Read the latest news from Essex Farm in the note from Kristin Kimball’s blog below:

“Miranda was sick all week so I took advantage of the enforced home time by finally doing the two project I’ve been meaning to get to since our beautiful soybean harvest in the fall. On Tuesday night I put up my first batch of miso paste. Miso is a mixture of mashed, cooked soybeans and special rice (or another grain or bean), called koji, that has been inoculated with an aspergillus culture. It’s possible to make koji at home but it is fussy, so I ordered mine instead from South River Miso. You mix the koji, salt, and soybeans together, then pack it tightly into a bucket or crock, and let it ferment for, for this type of miso, between seven months and three years. It is traditionally made in winter, and its age measured in summers. I am going to move the crock to the basement so I’m less tempted to mess with it.

Yesterday, in need of more immediate gratification, I made a few pounds of tempeh, a fermented soy product that originated in Indonesian. To make it, you soak and partially cook the soybeans, then rub them together to loosen the hulls and break up the beans. That part was tedious, and next time I’ll try running them through a mill first so I won’t have to do it by hand. When the beans are mostly dry and have cooled down, they are mixed with a little bit of vinegar and the culture, then incubated at 88 degrees, to trick them into thinking they are back home in Indonesia. I used a Styrofoam cooler with a 20 watt light bulb in it. When I checked this morning, the soy was covered by a white web of mycelium, and was generating so much heat on its own it no longer needed the light…” Continue reading this Essex Farm Note.

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