KojiFest 2019

#kojifest2019 is an ongoing series of events hosted by culturesgroup. Expect to learn, ask questions, and taste and enjoy great food and drink.

Each #kojifest2019 event includes different guest presenters and participants sharing and sampling different fermented and handmade foods, most made with a koji-centric item such as miso, shio-koji, or tamari. The events focus on methods and examples of how koji can elevate the taste and nutritional benefits of local and regional foods. Through rapid, or traditional longer term methods koji can be used to enhance taste, ferment food or preserve taste for a later time – sometimes years. Koji and other microbes are used throughout the world in many cuisines to create local, regional and sustainable food and drinks.

Koji is the most commonly used word to describe Aspergillus oryzae, a malted mushroom type of microbe that is an enzymatic powerhouse. There are other types of koji that are also members of the Aspergillus family that have their own unique characteristics. Koji has been used for thousands of years but recently with inspired intent to create opportunities for people to share the pleasures and benefits of food and knowledge of how things are made. You might not know how to cook, or even want to, but the artistic, semiotic, cultural, and ethnological background of everything shared during #kojifest2019 will inspire you to become more curious and become more informed.

Presenters will provide tastings of foods that use koji or other fermentation techniques. These include misos, shoyu, shio-koji and how the enzymes created by koji can quickly or over time create incredible tastes and nutritional benefits.Some things will be lightly dressed with a probiotic rich sauce, others will be deeply flavored misos or sauces that highlight a fresh ingredient or can be eaten on top of or in cooked grains, beans, vegetable based proteins and sweet desserts.

• Mushrooms Fermented in Maple Sap with Wild Herbs
• Wild Greens Pkhali
• Porcini Black Trumpet and Leek Nuta with Homemade Miso, Vinegar and Wild Seed Mustard
• Wild Mushroom and Mushroom Miso Tapenade
• Sweet simmered miso
• Black beans with smoked mushroom bacon
• Tucupi miso soup (a fermented yuca broth, szechuan buttons (jambu), cilantro and spring vegetable
• Nut cheese using miso made with sour tapioca starch
• Yucca rolls (vegan pães de queijo)
• Puba (fermented yucca) pudim with miso caramel
• Pickles (kumquat and carrot, shio-koji cucumbers, tempero baiano style mushrooms)
• Rice, garnished (eggplant chutney, date and ginger douchi, cashew, garlic, herb pesto)
• Mushroom Tea

Two very talented contributors of new and exciting things to the ongoing food conversation are joining Chef Ken Fornataro for this event.