The Sciencey Bit

Let’s take the comparison of egg yolks vs rice Koji. Egg yolks work as a binder because they have molecular surfactants, specifically lethicin and lipoproteins. These surfactants wrap around oil droplets and and use their “heads and tails” to bind to water. The hydrophobic tails face inwards towards the oil droplets and the hydrophilic heads stick out. This arrangement lowers the interfacial* tension between the oil and the water. What you end up with, for example in the case of a mayonnaise, is the fat molecules tightly suspended in the liquid. Think of a luxurious bubble bath with tightly packed bubbles forming a thick foam.

But the rice koji works in it’s own unique way. As it doesn't possess the lecithin or lipoproteins as eggs do it instead employs its mycelium fibers and broken down starches. The particles of rice starch and fungal fibres engulf the oil droplets, tightly wrapping around them to stop the oil droplets from merging back together. This has to be done with high speed blending to break the oil into the smallest particles possible while forcing the starches to get pushed right up against the oil droplets. The second part of the Koji magic is the broken down starches which cause the liquid to thicken, regardless of whether there is oil in the or not. Koji rice blitzed into water or vinegar will naturally thicken the mixture, aiding the process of making mayonnaise before any other oil is added to the mix.

So, while egg yolks act as a chemical glue that sticks the oil and water molecules together, Koji traps the oil in a thick gel that stops it from bumping into each other and creating larger masses of oil.

In a more practical sense, Koji offers an alternative to egg yolks in mayonnaises, ice cream bases and hollandaise. Follow me in a little dive into how we make the most of the emulsifying properties of those fluffy little grains at Baldio.

Ice Cream Base

Our bases for ice creams do not contain eggs, but instead include some form of Koji. Whether it be the filtered solids from rice amazake or fresh Koji the bases are blended in much the same way as a traditional base. For example, the milk ice cream that accompanies the plantain cake includes fresh Koji to slightly cure the cream before being blended with the sugar and milk. The Koji holds the fat molecules of the cream and suspends them in the milk. Although the dessert itself contains eggs, removing the eggs from the ice cream makes it a little lighter and a good contrast with the richness of the plantain cake.

Eggless Mayonnaise

There are many alternative ways to make mayonnaise without eggs (a cursive Google search for “eggless mayonnaise recipe” will return around 30 million results, with this article adding another 1) but the novelty of using moldy rice adds live enzymes to develop umami over time. Blend the Koji rice with mustard, confit garlic and vinegar until you have a smooth paste. While blending, add in the oil slowly as you normally would and season to taste. An interesting difference between this process and an egg mayonnaise is that the mixture will thicken very soon after you start adding the oil. In comparison, the egg mayonnaise mixture will need to be at least 75% oil before it will start to thicken.

Playing around with Koji opens such beautiful corridors of exploration. Either as the precursor to a ferment, a wildcard addition to a sauce or to build layers of flavour. Don’t be afraid. See how it reacts, observe the results, make adjustments. You may just discover something completely new.

*interfacial tension is similar to water tension, but instead of describing the boundary between liquid and air, it describes the boundary between oil and water.

In my early days of cooking in a hotel in South Yorkshire, UK, we would “double-glove” for extra heat resistance when plating banquets for 300+ people. But even more than that, later in my career, in larger teams the usage would be much higher. Each piece used for just a few minutes before being discarded into landfill where they would persist for decades or hundreds of years. And each de-gloving would likely be followed by hand-washing. The irony of this is not lost on me and wasn’t then either. But isn’t it interesting when you exist in a system that not only encourages but mandates doing something that it becomes habit.

While some materials are better than others, choosing to include disposable gloves in your operations inevitably results in a higher operational costs and has the ecological cost of the breakdown of the materials. Even latex gloves that derive from the natural sap of the rubber tree, are heavily processed and will take decades to degrade in landfill, where they will likely end up.

But I agree that there are some scenarios in food prep where it is more comfortable to wear gloves.

Chillies

Now this one is more of a matter of pain and discomfort than anything else. Ever touched your eyes after handling chilies? Or even worse, gone to the bathroom? That experience will have you begging for gloves the next time you’re tasked with cleaning a tub of habaneros. But in reality, proper hand washing after handling the chilies will suffice. Because the active ingredient in chiles that causes that burning sensation, capsiasin, is oil based, the way you clean needs to be a little different to what seems logical.

Use cold water - hot water will open your pores, trap in the capsiasin and irritate your skin for hours afterwards. Instead, start with soap and no water. Rub the soap well all over your hands, with help from a little friction, then rinse with cold water. Repeat this a few times and rinse well. The surfactant in the soap will drag the oil based capsiasin away from your skin and into the water to be washed away.

Raw fish

The reservation about handling raw fish with bare hands generally surrounds odor. Nobody wants to smell like fish. But just like the chiles, there are similar hand-washing tricks that can be used to eliminate the lingering smell.

Use cold water - just like the golden rule after handling chiles, that same goes for fish. Hot water will both open your pores and melt the fish fats making them even harder to remove. The cause of the fishy smell are fatty acids and a compound called Trimethylamine. Luckily, this compound binds quickly and easily to stainless steel and will transfer the odor directly onto the metal. Rubbing a piece of stainless steel in your hands under running cold water is a really quick trick to remove the odor. Vinegar also acts as a strong neutralizer of Trimethylamine due to its high alkalinity. Splashing a little white vinegar over your hands will neutralize the compound while also acting as an effective sanitizer.

The Other Glove Option

While most of the scenarios where glove use is prevalent are somewhat performative, there are genuine times where individuals may need a barrier between their skin and a particular ingredient or substance. Folks with a skin irritation susceptibility should protect themselves. Re-usable gloves are a great option, can be washed and will last for many uses before degrading. At a rough estimate, one pair of reusable gloves could weigh the same as 10-14 pairs of disposable gloves meaning that it can vastly outlast the ecological cost of using disposables. Keeping a pair for each use can be helpful in avoiding blending of odors or spiciness.

The Perception of Clean

Have you ever seen somebody handling food while wearing gloves then switch to touching money, their face or their phone. Then switch back to touching food? Disposable gloves give the illusion of clean and sanitary food handling but in reality can pose a risk due to the false security in the mind of the wearer.

Intial, the UK based provider of hygiene services, lists glove contamination and the false sense of security as two disadvantages of using gloves. Although, interestingly, it does not list the persistence of waste plastic in the world as a point of consideration anywhere in the article.

I think we can say that regular and proper hand washing negates the need for pointless plastic pollution and and the other solutions above should help eliminate the other pesky reasons one would need to don the gloves. But I would love to keep this conversation flowing and hear any other situations where there might be an absolute need for them. So please comment if you have any suggestions and we can explore more ways to share our thoughts.

Leave a comment

Sitting down to staff lunch at the Baldega, Baldio’s production kitchen, we were about to tuck into a delicious tomato salad, adorned with a herb dressing and queso fresco, when the thought found the right size hole to drop down and out through my colander of a brain.

Being presented with the plate of heirloom tomatoes, grown a couple of hours down the road, clicked my brain online. This variety of tomato, Jitomate Riñon, is one of the earliest varieties cultivated in Meso-American Mexico and acted as a poignant reminder that the direct lineage of all tomatoes consumed in the world are down to this land and ecosystems.

Tomatoes have been a part of my life since I can remember. I vaguely remember roaming through the greenhouse in my parents garden as a small child and feeling my breath being taken away by the peppery aroma of the plants. I recall picking the fruits from a very young age, directly from the vine, and biting the warm ripe flesh. Little did I know their history, and the name, stemmed directly from where I would find myself living some 30-odd years later.

The Aztec people of pre-colonial Mexico had developed complex systems of agriculture in symbiosis with the surrounding ecosystems. Their connection to food was deeply related to how the world was understood and, like in my article on Tlazolli, was part of a constant and cyclical system in the universe.

The language of the Aztecs was Nahuatl and included words that are still used in the vocabulary of Mexicans today. Nopal (cactus), guacamole, chile, chocolate and mezcal all stem from the Nahuatl language. As I write this I am aware that chile and chocolate hold those names in many other languages and cultures too. But let’s look specifically at tomatoes.

The Aztec word used two similar words to refer to red tomatoes and the green tomatillo. Tomatl & Xitomatl. The distinction is as follows:

Tomatl: a blanket term for plump fruits that swelled with water. but as the tomatillo was one of the main cultivated fruits, the name became reserved for this particular fruit.

Xitomatl: a compound word of xictli (navel or center) and tomatl (fat water fruit), resulting in “fat water fruit with navel”, the navel referring to the calyx and the indentation it leaves when removed.

These names were intertwined with agriculture, food and the understanding of the world. The significance of the red fruits themselves reached beyond nutrition and sustenance and were also a potent symbol of fertility, abundance and life-force.

Then arrived the Spanish…

The prefixed of the xi was dropped by the Europeans, presumably seen as redundant, and the seeds and fruit shipped back to Europe to be marketed as tomate. Because the fruit was completely unknown to any other place on earth, other than where it was native, the word penetrated languages globally and appears in virtually the same way in almost every language on earth. Some rare exceptions are Italian (pomodoro), Swahili (nyanya) and Hungarian (paradicsom). These outliers likely present interesting rabbit holes to follow but I will allow you to take those journey solo.

The resilience of Aztec culture is easily observable in Mexico. From the indigenous words still used and intermingled with Spanish, to the textiles and art, the celebration of corn and the myriad ways of preparing it, as well as the food and drink as a whole. But around the world, people of all cultures, races, religions and geographical positions are, likely unknowingly, using words that directly stem from the ancient Aztec language.

As I learned the word tomato as a child while ambling through a humid and wild greenhouse in England I was, unbeknownst to me, being taught the Nahuatl language. The food of the Aztec peoples and a connection to the rhythm of the universe. Just as a child 1000 years ago would have viewed the same fruit with the pure and unadulterated vision of being in symbiosis as a piece of nature.

Mirin

Traditionally, Mirin, or Hon-Mirin (true-mirin), is a beverage which is created using Shochu and rice koji to result in something with naturally dense sweetness and an alcohol content of around 15%. Shochu, the distilled rice spirit, is marinated with rice koji and cooked rice, allowing the natural process of saccharification of rice starches through the enzymatic activity of the koji. What you end up with is a deliciously complex liquid with a good amount of sweetness and mild alcohol. For this reason, Mirin not only lends itself well to drinking but is terrific for cooking. The alcohol, once evaporated with heat, leaves a coating of sugars that cannot be replicated with a simple sugar syrup. The enzymes did their work on the complex starch carbohydrates to cut the chains into a myriad of short chain sugars (especially oligosaccharides) that leave a deeply intricate sensory experience when consumed.

While we often use locally grown rice at Baldio as a substrate for cultivating koji (and staff meals), rice is not a native ingredient to the Americas. There are two distinct varieties that are native to either Asia or Africa. One of our objectives at Baldio, in addition to zero-waste, is a commitment to honour the food culture of this land, which includes, recognizing and using native ingredients. Corn is absolutely one of the most recognizable and significant symbols of the food culture in Mexico. It’s the reason why I have a corn tattoo on my left forearm. The connection runs deep and is inextricably linked to the development of the indigenous civilizations in this region.

With that in mind, we made a leap forward into honouring Mexican culture, ingredients and flavours while giving reverence to the traditional practices of Mirin production.

The idea was first pollinated by the master of fermentation, Mara King, during her visit to Mexico City where we ran a workshop on Koji. During the workshop, she demonstrated the process of creating a Mirin inspired beverage using Mezcal, rice koji and cooked rice. For me, this was an eye-opening process and yielded a beverage that tasted like a perfect marriage between the deep roots of distillate production from Maguey in Mexico and the ancient history of Mirin making in Japan. It was absolutely delicious by itself, especially chilled, but when we used it in cocktail development it got totally lost. The flavour diminished and was masked by the other ingredients no matter how little dilution we attempted.

So the question was asked - how do we create something similar, with more “oomph” but still deeply speaks to the Mexican roots of the ingredients?

Our answer, as I may have hinted to already, lay in corn.

The new batch included: a neutral corn spirit, distilled in Mexico City, combined with an extract of the by-products of fresh corn, nixtamalized blue corn and blue corn koji. The combination was born and, after an intial test surprised us all.

Post-filtration, the liquid was a tantalizing melody of toasted corn, corn masa, fresh corn and caramelized dairy. And the alcohol was much higher at around 42%. This was exactly what we were looking for, making it ideal to be substituted for a base spirit in cocktails.

With the wheels set in motion to get our corn “mirin” in production, the bar team set to work crafting a mixed drink suitable enough to stand up to the robust flavours. The old fashioned that resulted is now on the menu at Baldio and is genuinely one of the most delicious liquids that has graced my taste buds. Complex flavour from the base spirit immediately levels it up from a standard old fashioned but paired with the intricate profile of vanilla and toasted mezquite launches it into the stratosphere of sensory heaven.

The Unintended By-Product

As with most of our creations at Baldio, there is an intended product and an un-intended product. In the case of shoyus and garums, these are the liquids (intended) and the solids (un-intended). But in those instances, both elements are made use of and have respective homes in dishes on the menu. The same is true of the residuals extracted from the Mirin process.

The sloppy mixture of alcoholic corn is transformed into the flavouring agent, and emulsifier, of an ice cream to pair with an espresso shot comprised of ground mezquite. This “affogato” dessert, while hugely familiar to most of our diners, speaks to its deep cultural roots of indigenous ingredients while at the same time being wildly delicious. The perfect way to end a meal, especially when paired with a Mirin old fashioned. Experiencing the whole story of an ingredient in the same moment is something that, for me, represents a magical closed-loop of sumptuousness. Like each bite at Baldio, it leads with flavour and is supported by the storytelling of people, place and process.

The stems and stalks posed a challenging problem to solve in finding a meaningful way to honour them and pay respect to the farming families that took the time and intention to grow the plant itself. While the intended purpose of the plant (particularly kale and other leafy green) is to consume the more tender parts, the stems hold heaps of flavour and untold potential for a second life. One of the challenges that many find with these fellas is the texture. Robust, fibrous stalks serve the plant well, giving it a sturdy structure against wind and rain. Water-sodden leaves weigh heavy and the stems do the work to keep delivering nutrients to the cells. But once the leaves are cut, they are almost bothersome to the folks tasked with chomping on them.

A few years ago, while watching a seminar during the annual gathering of fermentation fanatics called Kojicon, I remember the mention of vegetable based garums. We make mushroom garum at Baldio, so it made perfect sense, it was just something that had not before crossed my mind as an immediate go-to. Lacto ferments are the common process for vegetables and oftentimes are an easy and quick solution for taking care of trim and surplus. Kale tend to get a bit, well, “farty” when transformed with lactobacillus so I really wanted to stay away from trying to make that taste good. So, we began the to go down the route of a koji based ferment.

Roasting the stems first seemed like a no-brainer, adding some toasty flavour to the liquid and reducing the prevalence of those volatile sulphur compounds. The frozen kale, verdolagas and chard stems were launched into an oven tray and roasted until dark brown, on the verge of burnt, and strongly aromatic.

Rice koji was blended with water and a good dose of salt bringing the overall salinity to 5%. The thick porridge drenched over the toasted stems resembled a thawing snowfall over bare winter branches. The colour took little time to transfer to the thick liquid, turning it a tan brown, lightened slightly by the brilliant white rice koji.

Because of the volume of by-product you get from these types of vegetables, this had to be something that we could turn over quickly and get a usable product from. Garums can take months, but with some tricks to accelerate the process, this takes just a week. In essence, what we are looking at more closely resembles a shio koji flavoured with the roasted stems.

The main objective was to build an seasoning liquid bursting with enzymes but with the depth of a diluted soy sauce. And we got pretty close, with the result being something that resembles a diluted Maggi seasoning. It is savoury beyond belief and has a backbone of umami that leads you down a meandering snicket of flavour. The end result allows us to level up the already exceptional pork butt from an agroforestry project in Veracruz called Risueño. The muscle is submerged in a brine of the garum de tallos (stem garum) overnight before being allowed to dry in the fridge then hot smoked at the restaurant. The enzymes in the garum add boatloads of mouthwatering umami, the salt seasons and improves juiciness and the toasted savouriness of the stems delivers background depth to pair perfectly with the smoke of the wood grill.

We always aspire to achieve processes that close the loop entirely on ingredients, and we are very proud of the ones that do. This one, although it generates heaps of flavour and serves an amazing place on the menu, leaves us with very difficult to use residue. These are returned to the Chinampas as compost, destined to nourish the next generation of bounty from its ancestral lands.

I love it when we have completed the mission and made something quite undesirable into new ingredients with no trace left behind i.e. fully consumable. But really, it is equally exciting to know there is more exploration to be done. Besides, once you’ve completed the game, it’s all over. And who wants that.

Think of making a miso paste and this statement:

“the process will take 6 months”

Most of that process is waiting. The passing of time IS the process.

This may seem like an obvious statement and, it is, but it gives us an opportunity to view how we experience the world. The world of fermentation relies heavily on waiting. It is even described by some folks as the culmination of microbes and time.

The inextricable link between time and process has the potential to root us in the present. The multiple steps and stages of transformation required in processes necessitates time as an integral component. We don’t see time itself but we see the passing of time through change. A traditional fish sauce that took a year and a half to ferment carries the story of those 18 months. We don’t see time but we see the results and often use that fact as a selling point.

In the same but opposite perspective, time will pass despite what we do. Have you ever thought “if I would have started this 10 years (or 10 minutes) ago it would be finished by now”. Similarly to those who bought Bitcoin in 2012, and then did nothing but wait, seizing a moment, at the right point in time and then allowing time to pass can be hugely valuable. I often have the same thoughts in the food lab: “If we had started this type of miso back in April we would have this flavour available to us now”. But in reality, this thinking is unproductive and futile. Capitalizing on the moment requires thoughtfulness in the moment.

Now, let’s leave reason and reality on earth for a brief minute. If we were to take a step into space and assume that the theories of space-time by Einstein and Hawking are correct, what would process look like to us?

Firstly, if we are following the theory, local processes would never change for the observer experiencing them. Through the eyes of the person present, things would appear very regular. Their heart would beat at the same cadence and chemical and biological changes would occur at the same rate. The decoupling happens when the perspective shifts to an outside observer.

Imagine being on a spacecraft travelling close to the speed of light. While on that ship, you make a batch of shoyu. For 6 months of your own perceived time, that ferment will have matured to a delicious sauce to douse your freeze-dried space sushi. But for somebody observing from earth, if that was possible, that process may have taken close to 45,000 years.

Entertain me and allow me to take a silly look at how process and time would be perceived while making a miso at the edge of a black hole, at the event horizon (the point of no return). Note that the gravitational pull at this point would be close to infinite.

So, we’ve taken our koji rice, cooked beans and salt into space and embarked on a one way suicide mission to make the universe’s wildest ferment. We have our assistant waiting safely back on earth with a telescope capable of seeing in detail what we are up to.

The ingredients are ground together and packed tightly into a jar. The process for this desired recipe back on earth would take 6 weeks. Here, at the event horizon, the process appears to us as the same. The development of flavour and the enzyme and microbial activity seem very routine. From our perspective, after 6 weeks, we have a paste that resembles exactly that of what we make a Baldio in Mexico City.

Now, for our assistant back on earth, what they see is warped by gravitational time dilation. This 6 week process could literally take billions of years and what they would see through their telescope is a cosmic freeze-frame of the fermentation demo. In the time taken to mature the ferment from the assistant’s perspective, if they were immortal, they would witness the entire lifespan of the sun, watch oceans boil away and see our solar system fade into nothing.

Our perspective will dictate entirely our experience. Feeling presence in what you are doing and sensing in the moment can change how the process is experienced. As I sit here in Mexico, sipping a coffee on a rainy Saturday morning, I am somewhat dizzy with the notion that we all experience process individually. It is highly intimate and can be shared through expression but felt in solitude. As the role of the fermenter, we have the opportunity to not only seize a moment to feed a timeline, but also to experience it from our own perspective and its relation to time as our own. As something deeply personal and private.

So, what will you do today to initiate a process that will fruit in the future. How will you choose to use the time that marches on in front of us and embrace it as something deeply personal. Which spot will you pick in which to plant a seed and let your garden grow.

First Steps

With any koji driven paste fermentation you’ll first need to acquire koji. The miraculous mold that fuels these transformations can be purchased in dried form, or fresh if you are lucky enough to have a local producer. The other option is to buy the spores and make koji like in THIS article. If you’d like to try your hand at making a batch of koji rice yourself, check out the guide and trust the process. It is wildly rewarding and will fill your nostrils with an unforgettable scent that will have you scrambling to make your next batch.

While koji rice is probably the most common starter for your paste fermentation, there are numerous grains that you can use. Barley, wheat, corn, bread, beans and countless others that will have varying degrees of difficulty and resulting properties. If it is your first endeavour into the world of koji then rice is definitely the easiest first step.

Flavour Selection

Once you’re set up with some fresh koji rice, you’ll want to choose your substrate. A traditional miso would use soy beans. With a protein percentage around 50%, they are primed for this process, the enzymes produced by the koji acting as scissors to cut the long protein chains into amino acids, creating free amino acids that resonate as umami on your palette. But that’s not necessarily the route you want to go down. For example our staple “miso” at Baldio is made from koji rice and yellow corn masa. The combination of these creates something that is reminiscent of miso but with more florality, fruitiness and sweetness. While this would not resonate with a lot of people as miso, it employs the same process steps. Also, it is good to note that the protein context of corn is MUCH lower than that of soybeans, which causes the mix to be lighter and fruitier with less of that deep umami caused by the broken protein chains.

So let’s dig into the variables to unlock the freedom of making pastes outside of tradition.

All About Percentages

The ratios of the mix will determine a few things:

• How fast it will ferment (% Koji)

• How long you can safely ferment it for (% Salt)

• How long you can store it for once it is done (% Salt)

• Flavour (obviously) (% Substrate)

The quantity of koji rice that is added to the paste will determine the speed at which the paste will ferment. Note that salt is also an inhibitor of microbial activity causing the fermentation to move slower. So with a low salt percentage and high percentage of koji it is possible to make a delicious paste in just a few weeks. Our “misos” in Baldio are made with 100% koji to the weight of the substrate plus 4% salt (of total weight). This renders a delicious, young and fruity paste in 6 weeks. The benefit of this is that we can use the paste liberally in sauces, dish elements, and even on its own. The drawback of this is that if we wanted to ferment it for longer, it would become unstable and the likelihood of things going array would be quite high. For these types of planned longer term ferments, a higher salt percentage would be essential. We currently have another corn “miso” sat in our fermentation room with the same ratio of koji but with a salt level of 10% with the intention of maturing it for several months. The result will be very different from the 4%, 6 week paste and will allow a different flavour profile in dishes while still sticking with corn as the extremely important culturally significant substrate.

The Noma Guide to Fementation, the first book that introduced me to koji based fermentation, suggests a 66% koji ratio to substrate. I have made these pastes in previous years, especially when I was first embarking on my koji journeys, and found that after about 3 months the paste was ripe and ready to use. Now, with the ongoing learning I have had, I would suggest a higher salt percentage for ferments of that length of time.

Straight Outta the Noma Guide

Xg Cooked Beans / Cooked Corn / Bread / etc

66% Koji Rice

4% Salt

Baldio Pastes

Xg Cooked Beans / Cooked Corn / Bread / etc

100% Koji Rice

4% Salt

Bump and Grind

The next few steps are quite straightforward if you are in any way familiar with simple food prep. You are simply grinding together the koji rice, substrate and salt. This can be done in a sanitized meat grinder or even in a food processor, although the food processor will take a little more fiddling around to get the entire batch to the correct texture.

Sanitize all the equipment with alcohol to ensure you’re not adding other unwanted microbes to the party and grind all the ingredients together to form a wet dough/paste.

The salt should be evenly distributed at this point, so if necessary, give it a mix.

Pack it Up

Take a glass jar of a suitable size to fill with the paste, clean it well and pack in the paste in tight balls, trying to remove as much oxygen as possible. If there is oxygen in there, It’s likely that there will be some off flavours developed through the fermentation process. Even though there needs to be some air exchange, the bulk of the paste needs to be firmly packed down.

The finishing move of the paste has a few different options.

1. Salt top - this is a great and easy option to create a barrier between the beloved ferment and the outside world. Just sprinkle a little salt on the surface to prevent microbial activity where it is exposed to air.

2. Matured miso layer - this is a recent one that I discovered and it makes a lot of sense. A matured miso/paste is heavily stable with a world of happy bacteria and enzymes that are thriving. Add a layer of this with at least the same salt percentage as the young paste will keep the developing microcosm below safe from rogue players.

3. Silicon mat or similar - This is what we use at Baldio as our safeguard. A thin layer of sterilized silicon is laid on top of the ferment, making direct contact with the paste to remove contact with air but still allowing oxygen exchange.

Lastly, cover the container with a cloth and seal tightly with string or an elastic band, and place in spot out of direct sunlight without temperature fluctuations. Say “bon voyage” to the microbe laden mix and rest back into the role of the observer.

“Are We There Yet?”

Unlike most traditional recipes that require strict time and temperature regimen (pour one out for those who have struggled with souffles), fermentation is much more of a “when you like it, it’s ready” process. Longer aging doesn’t necessarily mean better and sometimes, like the corn Paste we make at Baldio, it can be optimally fit for purpose after a few short weeks.

So keep an eye on it. Taste it often and enjoy observing the hands-off transformation as it unfolds. Once you taste it one day and think “this is delicious”, it is ready to store in the fridge to slow the fermentation to a crawl.

So get started! Experience slow food and its magical transformation. Eat more ferments and treat your body to the delights that the microbial world has to offer.

So, brace yourself…

Tlazolli (pronounced TLAH - zoh - lee) is a word from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, with a meaning that was immediately mis-translated by the Spanish colonialists.

It was described as a literal meaning for filth, trash or discard. Something that is destined for “away” and to be removed from view. But the reality is far from it. In the Aztec world-view, there is no such thing as a valueless end-product. Everything is viewed as energy in flux, a constant cycle of that energy, awaiting transformation to its next stage of life. This was viewed ion a few different ways.

The Cycle of Decomposition and Rebirth

In a culture without a concept of “waste,” everything was part of a continuous cycle. Tlazolli was seen as the breakdown of the old to make room for the new.

In fertility, just as compost (decaying organic matter) is necessary for a harvest, Tlazolli was the essential “refuse” required for regeneration.

And in terms of transformation, “waste” wasn’t something to be discarded, but something to be recycled or transmuted.

Moral and Spiritual “Dirt”

Beyond physical debris, Tlazolli referred to spiritual or social disorder. It was often associated with “excess”—specifically sexual excess or transgressions that disrupted the social fabric.

The Tlazolli Eater, the goddess Tlazolteotl, is perhaps the most famous representation of this. Known as the “Eater of Filth,” she was believed to consume the “dirt” (sins or transgressions) of individuals.

Purification: By “eating” the Tlazolli, she didn’t just remove it; she purified the person, turning the stagnant moral energy back into a clean state.

Entropy vs. Waste

In Western thought, “trash” is the end of a linear journey—the landfill. In the Nahuatl context, Tlazolli is more akin to entropy. It is the state of something being worn out, tangled, or messy. The root of the word is linked to things that are twisted or frayed. Something to be untangled and made a new, but in a slightly different state.

Life was seen as a tapestry and Tlazolli was the fraying of the threads. The goal was not to throw the thread away, but to re-weave it, creating something new with the same material.

I often talk about looking to the past to shape a future that can support life on this planet in a symbiotic and sustainable way. In regenerative agriculture the conversation is often surrounding the delving into ancient farming practices to maintain and build soil health while yielding hefty and nutrient-dense harvests.

Discovering this word, concept and perspective has emboldened the notion that the thought-state of our ancestors respected the planet and understood the interconnectedness of the world.

So how can Tlazolli be applied to our modern world and materials that are not directly from nature.

Food

Let’s look at some processes within Baldio where Tlazolli-thinking can be applied.

Onion Skins

While the skin of the onion is still onion, it often finds itself as a discarded product. At best, the compost is a fine re-birth for the skins. Adding vital minerals and nutrients to decomposing material, it serves its purpose in fueling life, enriching soil for microbial activity and cultivating fruits and vegetables.

But the re-birth can take several turns before reaching this vital stage.

At Baldio, the process of this rebirth begins with the smoking and lacto-fermenting the skins with water and salt to create depth and complexity. After some days we are left with two flavour-packed products: the solid skins and the umami-rich liquid.

The liquid has many delicious uses and is the primary ingredient in a caramel which adorns an onion and chintextle butter to accompany the bread course. It is also a primary ingredient in a miso jalapeño hot sauce and also a “Clamato” juice, accented with fish sauce and heirloom tomatoes.

The solids are dehydrated and used to make the Salsa Inglesa (Worcestershire sauce), along with being ground and added to a paste for the chorizo sausage on the menu.

The only residuals from this process is the solid residue from the Salsa Inglesa production process. These could well be composted and returned to the earth to commence their next stage of life.

Plastics

Plastic is a derivative of petro-chemicals. It is initially from this earth in the form of crude oil or natural gas, but manufactured by humans into a product that takes a thousand years to biodegrade, poisons land and water systems, and leeches harmful chemicals into our food and drinking water.

So how can Tlazolli be applied to such an unnatural material?

A plastic bag discarded into landfill would be largely deemed as its end of life in modern society. Destined to live there without another use. But disposed of in this way, the plastics move onto their next stage of transformation. Although this is an incredibly slow process it is the next stage of the cycle of it returning to the earth. Through that degradation, the long polymer chains break down into smaller pieces over time, entering into ecosystems and food chains.

The craziest thing is that we have yet to witness the full breakdown of plastic on earth as it has only existed for around a century. But science tells us of the next stages of life: eventually entering back into the carbon cycle after environmental weathering breaks it into nanoplastics small enough for microbes to digest.

Even in something so synthetic and damaging as plastics, the concept of Tlazolli still holds relevance. A continuous cycle of energy that continues despite the perception of an “end”. I think that in listening to the lessons of our ancestors we are better able to support a world which can sustain life: our life and the life of all the things around us that make the world beautiful and delicious. The responsibility that is implied with this type of understanding allows us to go about our days with intention and think a little more about our actions and how we are interacting with the cycles of other objects, people and energy.

There are historically 3 methods of obtaining the alkaline solution.

1. Wood ash from fires

2. Slaked lime

3. Soda ash

The word nixtamal itself comes from the Nahuatl words of “nextli” (meaning ashes) and “tamali” (meaning corn dough). So it’s no surprise that nixtmalaization through wood ash was most prominent in Mayan and Olmec culture.

In modern corn preparation, food-grade calcium hydroxide is used in the transformation process.

Mexico produces around 50,000 tonnes of oysters annually, with 90% being consumed within the country. Using this statistic we can assume 45,000 tonnes of oysters are consumed in Mexico from local farms. The oyster liquor and meat only account for 5-18% of the total weight of the oyster meaning that, as a conservative estimate, there are 36,900 tonnes of oyster shells being discarded each year from domestically produced oyster consumption in Mexico. These shells would be well placed in the ocean to breakdown in their natural habit. But the reality is the supply chain of returning oysters shells to the ocean from cities hundreds of kilometers away, for zero capital gain, is just not possible. So an oyster farm named Bendito Mar had other ideas.

Bendito Mar is an oyster farm in Baja California Sur, with big ideas about how to responsibly operate. Oysters are naturally filters for the ocean but also capture carbon as they grow. The shells themselves are 95% calcium carbonate, meaning they sequester carbon from the ocean as they grow in order to build their thick shells. Additionally, this calcium carbon can be transformed to be used in the nixtamalization process through heat and time.

It takes temperatures of 1200°C to transform the raw shells into a usable product for nixtamalization. For this, kilns for ceramic manufacturing are employed to bake the shells for long enough to cook them to a state where they can be crumbled to a powder. At this point, the shells can be ground and used in the nixtamalization process in place of calcium hydroxide (cal). This full circle thinking could close the loop on the mountains of oysters shells being discarded and, with a growing demand for oysters in Mexico, poses a valuable sustainable option other than returning the shells to the ocean.

At Baldio, we do not directly partake in many nixtamalization processes. Our corn, grown in the ancestral gardens of the Chinampas, it nixtamalized and ground in the neighbouring town of Xochimilco and delivered along with vegetables from the same area. But a process that we have begun is a really special marriage between a Japanese beverage and corn. A Mirin made with corn in place of rice, using the calcium rich baked oyster shells to transform the corn in order to cultivate koji mold directly on the grain. Imagine a beverage with technique that hails entirely from Japan, followed very closely, but using 100% corn. From the liquor, liquid and substrate, it is a very special adaptation of process, to respect place, cultural significance and an ingredient that has sustained a vast population for millenia. This 100% deserves a deep-dive as some juncture so we’ll pop a pin in it for now and circle back at a later date.

If you are interested in learnign more about Bendito Mar or the work they are doing, you can visit their website HERE.

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I came across this phrase while researching a little for this article and it struck me. This proverb has been found in literature dating back as far as the year 1576. Even during period in time, being wasteful was a concept that was known in society. There is absolutely no doubt that the quantity of waste now, both food and other, mammoths the amounts that would have been discarded back then. In addition, every single thing that was consumed or discarded would have been organic material that would inevitably have been returned to the earth. Our current global situation presents a different scenario, one of synthetic chemicals and inorganic materials that cause harm and destruction to earth’s ecosystems.

It is ponderous to think of the act of willful waste as an age old habit that was associated with foolishness. Wastefulness now seems to be a somewhere between an act of status or wealth and a thoughtless habit that.

So you’d like to reduce how much you waste…

If you’re reading this from a restaurant or food service perspective, great. You’ll likely get some take-aways that you can put into practice in your place of work. But if not, there might be some interesting insights that could be implemented across industries. If so, please let me know in a comments!

I think firstly we can summarise waste as, broadly, things that are sent “away”. “Away” is a place with different final destinations. Almost all of these destinations are unseen. Whether the items are combined into one pile and sent to landfill, or separated to be recycled or composted, there are all hidden from public eye. We create the mess but are shielded from it’s impact.

So, how to begin with creating systems that reduce waste and deal with what is wasted in a responsible way.

List It

In a system (like a restaurant) where everything has been historically combined into one bin, the easiest place to start is by recording what types of things are being discarded. A useful system could be a whiteboard hung by the bin with the intention of building a list. As somebody discards an item, they write on the board what it is. If an item is already on the board, the work is already done. This way you’ll build an inventory of all the types of items being thrown out. As a secondary bonus, it will also start to build a little cognition in the folks who are discarding items which is never a bad thing.

Weigh It

In building better systems for waste management, data is your friend. It will help you to navigate changes, calculate impact and communicate your gains. Data allows you to communicate to others, both within and outside of your organization.

Weighing the total waste gives a great baseline metric of where you are now. Not an average of restaurants in your country, not where you should be, but the reality of your current situation. Whatever that is, it is your starting point. The hope is that it can only improve. And when it does, you’ll be able to look back on the starting line and celebrate the progress that has been made.

A great way to track the weight is it to record the weights of the receptacles being used. This way, the whole receptacle can be weighed and the object weight removed. Floor scales are brilliant for making this a quick and painless process.

Take these measurements before the waste is removed from the building and start tracking. You’ll likely start to see patterns without even doing any real analysis.

Make Nice Homes For Your Waste

Once you have your list built, you’ll have a somewhat complete and itemized compendium of all the things being discarded. This is useful for a couple of reasons:

1. You can now start to separate out the items into different silos depending on how they are being treated

2. You will have a good idea of where those pieces of waste are being generated. Food scraps from specific processes, plastic wrap from covering containers without lids or vacuum bags. Each piece has an origin, a process that can be assessed or a procurement method that can be questioned

These silos can be broad and large or as granular as you would like although, for the first steps of doing this process, I would recommend keeping them broad, becoming more and more specific as you progress. Understanding what is being generated is just as important as finding an outlet for it.

The categories should be thought of as “what is the next life of this product?”.

Organic material —> Compost

Egg Cartons —> Compost

Cardboard —> Recyclable

Recyclable plastic —> Plastic

Soft Plastics —> Likely landfill (although there might be recycling schemes near you)

Vinyl gloves —> landfill

Once you have these silos, you can start to separate the weighing of waste in these separate receptacles.

Make Your Best Choices

By now, the system is in full swing and you (and your team) are into the habit of separating waste. But what is the point in separating waste if it is just being disposed of in the same way? Next up is making responsible choices about how it is managed or finding ways to eliminate it from the system.

Options for dealing with waste vary greatly from country to country and even between cities in the same country. Recycling, composting and waste management programs will have varying degrees of efficacy, cost and viability. But I think we can probably agree on one rule:

If the only option is that it goes to landfill = Remove it from your system

If the willful choice is to buy something that you know will inevitably be buried in the earth and cause damage then avoid bringing it into your system. Once it enters your orbit, it becomes your responsibility to deal with. Busy people (us) don’t need more responsibility and creating system change shouldn’t come with extra work. By simply finding ways to “turn off the tap” of the waste stream you can eliminate the responsibility of finding ways to dispose of it.

Now, this analysis mainly points to material waste as opposed to food waste. But the deep dive into organic waste can get more specific too. Waste can be separated by section (garde manger, bar, grill, plate waste etc) and/or by type of waste i.e. raw or processed. By sorting in this way you will start to build up a picture of where the waste is generated and if there is potentially something that can be done to reduce it. If you are experiencing a high amount of raw food waste, it could be that these are usable ingredients that can be incorporated into the menu elsewhere.

What it could look like in practice

Let’s look at some practical examples of where this journey could take you.

Landfill Culprit

Vacuum bags - used to store portioned beef found in the bin

Solution

1. Order larger cuts of beef to be portioned in house

2. Change portioning to be scheduled each day

3. Store portioned beef in containers with an airtight seal

Result

Less plastic going to landfill

Lower materials cost

Raw Organic Waste Culprit

Tomato trim - from garde manger section

Solution

1. Store in a designated space in the freezer until sufficient have been accumulated

2. Lacto-ferment with 2% salt until tangy and strain

3. Dry the solids as a seasoning powder

4. Serve the juice with a fish crudo, add to dressings or sauce

Result

No more tomato going to the compost

Lower food cost %

Menu flavour boost

The journey of reducing waste begins with intention and succeeds with gradual, consistent action. I hope that taking this guide and building out the systems to fit your operation is a good starting point. We all have more work to do and the system is never perfect. So accept it and keep making small incremental changes toward better.

Where we left off with part one was a hint at a closed loop of deliciousness in chile stalks. This process not only creates a delicious soy sauce, but also creates a salsa macha that results in the once in-consumable woody stalks being fully consumable. These “leave no trace” processes are the gold standard of loop closing and, for me at least, are highly sought after.

Choosing Stalks

This isn’t a particularly technical process and can be as simple as collecting up the chile stems that you are accumulating in your processes and mixing them together. We, at Baldio, do this with our dried chiles and combine everything together for other uses like as popsicle sticks. But for the soy sauce we specifically select the stems of the morita chile. These are similar to chipotle chiles as they are also smoked and dried jalpeños, but are smoked for less time and resulting in a more balanced combination of sweet, smokey and spicy. For this specific process we managed to dip into a waste stream of a neighbouring chile, bean and corn exporter who had a sack-full of these delicious stems. By looking at these as an ingredient we scooped them up and got to work

Roasting

Much of the flavour and colour generation in dark soy sauce comes from the roasting of wheat. It is for this reason that soy sauce is generally not gluten free. The heavily roasted wheat gives the liquid those beautiful toasty notes and deep coffee colour. As we were planning to omit the use of wheat, we needed to simulate what the wheat grains add. Using other roasted ingredients really helps to add depth to the sauce. With this technique it’s much easier to end up with something that closely resembles the familiar sauce.

So the stalks went in to roast until they developed a nutty and toasty aroma. But be warned, these still have some capsaicin so will send everybody in close proximity into sneezing and coughing fits so make sure the space is well ventilated!

Koji

As with traditional soy sauce brewing, we used koji beans for this process. More on the process of growing koji on beans can be found in a previous post HERE.

We chose Aspergillus Sojae spores for this process to align closely with tradition. Although we do stray from tradition on almost every occasion, we do look to traditional processes to guide the path into the unknown.

Mixing

Once we had our roasted stalks and koji beans, we set about mixing them with water and salt to start the brew. The process is quite straightforward, combining the ingredients at room temperature and mixing to dissolve the salt. The mixture went into our fermentation space in a 50L barrel, covered with a cloth to allow air exchange.

Maintenance

As with most of the liquid ferments we do, the mixture was stirred daily for the first week. The reason for this is to evenly distribute the mixture and enzymes but also for safety. Submerging everything that has been exposed to air every day into the salt brine is enough to ensure that it will be free of unsavory characters dipping in for a free lunch.

After the first week, we kept an eye on it and stirred once or twice per week. This process continued for a month, after which point it was pressed. Now we 100% could have kept this going, and we would like to at some point, but being a busy restaurant we often need to find ways to accelerate the time intensive processes. It just isn’t feasible to store large ferments for months and months and maintain a consistent supply.

Pressing

With the mixture hitting a desirable level of delicious we filtered the sauce using a cider press. But it doesn’t really need to be like this. It can be as simple as passing it through a sieve. The chile stems do not absorb much liquid, it’s really just to get more flavour and texture out of the beans. I find the most notable difference between pressed and strained shoyu is texture. There is a little more viscosity achieved in a pressed sauce that adds a wonderfully silky profile to the mouthfeel.

Firing

Like with any finished shoyu, we heat the liquid to a 85 degrees Celsius to eliminate any volatile compounds. Mainly, these are ethanol and ethyl acetate, both of which would change the flavour and aroma of the finished product if not removed. Secondly, if left unpasteurized, the sauce would continue to evolve. The idea of stopping a ferment when it is at it’s pinnacle is that you want to preserve that flavour. If it continues to change through enzymatic processes it may go in a direction that becomes less desirable. Firing will denature the enzymes that would otherwise further fuel any post-pressing transformation.

From this point onward, you have yourself a delicious liquid with a flavour resembling a soy sauce that has had some toasty chiles infused into it. It will potentially hold a slight hint of chile heat but mostly that familiar capsicum taste. The sauce can be used in much the same way as soy sauce but really shines as a stand alone product. Try swapping it out for the commercial stuff with the next sushi order.

But what to do with all the leftover solids? They still hold heaps of flavour and are another ingredient waiting for its next step of transformation. But think this deserves an article of its own. How about a third installment of “Redefining Ingredients”?

Uncovering the lightly damp blanket covering the heirloom “frijoles bayos” is a wonderful experience. Will the mold be white? Light green? Olive green? Throughout the lifecycle of the spore types grown on beans, the colours develop and bloom into beautiful deep hues that cannot resist the camera.

But let’s move away a little from the poetry and get into the technicals.

Beans, unlike starchy grains, have a higher protein content. Frijoles bayos for example can have up to 15% protein, whereas soy beans can have up to 45% protein. This means that the spores selected to innoculate beans changes slightly from those selected for rice, and also the applications of the beans in fermentation processes differs.

At Baldio, we us the heirloom frijoles bayos as our substrate, soaked and boiled just to the point where they can be gently crushed between thumb and forefinger without too much effort. This gives us a great sense that we have achieved the right moisture content and level of doneness of the beans. This process would be the same for any beans you are attempting to grow koji on.

Once the beans are cooked, they are stained and allowed to dry and cool. During this process we want to make sure that the excess moisture is not allowed to pool at the bottom and can drain away easily.

Next comes the spores. We specifically use two different strains for beans:

• Aspergillus Oryzae - a variation with green spores and higher protease characteristics.

• Aspergillus Sojae that also produces green spores.

In general, aspergillus sojae grown on beans will be used for shoyu or ganjang production. The high levels of protease in this variety make it a good choice for creating amino acids from the long protein chains in the beans. We are no different at Baldio and use these to make our “soy-sauce style” sauces with by-products such as bread, chile stems and banana peels.

The aspergillus oryzae variety graces a couple of our misos, namely, the chintextle miso and bread miso.

Once you have your beans cooled to 30°C you can begin to innoculate them with the spores. The innoculation and growing process is much the same as that for rice in my previous post HERE. You can follow these steps with your beans.

The real difference comes with the colouration of the spores. When growing white koji spores on rice, the bloom will be beautiful and white. Beans are a little different and will produce a green bloom that can be light or very dark. The first stages of growth may appear light as pictured below.

But then as time progresses, past around the 24 hour mark, you’ll see more green start to appear, as shown below.

And finally, you should end up with a beautiful green velvet covering of your beans after 40-48 hours.

From this point onwards, you can use the beans immediately in a shoyu or miso (as applicable) or they can be frozen for later use.

Notes and things to watch out for

When the beans have first been innoculated and put in the chamber, the smell can be quite strong in, well, cooked beans. This is totally fine and, as long as the smell doesn’t turn to anything else like ammonia, and the koji is showing signs of growth, you should be fine.

Koji is quite particular with the moisture content that it is happy with. Too much moisture and it will just not grow. This can be tricky with beans because it is a little bit more of a “just knowing” how wet the beans need to be. I do find that the squeeze between the fingers technique works well. It’s just a little arbitrary and suseptible to interpretation.

It has been 56 years since Earth Day began. What has changed since?

• Glyphosate was not in use in 1970, but now is used at a rate of 850,000,000kg annually

• Freshwater species of animals has declined by 85%

• Populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians have declined by 73%

• The frequency of extreme weather events (floods, wildfires, heatwaves) has roughly tripled since 1970

• It is estimated there are now over 170 trillion plastic particles floating in the world's oceans. By 2050, plastic in the ocean is projected to outweigh all fish

• Due to intensive farming practices and chemical use, we are currently losing fertile topsoil 10 to 40 times faster than it can be naturally replenished

• The global nitrogen cycle has doubled through the production of synthetic ammonia which is used in agriculture from synthetic fertilizers

Not the most uplifting summary of events, is it. And it is indeed hard to feel like any sort of progress has been made through a one-day recognition of this planet that sustains us.

But I think we need to look at earth day as a symbol of the power of collective action. Take a look around you and see what is happening on 22nd April every year. Is there community call to action? Are there group demonstrating their work in climate action? Forget all the performative, green-washing bullshit that corporations use to sell their extractive and damaging products. But look at what humans are doing through genuine intention to do better.

The next step to this is:

• How can I get involved?

• How can I give a little of my most valuable resource, my time, to these organizations to help their work?

• What are the individual actions I can take as part of my daily life to have a less negative, neutral or positive effect on the planet.

Community organization, Sostenible PXM, in Puerto Escondido, Mexico championing clean water and recycling projects

The demoralizing realization is always bound to rear its ugly head and bring out the doubt of whether you can actually make any difference at all. 32 corporations account for over 50% of human caused greenhouse gas emissions. But it’s always useful to remember that these corporations only thrive because we, as consumers, are responsible for creating demand. How many people would it take to refuse single use take out cups to make societal change? How would national fuel consumption change if a population chooses to cycle or walk once per week instead of taking the car? What if consumer demand shifted to valuing natural fibres in their clothes instead of those that rely on plastics (and therefore, petrochemicals). Change has to begin at an individual level first. Either with a decision or an action. That is where we need to start.

Just as in 1970 with the mobilization of 20 million people in the US, we have the ability to wake up the governments that have allowed our lands to be poisoned, bought and destroyed. And when we look at the health of our world since that march 56 years ago, it is in a much poorer state. Now is the time to make change through action.

I believe another useful tool we have is the power to choose how we derive our income. The jobs we choose to keep have a direct impact on the success of businesses. I feel very deeply that the work we do cannot be separated from our values. A job is not just a job and can do great harm, even when that harm is far removed from your direct responsibilities. As we think more about our impact and the tools we have within our control, we are presented with a great number of things we CAN do. We don’t need to, nor can we, do all of them and putting that amount of pressure on yourself is debilitating. But one small action at a time will become a habit. Which can turn into a conversation where you influence somebody else to take small actions.

This Earth Day, pledge to make a small change in your life. A new year’s resolution, if you will. Be proud of it and see where it takes you.

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What words we use for the discarded. Devaluing items before they have the chance to be something. We do the same with people, places and objects and the moment we use these labels our perception treats them as such. That there is no other purpose for that thing other than what we have chosen to give it.

What if we didn’t do that. Is the flower of a “weed” not still a flower. A dandelion, for example, is entirely edible throughout it’s life cycle, with each part having a peak moment of consumption. It also has a beautiful yellow bloom and seeds that are engulfed in magical orbs of white fluff. Yet largely we label this as a weed. An annoyance and pest. It grows prolifically which, if it were seen as food, medicine or an ornamental flower, would be a very attractive characteristic. But there are very few people who would see it as anything other than a weed.

This is not dissimilar to the approach to food, both at home and in commercial cooking. Vegetables are prized in a fairly linear way. Freshness is held in high regard, and as soon as a fruit or vegetable is picked, it begins to lose value. This mindset seems to be universally accepted, despite the fact that we eat cured onions, apples that have been stored for months and potatoes that are up to 10 months old without batting an eyelid. A bunch of parsley may wilt in the fridge and be deemed unusable, but a jar of dried parsley is readily available to buy at a premium on supermarket shelves.

As an example, lets take cilantro (coriander). A polarizing herb that graces dishes from Mexico, to Thailand, to India. It’s pungent flavour enhances fragrant dishes and adds welcome freshness to dishes laden with spice. The whole plant is edible. From root to seed, throughout it’s whole lifecycle. The roots, stems, flowers leaves and seeds are consumed around the world, but some cultures only deem certain parts valuable.

The usability of a good item depends on the value that WE place on it.

In this same vein, let us take a practical example from Baldio of chile stems. Those woody protrusions from the mountains of dried chiles used in Mexican cuisine are often discarded, and for good reason. They are texturally undesirable, lacking in depth of flavour and an inconsumable part of the fruit. But with a little attention and care we have managed to not only achieve the realization of two delicious products, but make the second product entirely consumable, leaving not a single drop left for the compost.

But let’s save this tale for part two…

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But the most recent centuries of human existence have sought to remove us from that connection to nature, placing ourselves in a higher role, capable of designing ourselves out of this web. WE have tried to remove ourselves from that complex network that sustains us and all life on earth. In humanity’s quest to control, we are increasingly powerless to the magnitude of our errors. Our only way back to connection with nature is to embrace the systems from which we came and look to our world as a blueprint for how to build symbiotic relationships and closed loop processes into human designed systems.

So how can this lofty, seemingly philosophical, diatribe be applied to our tiny restaurant in Mexico City and, more specifically, to fermentation?

A zero-waste restaurant’s system seeks to close the loop on ingredients and, just as it is in nature, assign purpose to all elements of the ecosystem. By design, the system reflects nature and soon the web of interconnectedness multiplies until we have our own ecosystem, presented to a restaurant guest as a menu, living with moving processes that enrich one-another in a constantly shifting dance. Just like a photo of a thriving wetland; the beauty is the product of the interwoven processes that built it. Fermentation allows us to observe these symbiotic relationships in a manner not typically found in restaurants.

The rise of the dominance of primarily “dead” ingredients has led to kitchens being overly sanitary places where food should be as sterile as possible. But once the fear around fermented foods has been overcome, the trapdoor opens up to whole new realm of cooking and transformation with untold riches. The real beauty in this context is being able to build an observable, hands-off process that transforms loose ends into pure gold drops of flavour. Just as in nature, by-products create delicious morsels for other animals and microbial life. After the microbes have enjoyed the by-products of the kitchen, we can enjoy the byproducts of their molecular transformation with flavour driven intention.

Embracing the fact that we are part of the system, not separate or sterile, we can integrate our processes of cooking.

What are we left with? A system. Built with fermentation and maintained by humans as participants in nature. In the eye of nature. In the centre of one of the largest cosmopolitan cities in the world. This is the beating heart of Baldío. This is a closed loop system.

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So here are some nice and easy ferments to play around with to get some flavour out of those little fellas.

Tomato Shio Koji

Blend 1 part fresh rice Koji to a 50/50 mix of tomato scraps and water plus 4-10% salt of total weight. The longer you would like to age it, the more salt you’ll need to add.

4% salt will do for a 24-48 hour ferment, while the 10% range will keep it safe to age for months.

Lacto-Fermented Tomato

Collect up your scraps.

Whole or blended: absolutely your choice

We like to keep them whole and just mix in 2% salt to the total weight.

In our toasty fermentation room (around 26°C) we leave these to ferment anaerobically for 3 days. They develop just the right amount of acidity without getting too funky or yeasty but elevating their umami notes. From this point the mix is well broken down and can be passed though a seive to separate out the skins and seeds (see the next section for further notes on this).

The liquid can be used as is, or if you’re looking to store it for a later use, the liquid can be reduced to a thick paste which will last for months.

Lacto Tomato Seasoning Powder

Back to those delicious skins and seeds from the lacto-ferment.

Although the texture is not something you might want in its current form, drying them renders them into a delicious seasoning with a wonderful tang (think ketchup chips that actually taste like tomato).

Pop them in the dehydrator until fully dry and grind to a fine powder.

You can also try adding other flavours before dehydrating, or smoke them for a delicious added depth.

Tomato Wine

This one is also a lovely transformation that folks may find has an unexpectedly familiar flavour in the finished product.

Note: you’ll want to make sure that these weren’t cut on the same board or using the same knife as onions, garlic or other flavours that you wouldn’t want to find in your wine.

In this iteration it is advised to blend the tomatoes to get the best yield. Add them to a fermentation vessel for alcoholic beverages i.e. demijohn or other narrow mouthed vessel, add an airlock and let it do it’s thing. The natural yeasts on the skins will do the legwork for this.

The length of time of the fermentation will largely depend on your preference and the amount of sugar in the tomatoes. If you want to get tekky you can measure the amount of sugar in the initial blend using a Brix meter. Once it gets to a flavour you like, strain it, chill it and enjoy it!

Like many of the by-products accumulated through the process of cooking, there are a myriad of things that can be done to extract flavour, create unique tasting notes and fuel creativity. Drop a comment if there are other things you have done with tomato scraps so others can learn too.

Stay bubbly ✌️

Restaurants have always been a hotbed for abuse and harassment. Physical, verbal, psychological and indirect abuse through long hours in uncomfortable conditions. In addition, harassment of employees by co-workers, managers and customers has been normalized for a long time. An Australian study showed that 89% of female restaurant workers had experienced sexual harassment. In an industry which employs 1.2 million people in Canada, that number becomes staggering.

Exposé articles, such as the 2021 NY Times piece on the atrocities of Blaine Wetzel and The Willows Inn or the most recent surfacing of accounts of the workplace at NOMA, may come as a shock to people outside of the world of hospitality, but for those of us on the inside, we can all relate to a place, a person or an event within our own experiences.

For an industry that prides itself on service, with its very name, hospitality, meaning “a friendly and generous reception”, why is it that this sentiment rarely extends to its employees? “The short answer is, because it’s permitted” states Christina Veira, co-owner of Bar Mortdecai and hospitality educator in Toronto, Canada. Veira goes on to note that the servile nature of the hospitality industry in North America lays the foundation for abuse and mistreatment of people. Along with this, food and drink is fetishized, enforcing a culture of quality above anything else and villainizing mediocrity.

Through this article, I am in no way attempting to oversimplify what is an interconnected web of issues burdening restaurants. The causes of abuse and harassment are deep rooted in our foundations. But to summon change requires analysis of the underlying pretext.

The ‘tip’ of the Iceberg

“Tipping is fundamentally the backbone of a lot of the problems in the industry” says US based Suzanne Barr, Chef and social advocate. Tip culture impacts heavily in the conversation of harassment. Barr adds “it is an archaic system designed as a way to keep people at the bottom of a manipulated meritocracy”.

It separates the restaurant industry from almost all others, in that tipped workers are legally allowed to be paid a lower minimum wage and rely on the customer’s arbitrary judgement to contribute the rest. The Glass Floor paper (2014) showed that sub-minimum wage tipped workers in the US are more likely to report sexual harassment than those who are paid the same minimum wage as workers in other industries.

It is not out of the ordinary for employers to require female servers to dress or look a certain way, before offering them up as bait to the unvetted public. Young female servers have likened it to the sex industry, where it is learned that the more abuse you are willing to tolerate from guests, the more money you stand to make, providing immediate reinforcement to the practice. When it reaches the point that it becomes unbearable, standing up for yourself could mean losing tips, being the subject of a guest complaint for being ‘inhospitable’, losing shifts and even termination. These are real scenarios that many in the industry have experienced.

Said behaviour from guests and the reactionary treatment from managers has long been commonplace. And if the reporting of harassment results in such a response, how could any employee feel safe or comfortable bringing it to their employer? The statistics around harassment only show the numbers for reported cases. The reality is certainly much more shocking.

The Stress of it All

A US study on sexual harassment in the hospitality industry found that high stress environments have contributed to overwhelming levels of harassment.

These high stress/low reward environments take a heavy toll on mental and physical wellbeing. According to Statistics Canada, poor workplace well-being and a low sense of belonging in an organization leads to a higher likelihood of workplace harassment. Both of these attributes are heavily related to the hospitality industry. High employee turnover, unstructured work flows, little to no training and a lack of development paths all contribute to a toxic environment.

Patriarchal Island Nations

The restaurant industry is controlled by males. It is dominated by white men in their late twenties to mid thirties and of an anglo background. I am well aware that I, too, am part of this majority. Females, racialized and queer individuals are statistically more likely the subject of harassment but are rarely in positions of power to make change, explaining why these patterns of abuse continue to thive.

Ivy Knight, former line cook turned journalist, speaks of each establishment only needing to answer to itself, enabling them to make their own rules of how to operate with little to no consequences. “Each restaurant is its own country. Its own dictatorship”.

With that being said, each owner, chef and manager makes a decision on the culture they create with absolute freedom. With the high levels of abuse and harassment still present in restaurant environments, it’s clear to see that the choice to cultivate a toxic culture is being made time and time again.

A Call to Action

Our industry has been decimated by the pandemic. Never before in the modern age has there been a time where restaurants were shuttered for over a year and were forced to take a long hard look at themselves with some added perspective.

From the rubble there is opportunity to rebuild an industry full of the good and do away with the bad. We have proved time and time again that we can adapt to change to survive. Now is the time to adapt to thrive. Harassment occurs at all levels of society and is exacerbated by ingrained prejudices and systemic inequities. As independently owned small businesses, there is tremendous opportunity for restaurants to be leaders in dismantling these prejudices and build frameworks based on equity.

But ultimately, the responsibility falls on owners and managers to make these changes, to do better and stand for what is right. Male leaders in the industry particularly need to steward change by learning, listening, acting and intervening. This industry can be a celebration of food, drink, culture and people. We can achieve more together without the baggage of abuse.

We need to not be uncomfortable with being uncomfortable. Avoiding these conversations will not work. Doing the work will work. The future of restaurants is in our hands.

Once we consider that ingredients can be transformed with the help of microbial life, our perspective needs to make a shift. Suddenly, we become the observers. The curators of a world of life being nurtured into a thriving microcosm.

Whether we are talking about vegetables, dairy, fish, grains or meat, the difference in the journey that these molecules undergo when being cooked vs fermented are wholly disparate.

Cooked Vs Fermented

Cooking allows us to use heat, acid and salt to render food safe, more easily digestible and more delicious. A piece of raw fish can be changed and preserved using acid and/or salt, while heating will improve the flavour and change the texture significantly. Cooking food was one of the most significant advances in human history, allowing for more efficient and less energy-intensive breaking down of nutrients, fibre and protein chains. This advancement resulted in more available energy for brain development, setting us on the path of rapid advancement, ultimately leading to you sat reading this, with tiny computer in hand and data being beamed down to you from satellites in earth’s orbit.

Once food began to be heated for survival, the options would have started to open up, allowing more complex forms of culinary arts to enter the minds of early man.

Although we find the earliest evidence of cooked food some 780,000 years ago, it takes quite a while before we see evidence of humans intervening in fermentation. Tools from milling beer grains have been discovered in Palestine, dating back to 13,000 years. Although we can’t rule out the possibility of early humans experiencing the products of fermentation, maybe by eating fallen fruit, spontaneously fermenting and offering a little alcoholic body-buzz to the unsuspecting consumer, it took a good while to discover the opportunities for fermenting with intervention.

So What?

So we know that humans started playing with fermentation fairly recently, but what does that mean for us today, in our kitchens and homes?

For me, this leaves us with an untapped, almost forgotten resource to create deliciousness and cook using slow techniques. A library of alternative recipes that require patience, time and diligent observation. A slow cooker that doesn’t need electricity, but requires mental energy, compassion and empathy. A process that requires your presence to shepherd it on its journey to something that will make your taste buds dance.

As chefs, we are constantly searching for flavour pathways. And although we may no longer be in a state of need to preserve ingredients, why wouldn’t we if they taste better? Or have improved texture? The real question is, why WOULDN’T you?

The Preparation: The Ritual of the Grain

The journey begins with the rice. Here in Mexico, we use a short grain rice from the state of Morelos, although any short grain rice will do.

• The Wash: The reason for this is to remove excess starch. There are a few approaches. Some people like to soak the grains overnight. It’s entirely possible to do so and some folks swear by it, but it’s important to know that there is some flexibility as long as the end result is correct (which we will come to later on)

• The Steam: This is the pivot point. Koji rice is never boiled. It is steamed, ideally in bamboo, over a perforated tray lined with a clean linen cloth, or a tray with additional water. The goal is a grain that is al dente—firm enough to bounce if dropped, yet translucent. It must be cooked through but dry on the surface, providing a perfect “climbing wall” for the fungal hyphae. Rice that is too wet will not provide a good substrate for the spores and may make it difficult for the mold to take hold and thrive.

The Inoculation

Once the rice is steamed, spread it out to allow it to cool. You must wait for the temperature to drop to roughly 30°C to 40°C. If it is too hot, you will scald the life from the spores; if it is too cold, it will not provide a good kick starter of an environment, but there is still a good chance that it’ll work

The tane-koji (the spores) looks like a fine dust. If you managed to buy pure spores, there will be some directions on the bag noting the amount of raw substrate that can be effectively inoculated by the quantity of spores.

NOTE: You will need to dilute the spores with an inert flour such as rice flour or wheat flour. This will help the spores to distribute evenly. I use a 2% ratio to the weight of the flour, although I know some folks use up to 15%.

Sift the spores and flour mixture over the warm rice. Massage the spores into the grains with a gentle but thorough (and very clean) hand. Every grain must be a host so ensure the rice is well mixed

The Secret of the Wrap: After inoculation, bundle the rice tightly in a clean, damp cloth. Place it in a warm, humid environment—a proofer, an insulated box, or even an oven with the light left on. This is the “incubation” phase, where the air must feel like the bathroom after a slightly too hot shower. Ideally, it should be 30°C and 80-85% humidity.

The First Twenty-Four Hours

For the first day, the koji is often quiet. The mold is beginning to respire, consuming oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide and heat.

At the 18 to 24-hour mark, you will likely notice a subtle change. The rice smells different—not like plain grain, but like a damp forest floor or a sliced pear. You will see the first faint dusting of white, like a frosty morning on the lawn. At this point, it is entirely possible to break up the clumps, introducing fresh oxygen and ensuring the heat is distributed evenly. Alternatively, you can keep the koji as a “mat” and let the mycelium bind the rice into a solid cake. Both techniques can work, just be careful of the internal temperature of the rice if leaving it as a mat.

Check that it does not exceed 38°C.

The temperature of your koji is the heartbeat of the process. If it exceeds 42°C, the enzymes you seek will begin to degrade. Breaking the mat apart, creating furrows or distributing it across more trays will a,,l help to control the temperature and allow it to release the trapped heat.

The Final Stretch: The Bloom

After the first 24 hours the magic accelerates. The mold is now in a state of “thermogenesis.” It is generating its own heat. If left untended, the koji will continue to produce heat climbing to temperatures that will result in its own demise

Monitoring the Micro-Climate

As the clock nears the 48-hour mark, the grains should be bound together in a firm, white cake. This is the “bloom.” The mold hasn’t just grown on the rice; it has grown into it. If you break a grain in half, you should see white fibers of the mycelium penetrating the center like tiny roots.

The Harvest

When you pull the tray from its cozy little cocoon, the air will already be thick with the pleasant smell of koji. Some sense the smell of toasted nuts, grapefruit zest or sweet chestnuts. To the touch it will feel like velvet wrapped firm-foam.

This white gold is now a powerhouse of enzymes—amylase to turn starch to sugar, protease to turn protein to savory umami, lipase to cut fatty acid chains. At this point, it is entirely possible to use it immediately in a ferment. Or, it can be dried at a low temperature (45°C) or frozen to preserve it.

To grow koji is to witness the art of controlled transformation; a reminder that with the right heat, the moisture, and patience, even a humble grain of rice can become something transcendent.

Nature provides us with an abundance of flavors, textures, patterns, and genetically diverse plant and animal life. None of this would have been possible without inconsistency. Natural selection and evolution were the cause of, and product of, natural inconsistency. This process has brought about the sweetest tasting and ugliest carrots, buttery rich sea urchin, and the beautifully decadent marbling of Wagyu beef.

It always made sense to me that the better of these two scenarios was the latter, creating a playground of ingredients to choose from. At Marben Restaurant, where I was for 6 years, we worked with smaller producers, so we rarely found products to be consistent from one to the next. Sometimes the beef tenderloin was thinner and more marbled, and next time it was shorter and fatter with less marbling, even though it came from the same herd and was raised in the same way. Maybe one cow’s appetite was a little less voracious than its friend’s, or their genetic make-up meant that they were unable to put on as much intramuscular fat. These inconsistencies were embraced and celebrated. Inconsistencies made it more challenging to create dishes and pushed us to think outside the box, always be on our toes, and to appreciate and respect nature. In doing so, the challenges of inconsistency were relished, not feared.

One summer, we received the sweetest Ontario peaches. We used them grilled and fresh. They were so incredibly rich and giving! We ordered more in the hope that we would get the same. These were from the same farmer, same orchard, and only days apart. They were totally different. So we were left with peaches that were subpar. Or were we? We preserved them in a molasses syrup with bay leaves, rosemary, and peppercorns and forgot about them. Six months later, in the pit of winter, they were gracing tasting menus with their incredible flavors and texture, giving our guests an elevated Ontario peach while the weather outside was thirty below zero.

Maybe the most notable example of inconsistency was in something that all our food touched at the restaurant: the plates. They were handmade by Dayna Wagner in La Salle, Ontario, and no two pieces were the same. Even the width, height, and weight of the plates differed. Small bowls had up to an 80g difference in weight, and plates had a good half-inch diameter variance. They were truly unique, each with a story, their own thumb indentations, and irregular speckles. The fact that everything we plated landed on this dinnerware instilled the philosophy of embracing the abnormal: the misshapen apple, the under-ripe peach, the fallen immature pear. It helped the cooks to be comfortable with adaptation, problem-solving, and uncertainty. Yes, the plating for each dish was roughly the same, but with subtle differences as to where the leaves fell or sauce dripped, all along with the plate being the conductor of the symphony, shaping the cook’s decision as to what looked best.

In Canada, each season brought differences in ingredients, along with vast temperature swings. This meant that even ingredients that were in season varied greatly based on what was happening in nature. This was even true in the case of flour. We only used organic stone-ground flour at the restaurant. It was unbleached and tasted like wheat. It sounds funny to say, but shouldn’t all flour taste like wheat, not washed-out white dust? This flour was one of the most beautiful, delicious, complex, frustrating, neurotic ingredients we had dealt with. We made a batch of sourdough and let the shaped loaves proof overnight in the fridge before loading them into a proofing oven. From one bag to the next, the loaves could take 30 minutes or 4 hours to proof. Once we got used to the characteristics of one bag, we moved on to a different bag and had to start the experiments again. But how could we expect to have a consistent product that was organically grown in nature? Temperature, sunlight, humidity, nutrient levels in the soil, pests, wind speed, and rainfall all played a part in the wheat’s ability to grow and, essentially, replicate. Their end goal was symbiotic with ours.

Achieving a consistent product usually means sacrificing another aspect. Is it worth consistency if the product has lost all flavour? But it was consistent, right? I’d rather take a bag of deliciously unwieldy flour any day…