Fermented foods, traditional techniques, and fermentation culture.
Having left the small village where every household practised fermentation for so long, and drifted too long in the uncertainties of city life, I had lost a measure of my own vitality. This is something I have only recently come to realise. For years, fermentation was nothing more than a…
I. Spreading White to Dry, Hanging Gold to Cure; Fragrant Wine and Curling Smoke From the Start of Winter, amidst the mountain ranges of south-west Zhejiang and across the Songgu Plain, the people of Songyang have already begun preparing for the New Year’s Eve feast. In these valley settlements, cradled…
I. Assembling the Culture Room Eight years ago, I created a piece centred on naturally fermented yoghurt, drying yoghurt starter cultures onto fabric. I was never particularly keen on drinking yoghurt; back then, I mainly made it because I saw natural fermentation as a potential medium for artistic expression. Consequently,…
A Word from Foodthink Today marks the first day of the National Day holiday. I wonder if you’ve already hit the road? Recently, Foodthink’s “Eat Well” initiative invited readers to share their home fermentation methods and experiences. We’ve summarised three secret tips and identified one category that is particularly prone…
Foodthink Says From yellow wine and fermented black beans to pickled vegetables and soy sauce, people have long turned to the tangy, aromatic, and mellow depths of fermentation to find the warmth of home and the resilience of life. Across the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, fermentation is woven even more tightly into…
Many view craft beer as a niche culture centred on individuality and distinctive taste. Yet long before the arrival of industrial lagers with their monotonous, watery profiles, brewing traditions and flavour profiles were inherently diverse. Beyond the flattening of taste, industrial beer has also stripped fermented foods of their natural…
Opening an organic sourdough bakery was no spur-of-the-moment decision. To ensure my family could enjoy wholesome carbohydrates, I spent several years learning to bake sourdough using a natural wild yeast starter. Over these years, I have often shared my loaves with friends or brought them to potlucks, consistently receiving plenty…
Anyone who has visited the grasslands of Inner Mongolia will be familiar with steaming pots of salted milk tea and traditional Mongolian dairy foods. Last summer, during my fieldwork in Sangendalai Town, Zhenglan Banner, Xilingol League, Inner Mongolia, local herding households would invariably treat me to these delicacies. Initially, I…
Foodthink Says This October, Foodthink partnered with dozens of co-organisers across the country—including farmers’ markets, ecological farms, fermentation artisans, restaurants, publishers, and non-profit organisations—to launch the ‘Fermentation Awakening Festival’. In November, we hosted four reading sessions centred on Sandor Katz’s *The Art of Fermentation*. The guest for the first session…
In this episode, we’ll take you into the fascinating world of fermented foods—cheese—and introduce the story of Liu Yang, founder of Bleu Cheese, a master cheese artisan from China. Originally from Beijing and trained in IT, Liu Yang stumbled upon milk churning and cheesemaking while studying in France. This “incredibly…
