sauerkraut is German for “sour cabbage” it is mistakenly assumed to be German in origin. It is not. While there is a history of sauerkraut making in Alsace that goes back quite a ways, the origins are actually born in Asia. Some believe kraut was brought to Europe by Genghis Kahn, others believe it was a dish of the Tatars (contemporaries of GK) brought to Europe sometime in the 13th century. Either way—the process is the same, vegetables are brined and aged anaerobically with added spices such as caraway, or other fruits and vegetables like apples, onions, peppers, or beets.
Lacto ferments will not only last in a shelf stable manner for months, they will—depending on your point of view—improve over time. The flavors will become more concentrated, more complex, and funkier.
In a bit I’m going to make you all some kimchi, and it will be tasty now. It will be tasty tomorrow and the next day. But it will be awesome in about two weeks.
One more note on this: lacto fermentation is not going to produce McDonalds style foods. It will not taste the same every time. The reason for that is that from vegetable to vegetable and from batch to batch, you will encounter different flora and the lactobacillus will respond a little differently. A common practice for people who are really pleased with a particular batch of kraut chi is called “backslopping.” Backslopping is a process, not unlike a sourdough starter, where you save and reuse brine from a prior batch. It not only contributes flavor, but is obviously a live ferment kickstarter in and of itself.
SCOBY
Have you ever heard of “Mushroom Tea?” I have no idea where I heard of mushroom tea, but when Kombucha became widely available in co-ops and fancy grocery stores fifteen or so years ago (I’m sure it was decades ago in the natural food stores and old hippy co-ops, but anyway), I identified it as “mushroom tea” and I have no idea why. I’m from a factory town in Northern Illinois, my parents grew up there, they were not hippies, they’re total squares. Nonetheless, so pervasive is this idea that I knew that phrase. Between 2008 and 2009, Kombucha sales in the US quadrupled from $80M to $320M. Kombucha is sweet tea. It is then fermented into a sour tonic beverage sometimes compared to sparkling apple cider. Typically, this is produced by a SCOBY (also known as a mother). SCOBY is a “Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast.”
In the kraut chi method, we rely upon bacteria that are present in cabbage and other vegetables. For SCOBY we introduce a ferment—we are “culturing.” Certain fermentation starters have evolved into distinct biological forms that reproduce themselves as cohesive communities.
SCOBY doesn’t smell and works by digesting the sugar into chemicals (organic acids to be exact) such as glucuronic, gluconic, lactic, acetic, butyric, malic and usnic acid (haven’t heard of most of them); creating vitamins, particularly vitamins B & C; as well as some assorted amino acids, enzymes and of course, the SCOBY itself is a probiotic organism, a living zoogleal mat.
It does create trace amounts of alcohol 000002%. But mostly what it does is create a funky, zippy, lightly fizzy sweet tea.
MY LATEST OBSESSION
Last Fall, Beth and I attended Fermentation Fest in Reedsburg. I cannot recommend this highly enough. For your information, Fermentation Fest occurs annually over consecutive weekends in October. It would be an excellent idea for a future magical mystery tour for our social committee to consider. The weekend consists of classes and workshops, a few meals, and other activities involving fermented food and beverage. In 2017 we attended a Kimchi making workshop (more on that in a few minutes) that has totally changed our process. There are breadmaking classes, pretzel making, cooking with beer, kimchi, cheese courses (no pun intended), and FERMENTED HOT SAUCE making.
What?
All varieties of hot peppers may be preserved by fermentation. Chop them, add salt (about 2% by weight), and add whatever other flavors you might like—fruit (added sugar for the ferment), garlic, other veggies, etc, and you leave them alone for six weeks or so. That is the beauty of a lot of fermentation—doing nothing. I can drink a lot of beer while I’m fermenting hot sauce, making Kombucha, or the like.
THE CULTURE OF CULTURE
As I previously mentioned, I have a tendency to go all in on something and then focus my attention on something else to the neglect of whatever it was before. As a result, I’m usually reading 3-7 books at a time (which is immensely frustrating to my wife, so I hide some books at my office), working on three projects that all remain unfinished, etc. This is something she’s joined me in.
As the homesteader movement has gained popularity with the hipster millennials (see home beekeeping, pop-up restaurants, DIY culture, etc), preserving has gained a lot of steam and particularly things like smoking and at-home fermenting. It started with the rise of the craft beer movement and has expanded to other areas like home wine making, people distill their own booze, and many have begun various other ferments. The availability of ceramic crocks and weights at your local Ace Hardware and at Amazon.com should be evidence enough of the same.
An anecdote: I went to Minneapolis in November 2017 because Beth wanted to go to an opening and conference at the Walker Museum of art. We planned a few meals around it, but weren’t sure of our schedule regarding how long we’d be at the museum so we stopped to get a snack at the local grocery co-op “The Wedge.” While there I happened upon a cheese I really like and we had a party coming up so I wanted to get some. We each grabbed a kombucha and some thing else, I do not remember what. The cashier said, “Oh, you guys like fermented stuff…” and suggested we check out a place called Gyst. Gyst is a female-owned, female run, female operated “Fermentation Bar” in Minneapolis. They serve kombucha on tap, natural wines, sausages, breads, you can do BRINE SHOTS. It’s super awesome. Gyst is the olde English for yeast By the way. Best of all, they have a sandwich lovingly named for the aforementioned Sandor Katz that is peanut butter and kimchi. It’s delicious.
Then there is the FF in Reedsburg. Rookies, curious folks, geeks, etc. Everything has its geek. The Farm Art Detour is in alternate years (even numbered).
There are folks driving around the country, like Tara Whitsitt, who are simply preaching the gospel of fermentation. She owns a bus and drives around with her vinegars, wines, kombuchas and more offering classes, workshops, etc. I met her at the FF last year and took a look at the bus.
So, I made some kimchi for you all. Well, I started to make some. I’m going to finish it now.
Meeting adjourned at 7:54.