Pickled Vegetables

Profile: Cortney Burns – Chef/Owner, Motze

Cortney Burns and her husband and co-chef Nick Balla led the team at Bar Tartine in San Francisco’s Mission District for almost six years before departing at the end of 2016 to start their new restaurant, Motze. The unique style that they developed at Bar Tartine and continue at Motze combines ingredients and techniques from around the world with a focus on processing all their ingredients themselves, including the widespread and creative use of microbial foods. We caught up with Cortney in September 2016 to talk about her approach to cooking and microbe wrangling. [click to view the full story]

What brings kimchi to life?

Our last Science Digested piece on kimchi looked at the effect of red pepper powder on the progress of fermentation, and its impact on which bacteria dominate at the end. This paper backs up a step and asks: where do these lactic acid bacteria come from in the first place? Which ingredients bring microbial life to kimchi?

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Profile: Jeremy Ogusky – Culturing Fermentation Culture in Boston

Across the globe, local communities are forming fermentation communities – groups that meet to teach each other techniques and build a sense of community over delicious microbial foods. Over the past five years, a local potter in Boston, Massachusetts, has helped organize and educate a rapidly growing fermentation community. In this guest post, Maria Ordovas, explores how a fermentation culture is being formed in Boston. [click to view the full story]

The effects of red pepper powder on kimchi fermentation

When making fermented vegetables, we often add different kinds or amounts of spices. Their impacts on flavor may be obvious, but what do these spices do at the microbial level? A recent study took a careful look at how the addition of red pepper changes the course of microbial development in kimchi.

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Profile: Mitja Sirk — Artisan vinegar maker

The Sirk family own and run the Trattoria La Subida outside the town of Cormons in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, nestled in the hills only a few miles from the Italian-Slovenian border. Led by Mitja’s father, Josko, the Sirks ferment their local Ribolla Gialla grapes into a very unusual and delicious long-macerated and barrel-fermented wine vinegar.  [click to view the full story]