FermenTATION!

I've been experimenting with fermentation for the last couple of years, thanks to a knowledgeable roommate I once had. I never graduated to the wine- and beer-making fermentations--too much equipment, too many ingredients, I fell asleep reading the instructions, and too much mess--but I love the simpler stuff. Although I'm still sorry for accidentally trying to get Ian drunk, most of the experiments have been successful, and the fermentation processes have become a part of my daily or weekly rhythm.

The Bible of fermentation, at least from the few ferment books I've looked through, has been Sandor Ellix Katz' 'Wild Fermentation'. It's got pretty much every fermentation possibility in it, and I recommend it. Like 'The Joy of Cooking,' it's the sort of book I can sit down and just troll through.

My first was yoghurt--incredibly simple, and you don't need to buy any equipment. A mason jar and lid and an older style oven that has a light that will warm the oven just enough to keep the milk at the proper temperature. A note on new stoves: like all overly electronic things, the new ones are nearly useless. The light only stays on five minutes then automatically shuts off, they are constantly beeping at you, and have way too complex of settings for me to use. When I try to cook at my mother's house, I prefer to use the wood burning cook-stove.

After yoghurt, I then graduated to Ginger Beer. Similarily simple, and delicious!Don't feed it to friends who don't drink, because it does have trace amounts of alcohol in it. I tried other juices, which did work, though with a more vinegary (and alcoholic) result since I left them too long. Vinegar with a coconut exhalation? Perhaps on salad.

My last evening in Paris, I popped down to my local (ha, as if) organic grocer and bought a teensy bottle of kefir starter. It looked like medicine, as if it came with a nurse and hypodermic. It's content was a fine white powder, which you simply add to milk and let sit for 24hrs. While I was staying with friends in Montréal West, we threw it together, and in two days, we had a rather successful and tasty kefir. Adrien liked it, Christine didn't, and we may have picked on her for the rest of the day.

I relocated to my new apartment in the Petit Patrie neighbourhood of Montréal (quite a slice of a neighbourhood if you ask me!) I brought with me a cup of starter from our first kefir ferment, and started a new one. This time around, however, disaster seemed to strike! After a day of sitting in the dark cupboard, my milk was still just milk, but with the bizarre flavour of kefir lightly blended in. I panicked--milk at Montréal summer room temperature doesn't keep for very long. I decided to dump the rest of my starter in, and give it another day. The results were spectacular! 12 hours later, I pulled the jar out of the cupboard to find this:

The kefir had fully separated from the whey, producing a dry, crmbly curdlike substance condensed at the top of the jar, and the thin whey at the bottom. It was pretty in the sunlight, though.

I shook the hell out of it to blend it back together, with middling results. It tastes right, but it is a little lumpy. Hopefully my next batch will go a little better...