SANDOR ELLIX Katz makes no cure-all claims, though some are falsely attributed to him. The food activist and writer conveys a passionate intelligence about fermentation, the chemical breakdown of a substance by bacteria, yeasts or other microorganisms associated with foods like sauerkraut, wine and pickles.
Following careers in education and public policy, Katz discovered this age-old food preservation tradition, which he says is found in every cuisine and culture across the world; his vocation has earned him the moniker of Sandokraut.
The IJN caught up with the mustachioed 50-something during his recent trip to Denver, where he was scheduled to present workshops on fermentation at Denver Urban Gardens.
Such workshops are the essence of my work, Katz says, teaching people simple techniques for fermenting food at home.
In the urban oasis of the verdant and bountiful floral and vegetable gardens at the Victorian Queen Annes B&B in Five Points, Katz shared his views on the war on bacteria, the spiritual side of sauerkraut and food trends.
IJN: You call yourself a fermentation revivalist. What exactly does that mean?
Katz: Fermentation has been such an integral part of how people prepare their food in every part of the world. And really, up until the 20th century, if fermentation wasnt occurring in every household, it was occurring in every community and was part of the fabric of life.
Over the course of the 20th century, not just fermentation but everything related to food production largely disappeared from our households and communities. During that same period, the war on bacteria began to be waged and made people fearful about bacteria.
Today many people approach very simple, very common fermented foods, like sauerkraut, and project fear upon them. They worry about getting bad bacteria.
What Im interested in is demystifying the process and helping people feel confident about fermenting at home.
I see that as a revival of an activity, a skill, a realm of knowledge, cultural information, thats at risk of being lost.
What is the difference between fermentation and pickling and other forms of food preservation?
Fermentation and pickling are two overlapping things. Until the 20th century, most pickles around the world were products of fermentation.
Fermentation is the transformative action of microorganisms; pickling is anything preserved through a specific medium. The pickles of my youth in New York City, which are the pickles of Eastern Europe, are fermented, there is no vinegar used, just cucumbers, salt, garlic, dill, maybe some grape leaves or other seasoning. The acid is lactic acid, generated by fermentation.
In supermarkets, most of the pickles you find are vegetables with hot vinegar poured over them. This is great for commerce because you can have stable products that sit on the shelf indefinitely, whereas the living fermented pickles are much more dynamic.
Why?
Because theyre alive. They are still metabolizing carbohydrates into acids and carbon dioxide.
Living pickles, you have put them from a barrel into a container that is sent home with someone at the point of sale; or if you seal them in a jar you have to keep them refrigerated. Otherwise the jar is going to build up pressure and possibly explode.
For purposes of commerce and longer shelf stability, the vinegar pickles have become more popular, but only became widespread in the middle of the 20th century when the process was developed to make whats called distilled, white vinegar, which is cheaper than water.
There are pickles that are fermented, there are pickles that are not fermented, there are products of fermentation you can describe as pickles, there are acid-preserved things sauerkraut, Kimchi, the sour pickles of my youth and there are all kinds of ferments you couldnt describe as a pickle because theyre not acidic. Wine isnt a pickle. Bread isnt a pickle, but its fermented. Fermentation is much broader than pickling.
Youre originally from New York and of Eastern European descent. Did you encounter fermented foods in your childhood?
What really got me interested in fermentation were the flavors of my childhood. I grew up eating sour pickles, what people outside of New York call kosher dill. That was a favorite food.
Nobody in my family was making it, and we werent talking about fermentation, but later when I started reading about fermentation, I was already predisposed to loving it.
Did you investigate fermentation in the countries where your family originated?
Im very interested in the Eastern European ferments. My grandmother was an immigrant from what is now Belarus and she would make extraordinary food and lavished it upon us.
Ive never been to Belarus, or to Lithuania where my fathers side of the family is from, but Ive traveled in Poland. Ive learned a lot about Russian and Ukrainian fermentation traditions. Im really drawn to the flavors.
I do feel like theres some sort of a genetic component.
For example, I never drank kvass (a fermented non-alcoholic beverage popular in Russia and the Baltics states), which is fermented old rye bread.
The first time I made that, it felt like coming home again. It was like tasting a flavor that satisfied some deep craving that I didnt even know that I had.
Eastern Europe has amazing fermentation traditions and certainly the one that got me most interested in the first place, but Eastern Europe is not unique in having a preponderance of fermentation tradition.
In the context of the waves of immigration in the US compared to the earlier Anglo Irish wave, or even the Italian wave, the Eastern European one has more unfamiliar ferments.
Around the turn of the 20th century there are all these do-gooder Anglo immigrant aid societies who saw pickles as a sign of moral degeneration.
How do you do most of your research? How did you develop your technique?
It started out from books. I learned how to make sauerkraut from The Joy of Cooking.
Then, after Wild Fermentation came out [2003], what began as a book tour evolved into a life as an itinerant teacher about fermentation.
That got me talking to so many people. Ive continually met immigrants from different parts of the world, Eastern Europe very prominently included in that, who would tell me about the foods of the old country.
My initial education was primarily from books and experimentation, but increasingly its from people I meet and interesting stories they tell.
I read on your site that youre living with HIV/AIDS. You credit fermentation with helping maintain your health. Could you share a little more about that?
People interpret what I said in all kinds of different ways. I take drugs. I take HIV meds. Ive read things where people say Ive cured HIV with sauerkraut. Thats not the case.
But most of the people Ive met have terrible digestive problems because of the meds and Ive never had that. I feel that, knock on wood, my health has been remarkably stable. I credit the drugs to some degree, but I also think that diet and lifestyle affect health and well being.
What I try to communicate to people when talking about the health benefits of fermented foods, first of all, I feel like there are a lot of unscrupulous people making a lot of unsubstantiated claims on behalf of particular foods, most notably kombucha.
I think its not reasonable to expect food to cure disease. That said, I hear lots of feedback, and the literature really confirms, that bacterially rich foods thats not all fermented foods, but living fermented foods can help to improve digestion, improve nutrient assimilation, improve immune function and improve mental health. And thats huge. In the last five years theres so much new understanding of bacteria in our body.
In the last 15, 20 years we have the ability to look at communities of bacteria through a genetic analysis. For the first time were seeing the full spectrum of what kinds of microorganisms exist in our intestines and learning much more about their interactions with what we ingest and how that can influence our overall health.
There have been findings that serotonin and other groups of compounds that determine our brain function and ultimately how we think and feel are regulated by gut bacteria in ways that we dont understand yet.
Do you think people in the past understood the benefits of fermented foods without knowing the scientific terminology?
I dont think that the understanding was necessarily the same everywhere. Distinctive fermentation processes developed in every part of the world. Nobody knew about bacteria until 150 years ago.
Through powers of observation, people observed that under different environmental conditions foods would develop differently over time. Through observation, and trial and error, people figured out the techniques. I dont think they necessarily had insight into what was going on on a microscopic level.
Certainly many people recognized it as a mystical process of some sort. Indigenous cultures all across the world have, and have had, elaborate ceremonies and ritual around fermentation and that translates into the major world religions.
In Judaism wine is a sacrament, not some random stuff that we say Boreh pri hagefen [the Hebrew blessing said over wine]. The mystical power of the process of fermentation and the products has been recognized in widely varying spiritual traditions.
In terms of healing benefits, the folklore of many places associated the products of fermentation with healing, longevity. They had this incredible range of fermented condiments in Chinese culinary tradition called Jiang. There was this whole notion [discussed by Confucius] of using the Jiang to spiritually harmonize yourself and your family with the seasons, with the climate.
Is fermentation a food trend?
People are talking more about fermentation, chefs are experimenting more with fermentation, theres a lot more fermentation at local enterprises. But if you look at the big picture of fermentation, when did bread ever go out of style? When did cheese ever go out of style? When did wine ever go out of style? Its hard for me to take seriously that fermentation is a fad when most of our enduring delicacies are fermented.
My big picture analysis would be that after a century of full embrace of increasing convenience in foods and people wanting to spend less time in the kitchen, and less time shopping the rise of the supermarket and one-stop shopping phenomenon people have woken up to the idea that mass produced foods are nutritionally diminished and environmentally destructive, and the removal of food production from our communities is economically devastating.
Theres a growing interest in people being closer to the source of their food. The questions come up, Where does my food come from? How is it produced? How can I be connected to my food or have some role in it?
Once people start asking these questions, fermentation is part of the answer. According to one estimate, a third of all food humans ingest in transformed by fermentation.
The other big historical process that happened in the 20th century was the war on bacteria and the indoctrination we all received that bacteria are bad, to be avoided or destroyed by any means necessary. Science is certainly waking up to the fact that bacteria are the building block of all life.
Was that simplistic understanding of bacteria based on ignorance?
Bacteria were first identified 150 years ago, and the first triumphs of microbiology were identifying the pathogenic bacteria.
It makes sense that in the popular imagination bacteria would be primarily viewed as menaces and threats. It just turns out that were totally dependent on bacteria. Neither we nor any other multicellular form of life on earth could possibly survive without bacteria. Science is developing a more nuanced view.
Many more people are recognizing that bacteria arent our inherent enemy and we need to cultivate healthy communities of bacteria in our bodies.
One way of doing this is with fermented foods.
In addition to sauerkraut and kvass, are there any other fermented foods on your top five list?
Sure, all kinds of things. When Im at home, sourdough pancakes are a frequent part of my repertoire.
But theyre not like pancakes youd put maple syrup on. Theyre vegetable pancakes. I put leftover grains into them, I put cheese and eggs in them, I make savory condiments to put on them.
I make country wine, meaning wines from elderberries, blackberries, plums, whatever kind of fruit I have available in abundance.
I love to experiment and learn new things. My obsession this year has been doogh, which is a Persian yogurt soda. You create a little starter out of bulgur wheat and water that you add to yogurt and it carbonates the yogurt.
Shana Goldberg may be reached at shana@ijn.com.
Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News
