Fermented food

“What: fermented drinks of roots, bark, vines and dried leaves of several plants, many wild-harvested in forest areas (UWI Mona). Named ingredients: chaney root, sarsaparilla, hug me tight, raw moon, medina, strong back, guinea hen weed.”

“Alcohol: a fermented drink will hold some alcohol (never measured in a source). That matters in pregnancy, in recovery, for drivers and with medicines that clash with alcohol.”

“Natto, miso and tofu are the daily soy of the Japanese table. Miso is fermented soy and salt. Bridge: one bowl a day, thick with vegetables, tofu and wakame.”

“Fermented foods. Miso, natto, nukazuke, shio koji, amazake, koji: the old kitchen ferments. Start small: one fermented food, a little, daily. Pickles carry salt (the old Okinawan plate had none).”

“Roggebrood, stamppot, zuurkool, boerenkool, spek. The winter plate, not sourced as medicine, so told as the food of her generation.”

“Cabbage (Brassica oleracea). Kelj, varză. Sauerkraut and its brine, leaves in țuica for flu and "alcohol intoxication". Leaves on a swollen breast or joint. Caution: the brine is very salty. The țuica we do not do anymore.”

“Elderflower and elderberry (Sambucus nigra). Soc, zova, shtogu, murver, forboz. Flower tea for bronchitis and cough (Kosovo), a drink of flowers steeped 24 hours in cold water with lemon (Kosovo) or fermented with lemon and sugar. The ripe berries cooked into a syrup. Caution: flowers fine raw, ripe berries only cooked, everything else poison.”

“Every region its own: rice in the south. Cornmeal, millet or sorghum in the north. Black rice with Job's tears in Yunnan. A fermented, sour congee, suan zhou, in Shanxi and Inner Mongolia.”

“Yoghurt and milk: from the nomads' herds, and in the texts' autumn advice.”

“Yoghurt beside the hot. Yoghurt is served beside hot dishes or stirred into them: mast-o-khiar (yoghurt with cucumber and dried mint) beside a rich stew or kebab.”

“All sard. Yoghurt beside the hot dishes, mast-o-khiar, doogh the yoghurt drink with a little salt and dried mint. Kashk, fermented dried whey, finishes ash-e reshteh and kashk-e bademjan.”

“What it is. Yoghurt churned with plenty of water, thin, salted, with ginger, curry leaves, a green chilli, sometimes a pinch of hing or a few shallots. Spiced, it is sambaram, the drink of hot afternoons. Moru comes at the end of lunch and at the very end of the sadya, "the final cooling note of the meal".”

“Lehyams, kashayams, arishtams. The pastes, decoctions and fermented tonics of the old care. In the family they were made by an elder or a hired helper. She tells them as memory, and anything a mother or anyone else wants to take goes past the midwife, GP or pharmacist first.”

“Kefir. The sour milk drink. The word comes from the North Caucasus, where it was made in goatskin bags hung by the door and knocked by everyone who walked past to mix the milk and the grains. In Nicolai's house a glass in the evening.”

“Winter. Sauerkraut, frozen berries, mors, kefir, smoked fish, kasha, soup every day, the banya on Saturday, tea from the samovar let to cool a little.”

“Kisra. A thin flatbread of fermented sorghum, soft and a little sour, torn by hand to scoop the stew. "Kisra wa mullah", kisra and stew, is the everyday meal of the north. "If you have kisra and mullah, you have eaten. Anything else is decoration."”

“Why it carries her teaching. Fermented grain, okra, peanuts, slow stews, eaten warm and together. "Strength and balance are not a powder. They are this tray, every day."”

“Sauerkraut (raw, unpasteurized), kimchi, kefir, yogurt (live cultures), kombucha, miso, natto, kvass”

“Natto specifically: highest food source of vitamin K2 (MK-7) and contains nattokinase (fibrinolytic enzyme - blood clot prevention)”