The Center for Genomic Gastronomy

In September & October 2020, our studio conducted an internal master-class with Dr. Johnny Drain, guiding us through ways to further explore fermentation. We have been running separate experiments in our homes and our studios and below we will share the basic results here with you. Having members 6+ members of the Center for Genomic Gastronomy across the globe attending these workshops, we have been able to work with a wide variety of different raw materials for our fermentation experiments.

BITTER GOURDS, CHAYOTE & DRIED ANCHOVIES

Akash’s experimented with the local produce of Chennai had some exiting colors coming forth from the button mushrooms. After a few days the liquid turned a bright yellow color from the mushroom spores.

FIGS, PETINGA & LACINATO KALE

Working with different resources in our different parts of the world, we were keeping our eye out for what food resources were in abundance in the early autumn. Emma in Portugal experimented with figs, lacinato kale and brown button mushrooms that ended up in lacto-ferments and a surf & turf kimchi.

Experimenting with fermenting fish to garum, a months-long process, is not yet finished. In Portugal, you can go to streetmarkets where fresh ‘patinga’ (small fish) are auctioned off early in the morning among other resources. In ancient Greece and Rome, garum was a popular and widely used condiment, also referred to as liquamen.

Emmas fermented figs have been tasted and tried out as topping on pancakes with a dollop of yoghurt, and her mushroom fluids was turned into a tasty mayonnaise with recipe below.

Emmas’ Mushroom Mayonnaise:

• 1 egg (vegan: switch it out for ~45ml of aquafaba)
• 1 tbs lemon juice
• 2 tbs fluids of fermented mushrooms
• a splash of vinegar
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp mustard (optional)
• salt/pepper to taste

— blitz all and slowly add:

• ~3/4 cup olive oil (or until it reaches desired creamy consistency)

ROOTS, PLUMS & FORAGED MUSHROOMS

In Bergen, our studio members Cat and Zack, Pauliina and Eirin worked collectively and separately with fermenting abundance. They also experimented with making garum from locally sourced mackerel. Having an abundance in root-vegetables, they also worked with making vegan charcuterie, both with and without koji (Aspergillus oryzae).

Considering the cooking aspects of microbial experimenting, thinking and working with the texture and thickness of the different foods, we experienced how they reacted over time to the solutions we helped cook them in. The plums created a tasty liquid, but the flesh of the fruit broke down quite quickly, so we could consider how to texturally bring them to another level, maybe through dehydration, or simply as a purée.

We turned our vegan charcuterie drying process into a vegetable mobile twirling over our heads as we worked on our other projects, always reminding us of our microbial cooking to be eaten later.

Studio-member Eirin experimented with vegan charcuterie with carrots inoculated with koji-spores, a friendly fungi developed over centuries in cooking culture in Japan. Keeping the good development of the inoculation was a challenge in a hacked breeding environment, and the koji ended up sporulating earlier than anticipated. However, the carrots turned out to a tasty treat — the carrots texture could be described as that of a dried apricot, but not as sticky, salty and with striking licorice notes in both texture and taste.

NEXT STEPS

Each member of the Center will likely continue to experiment with fermentation in their home kitchens, and the one technique that is likely to be revisited in a more rigorous way is the vegan charcuterie (with Koji spores) that we will likely use for either our Pantry of Protein Futures research or the Meatigation project we are a part of in Norway.

ABOUT

At the end of September we ran an internal master class about fermentation with Dr. Johnny Drain as our guide. The goal of this workshop was for us to further explore fermentation,  using a genomic gastronomy lens and learn more about the possibilities of (genomic gastronomy x fermentation) by running our own fermentation experiment at home with guidance and advice from Johnny.

FOOD + BIO + ART

CGG is all about the art of food (gastronomy) + life sciences: but we have not had much time or domain expertise in fermentation / the MICROBIOME OF THE KITCHEN and this seemed like a good time to correct that.

Some implications of using a genomic gastronomy lens are:

1. Honing in on the biodiversity and biotechnologies that are entangled in contemporary and historical fermentation practices. 

2. Paying close attention to the abundance and distribution of particular species, cultivars and agro-ecosystems in the geographies we inhabit. 

3. Making connections across scales. From microbes to plants to land-use to planet. 

This was also an opportunity for each of the current members of the Center for Genomic Gastronomy to explore different interests and (since we are spread out across the world) to experiment with very different regional cuisines and produce. The goal is to explore our own local food offerings and come back together (virtually) to share what we’ve found…in particular, looking at what is grown / harvested in September that might be in excess. We imagine this as a “This is Not a Test (Kitchen)” follow-up workshop—an opportunity for us to meet together and share food and cooking (or fermenting) long-distance.

FERMENTED FOODS ARE THE NEON INKS OF PLANT-FORWARD FOOD

We also initiated this workshop to learn more about how fermentation can boost non-meat products and how fermentation processes (the science, labor, care, aesthetic and flavor) can add to the conversation around plant-based or plant-forward diets. Example: using KOJI to make vegan charcuterie.

Fermented foods and processes seem to be one way one can bring in unique, distinct and delicious flavors and textures to plant-based food, and move beyond the grey and brown veggie food of the 1960s + 1970s. I want fermentation to be the neon inks of our kitchen, lifting and brightening food design that might otherwise become dull and monotonous. 

In the next blog post we will write some notes and takeaways from the masterclass and the last post will include photographs our ferments and some recipes.

Today is the first day of an in-studio fermentation workshop which we will be running over the next 2 weeks. We have asked @drjohnnydrain to spend a couple of days with our studio updating our fermentation skills, questions and knowledge. Currently the Center for Genomic Gastronomy consists of 8 people in 6 countries! (+1 guest in Bergen, Norway for this workshop). Today we will be discussing disgust, the history of fermentation and the intensification of flavors. 

Every member of the studio was asked to list the fermented food products we have eaten in the last 7 days. (An interesting snapshot of taste and place). Here is what we guessed before the workshop began: 

AKASH (Chennai, India)

— Cheese

— Curd

— Dhokla

— Fermented Sundried Chillies

— Idly

— Pickle

CAT (Bergen, Norway) 

— Black Tea

— Coffee

— Douchi (Black Bean Sauce)

— Gouda Cheese

— Kombucha

— Kviteseidsmør (Norwegian cultured butter) 

— Sourdough Bread

— Soy Sauce

— Vinegar

— Wine

— Yoghurt

CONOR (Dublin, Ireland)

— “coming soon….”

EILEEN (Brighton, UK)

— Kimchi

— Kombucha

— Mozzarella

— Gouda cheese

— Sourdough bread

EIRIN (Bergen, Norway) 

— Cheddar

— Cottage cheese

— Kefir (Sourmilk) 

— Sourdough Bread

EMMA (Porto, Portugal) 

— Cheeses

— Chutney (?)

— Pickles

— Sourdough

— Soy Sauce

— vinegars

— Wines

— yogurt

LAURA (Portland, OR, USA)

— Cheddar and Parmesan Cheese

— Greek Yogurt

— Pickles

— Sourdough

— Vinegars

MYSTERY GUEST (Bergen, Norway)

— Lacto-fermented squash, cucumber, kale & apple

— Sour dough bread

— Tempeh

ZACK (Bergen, Norway) 

— Beer

— Black Tea

— Coffee

— Douchi (Black Bean Sauce)

— Gouda Cheese

— Kviteseidsmør (Norwegian cultured butter) 

— Sourdough Bread

— Soy Sauce

— Vinegar

— Yoghurt

#AdversarialFoodDesign

#AppropriateBiotechnology

#Bergen

#BiodiversityOfTheKitchen

#Brighton

#Chennai

#CulinaryBiodiversity

#DatabasesOfTaste

#DecadenceForAll

#Dhokla

#Disgust

#Dublin

#EnvironmentAsInterface

#Fermentation

#Food

#FoodHistory

#FoodDesign

#Idly

#IntentionalFoodCommunities

#Kviteseidsmør

#LactoFermentation

#MicrobiomeOfTheKitchen (an interesting article is here (.PDF) by pg. 22: “Good germs, Bad Germs — participatory ‘metagenomics’ of the domestic microbiome” by Carmen Mcleod + Jamie Lorimer

#Porto

#RecombinatorialCuisine

#SlowBiotechnology

#SocialBiotechnology

#Workshop

In June 2020, the Center for Genomic Gastronomy was asked by The Radical Futures Club For The Reorganization of Matter to contribute to their one day conference, taking place at various locations in Bergen, Norway.

Our contribution to the conference was a bespoke version of Guided Smog Smelling, which was held on a rooftop in the city center of Bergen—a city you would not normally consider prone to some of the worst air-pollution in Norway, and sometimes Europe.

We examined the history and seasonal variation of smog in this airshed, and the impact that COVID-19, fuel use, and changes in ocean use have on air pollution.

SMOG IN BERGEN

During both summer and winter, air pollution measuring stations from around Bergen show a substantial number of days with critically high air pollution levels. For example, in January of 2010 Bergen had the worst air pollution of any city in Europe.

Bergen has no significant industrial production located near the city, so it might be surprising that it would experience these high levels of air pollution at all.

According to research by NILU – The Norwegian Institute for Air Research, there are several contributors to the air pollution in Bergen. One way that air-pollution is measured is through the levels of particulate matter (PM₁₀ og PM_2,5) and nitrogendioxide (NOx), among others.

The main contributors to heightened levels of these particulates are:
— CARS: car-traffic that both release exhaust and wear down roads
— WOOD: wood-burning from non-clean-burning fireplaces
— SHIPS: and emissions from ships docked in the harbour.

Bergen has a complex topography with mountains surrounding the city on all sides, affect how air-pollution travels all year round.

WINTER SMOG

Meteorology also plays into the mix by way of inversion during the colder seasons. Inversion is a combination of cold weather and little to no wind. This leads to the winter-situation referred to by locals as the ‘poison-lid’. At times of inversion during wintertime, going to the top of Mt. Ulriken, (643 metres above sea-level) leads you above the lid, to clean air, the winter-sun and a particular view of the situation.

SUMMER SMOG (BERGEN HARBOR)

During summertime there is another aspect that adds to the air pollution in Bergen. In a normal year, during the summer season, cruise ships visit the city, bringing tourists and business to Bergen. Cruise ships built before 2000 have older fuel-burning technology installed. The likelihood is high that most cruise ships mooring in Bergen are burning high-sulphur bunker fuels, to keep the ships’ facilities running when moored.

The use of high-sulphur bunker fuel creates a summer version of the poison-lid phenomenon in Bergen air quality. The ability to supply shore power in Bergen, via an electrical cable you plug into your ship, has been economically delayed for years by lack of funding from the Norwegian national government.

The installation of three shorepower-stations ran behind schedule, but are set to be completed by the summer of 2020. Even more shorepower is set to be built in the coming years in world heritage sites like Flåm and Geiranger, further north up the coast where cruiseships moor in abundance.

GUIDED SMOG SMELLING: BERGEN HARBOR

Guided Smog Smelling uses the human sense of smell and taste to analyze air pollution and evaluate aeroir—the unique atmospheric taste of place. In addition to smelling with intention, we discussed the history and seasonal variation of smog in this airshed, and the impact that COVID-19, fuel use, and changes in ocean use have on air pollution. 

Guided Smog Smelling in Bergen this summer led us to the rooftops of a former coffee factory in C. Sundts gt. 55, with a view of Bergen harbor.

On the 2nd weekend of running the event there was a forest fire in Bergen that led to some particularly poor air quality. It could be smelled (and could even make one cough) across the southern half of the city.

“India’s pickle culture goes back thousands of years to when cucumbers and other vegetables were simply preserved in salt. Modern Indian pickles are more complex and probably more delicious, too — hot and tangy, deeply perfumed with aromatics and ground spices.”

— Tejal Rao for The New York Times

It all started when someone in the studio passed on the article “India’s ‘Pickle Queen’ Preserves Everything, Including the Past” from The New York Times, asked me to take a look into the book ‘Usha’s pickle digest’  by Usha Prabakaran that was mentioned in the article, and do some research into pickles. The article by Tejal Rao reveals the decades-long journey that Ms. Usha Prabakaran took to write the incredible book.

“The reason for writing the book was to ensure that the vast culinary heritage of this land stays on the map,” said Ms. Usha Prabakaran.

After reading the article I was really curious to check out a few cookbooks from my mom’s kitchen closet. After surfing through a few, I found a very interesting cookbook that belonged to my grandmother: ‘Samaithu Paar’ written by S.Meenakshi Ammal. The book was first published in 1951, about 60 years ago. It belonged to a time when recipes were passed on from one generation to another through practice. There weren’t many cookbooks then that documented recipes. It was pretty common in India for the bride to leave her house and move into her husband’s house. She brought with her the recipes that belonged to her family. At her new home she would get the opportunity to experiment and put it together with the new recipes and methods that her new household members would teach her. Thus, unique recipes were born that belonged to only one family. One bite could tell you who cooked the food that day.

The book ‘Samaithu Paar’ is a very important document not just for safeguarding the recipes, but also to understand the culinary scene of Tamil Nadu during the 1950s. Cookbooks don’t just give out recipes to people, but also serve as a repository for the future generations to take a peek into what their ancestors ate.

As I read through the old book, it triggered childhood memories of drying veggies on the terrace with my grandmother. Today we don’t dehydrate vegetables or pickle them as my grandmother did. There were a number of vegetables mentioned in the book which I had never heard of. My mom knew all of them, but didn’t know why we never cook with them anymore. 

I decided to check if the other families in my area were aware of the vegetables, and if they also didn’t cooked with them anymore. So I sent out a list of vegetables from the cookbook to all the houses in my neighborhood and asked them to choose the vegetables that they used more than twice in a week. I also asked them to give a reason why they did not use some of the vegetables mentioned in the list regularly. The results showed that the most used vegetables were not the traditional ones, mentioned repeatedly in the cookbook. Some of the neighbors had not even heard of the native vegetables before the survey.

The survey covered only a very small group of the population and cannot be used to theorize the results into insights or reasons. The only definite reading of the results is that the way we eat today is very different to how we ate 50 years ago. This is due to many complex factors, from changed farming practices to kitchen practices or even changed lifestyle choices.

The kitchen has changed, the cooking techniques have changed and the time spent preparing a meal has changed. The transfer of recipes between different households or different generations has reduced. A woman’s role in society has also changed a lot. Women are no longer tied to spending their time in the kitchen. In the words of my colleague, “The fact that women had the freedom to leave the kitchen is a great achievement in many respects”. Eventually, YouTube channels and recipe blogs have replaced mothers’ and mothers-in-laws’ recipe banks.

Change is inevitable. Humans have changed over so many years of growth and advancement along with their eating habits. In the process of changing, recipes and ingredients have reached new places and taken new twists. But at this point, we have to stop and question if the rapid changes and the globalization in the 21st century have made us skip a step. Recipes and ingredients are a reflection of a culture and local identity. But when globalization threatens the loss of local identity and its uniqueness, how do we hold on to it in these changed times?

Interestingly from the survey, most of the answers to the question on why they did not cook with some of the vegetables mentioned that the vegetables were not available in the market or that they were not aware of how to cook with them. None of them talked about having less time to cook or the difficulty of the process. In the past, we have let go of a number of traditions or even traditional recipes because they did not make sense anymore in these changing times. But in this case, my question is, were these vegetables or cooking techniques eliminated naturally by a change in society or were they influenced by external factors like the markets and social media? I do not have the answers right now.

To find answers to these questions I decided we needed to proceed with the research. If not, these cookbooks would just become repositories of forgotten foods from the past for the future generations. I believe in the survival of the fittest. The recipes and ingredients that we use today are here because they have survived the changes of the past. But in a time where the population is heavily influenced by social media and market changes, the old techniques and ingredients should be given a chance to fight for themselves.

I have started a campaign based on the cookbook “Samaithu paar”. I’m cooking 100 recipes from the book in 100 days. Cooking them and documenting the process would help me understand the challenges faced if we brought back these ingredients and techniques and introduced them to today’s lifestyle. Through this processes we can learn what kinds of challenges people will face when incorporating these recipes and techniques into their day to day life. This could help us understand why these techniques and ingredients were forgotten, and help us anticipate the future. Otherwise, I am afraid we might soon be adding a lot more to the list of forgotten vegetables and recipes without knowing why.

Written by Akash Muralidharan
Follow his 100 Days Recipe Challenge here: https://www.instagram.com/akash_muralidaran/

VENDING AT THE SPEED OF LIFE

Our SEED-O-MATIC vending machine is at Colby Museum of Art, Maine, USA, September 2nd 2019 – May 8th 2020.

The world’s slowest vending machine dispenses unique seeds with cultural, ecological or culinary significance. The future is slow, biodiverse and open-source. The future of great food is good seeds.

Simply put in your change, turn a crank, and you are ready to get your hands dirty.  Each SEED-O-MATIC packet contains enough seeds to grow a small row of vegetables, encouraging healthy food choices and agricultural biodiversity

The seeds inside each SEED-O-MATIC packet are provided by Fedco seed suppliers and are the result of many years of dedicated breeding work by Fedco’s seed breeders. See some videos with the breeders here.

“Adaptive breeding cannot occur under a system of restrictive ownership.”

—Frank Morton, a founder of the Open Source Seed Initiative

As a cooperative, Fedco does not have an individual owner or beneficiary, profit is not their primary goal. Consumers own 60% of the cooperative and worker members 40%. Through their product lines and cultural hints, Fedco encourages sustainable growing methods and offer a large selection of certified-organic cultivars and regional heirloom varieties. 

Fedco’s inventory manager and grower Roberta Bailey has added her ‘Matchbox Hot Pepper’ seed to the open-source seed initiative. “A group dedicated to offering up their genetic plant material and varieties to the public domain so that anybody can use them in any way.” By doing so these growers protect the breeding lines from ownership and patenting by large multinational seed companies, establishing a protected commons for non-patented seeds and pushing back against the hegemony of “Big Food.” 

The ‘Matchbox Hot Pepper’ seed can be found amongst the following in the dispensed SEED-O-MATIC packets:

Be My Baby Cherry Tomato

(65 days) Open-pollinated. Indeterminate. This productive cherry is the ongoing result of a cross of three famous tomatoes: an heirloom potato-leaf beefsteak and two cherries, one orange and one red. The grape tomato in its background lends a rich sweet flavor somewhat akin to that of Sweet Baby Girl, which it replaced. Bred by relentless. 2007 Fedco introduction. Breeder Royalties. OSSI. 

Flashback Calendula

Calendula officinalis. (55 days) A mix of orange, apricot and peachy doubled petals, all with red backing to create a distinctive contrast. Colors fade to bicolor yellows or yellow-peach, adding interest as the plants mature. Blooms withstand light fall frosts; still look good in October. Annual. OSSI. Seed purchased directly from the independent breeder. Especially attractive to pollinators.

Freedom Lettuce

This gene pool was created by Frank Morton in his so-called “Hell’s Half-Acre lettuce trial,” in which he crossed his most disease-resistant cultivars with his best-tasting varieties to select and recombine for excellent traits. Morton invites growers and breeders to work with this mix to create new varieties for their farms or for the general public while stipulating that nothing derived from it may be patented or protected from others’ use in any way. This strategy, originated by software developers, is now known as copyleft (as opposed to traditional copyright). Morton has adopted it to keep his varieties and their derivatives in the public domain as a protected commons. OSSI. Seeds as nature’s software! Copyleft has the potential to return to free use such shared resources as our plant heritage that rightfully belong to all of us. Seed purchased directly from the independent breeder. 

Matchbox Hot Pepper

(75 days) Open-pollinated. A product of our inventory manager Roberta Bailey. She has created an open-pollinated selection of the hybrid Super Chili, whose parents include Hungarian Hot Wax and Hot Banana. The squat plants bear prolific upright fruit, averaging 2″ long, 1⁄3″ across and ripening from pale green to deep scarlet. Like Super Chili, they bear well in cold damp weather, hot dry weather, sandy soils and heavy clay. They have plenty of heat and the characteristic finely cut lightweight leaves of many hot peppers. OSSI. 2000 Fedco introduction. 

Sweet Basil

(70 days) Open-pollinated. The heaviest-yielding variety, recommended for drying, all-around great eating, and large-scale pesto production. We sold more than 4,000 packets last year of these two strains of Sweet Basil. Tested for fusarium.

As simple as it is to operate, SEED-O-MATIC provides a point of entry into complex issues of food justice.

Today, SEED-O-MATIC’S vision is more important than ever. Large agrochemical companies are buying out seed suppliers and patenting the genetic information of the seeds they sell, posing serious threats to agricultural biodiversity and food sovereignty worldwide. In stocking seeds that are organic, locally saved, and/or open-source, SEED-O-MATIC makes supporting an agricultural system based on access and equitability as convenient as using a vending machine.

Website: http://seedomatic.com/
For more on seeds, see our newest issue of Food Phreaking: http://www.foodphreaking.com/