An Interview With Chef Aaron Adams | “Fermentation Is Craft”

Fermenter is a restaurant that has become a staple in Portland by making our favorite foods fermented and cultured while using the Northwests’s incredible produce. After 10 years of being open and Chef Aaron improving on his craft, he has launched the much anticipated book: “Fermenter: DIY Fermentation For Vegan Fare”. This book is for those that want to not just learn about fermented foods but also, make some of Aaron’s signature recipes.

I had the honor to sit down with Chef Aaron and chat about what sparked his interest in fermented foods, his journey with Fermenter and what makes his book unique.

***This is a condensed version of my 24 minute interview with Chef Aaron Adams. For the full interview, please check the interview on Youtube.

Vegan Ventures: I want to learn more about how you got started with fermentation and what sparked that interest.

Aaron: I think that fermentation has always been fascinating to me because you know, cooking is so immediate. You have a result right there but to watch something do such a crazy transformation slowly, like sitting in the corner over there. Some of the ferments that we do take a week. Some take two years, so it’s kind of amazing the kind of level of transformation and what we found too is that when making vegan food, there’s some flavors, there’s some depth of flavors, there’s some savoriness and piquency that you can deliver naturally without the addition of acids like lemon juice and things like that.

For example, when you’re making vegan cheese, you can make an analogue of vegan cheese by making some sort of nut puree and then adding acidulation to kind of get that flavor of the acidity of cheese and you can do all these things to find textures or you can use cheese cultures and let the bacteria sets go to work on the proteins and fats and carbohydrates that are inside of your matrix and make something that is not necessarily exactly like dairy cheese but has a character of its own that is vegan cheese. To me that’s more interesting than making exact analogues.

I’m not trying to make Swiss or Gouda, I’m making vegan cheese, which has its own character. Chefs like Karen McCaffrey for example, out of Canada, what she’s doing is marvelous. Working with cheese and making cheese have their own identity. That was an important aspect for me.

Making vegan food is to make things that are interesting and have their own identity rather than trying to replicate omnivorous food and then secondly, just finding depth of flavor like umami, that’s really important to have. Making misos, using koji for finding protein savoriness to break down the proteins that are in vegetables and to make them have the amino acids be more readily available. Not only on your palate, but also, for nutrition.

As far as getting started, I think that when I worked at the Red and Black Cafe some time ago. We had a Reuben sandwich on the menu as tempeh Reuben and they had sauerkraut that we were buying and I was like “guys, we can make sauerkraut!”. I just started making them in soy sauce buckets down the basement and that was like 15, 18 years ago. Then certainly, when I opened up Portobello, I was interested in fermentation, but I really didn’t have the skills to do it. So I would buy fermented pickles and things like that from local makers. But it wasn’t until Farm Spirit came that I really really got into doing more fermentations. Making tempeh, making koji, and doing shoyus and garums and all that kind of thing to try to add layers of flavor.

Vegan Ventures: What exactly made you decide to transition into fermentation. What was maybe the first dish that you started to play around with that you were like, you know, I really want to go down this avenue a little more?

Aaron: It started with cheese. I think that one of the things too is there’s lots of products available but we wanted to be able to exhibit a regional identity. To have a food that speaks to time and place is important. The time is now, obviously, which is to say seasonal. The place is here, Cascadia. So when we were trying to make a food that reflects the time and place, we want to use the products that are seasonal and from here, local.

For example, tempeh. Soy tempeh is the superior tempeh that’s made in Indonesia. It’s the superior tempeh. What we make is not trying to be better than tempeh that’s traditionally in the style that Indonesians make it. What we try to do is make something that has a reverence for tempeh from Indonesia, but using products from this place.

When we were starting to make dishes with hazelnut tempeh and using local grains like karma barley that was developed here in artwork and things like that. It was our way of trying to use traditional craft, fermentation techniques that have been developed by brilliant people hundreds of years ago. Primarily from Asia and show reverence for it, show respect for it, and then do it in a way that also acknowledge the where we are here.

Vegan Ventures: What really compelled you to decide to say you know what, I’m going to put in the extra labor, the extra work and to go further into fermentation and open a restaurant like fermenter?

Aaron: Cause you gotta go hard. I mean we have one life, right? Not to get too sappy on you but Mary Oliver said “what will you do with your one wild and precious life?”. And for me, what I want to do is to do things that make the world more interesting and beautiful. That’s not easy work, it’s hard work. I know it sounds like I’m being really hyperbolic but honestly, the people that work here, the things that are produced here. It’s hard for people who just walk in and look at the surface and look at the menu and for them to say ‘oh it’s a hamburger, oh it’s kombucha'. People are so used to things just being packaged for them and being here, they don’t understand the hours and hours in labor behind it. Sometimes, people will take the things that we made for hours and hours of labor and days and days of labor. Like koji beets take a full week to make. Tempeh takes about 2 days, you know the cheese takes a like a few days, the misos take like a couple months, but they still won’t like it. And that’s fine if it’s not their favorite thing. Some people’s pallets are not for it and that’s super fine too. But we want to have a singular, memorable identity, and we want to again, speak to time and place.

With having a place like fermenter and all the work and love that you put into your food, what would you say is the biggest take away of running a business like this?

Aaron: Don’t do it. It’s too hard. I don’t make any money. I think people have a misunderstanding about small business people. Luckily, my wife makes up good enough living that we can have a house and things. I mean, that’s just real. I do it for love. We don’t always hit the mark, but we try real hard.

What is the most rewarding thing of having a restaurant like Fermenter despite all the work and the sacrifices that you do for it?

Aaron: Being responsible. I can’t remember who said it but somebody said, leadership is a submission to duty. If you’re a member of the community and you feel like you have a desire to be somebody who’s responsible and somebody who has a desire to submit to duty, then you are compelled to duty. So for me, I’ve had ups and downs. I’m sort of a crazy person. When you deal with people who are doing crazy stuff, sometimes people are crazy, you know, it’s just the way it is. What I mean by that is I have bouts of like tons of energy and sometimes I get wiped out you know. I’m sure that I will be doing this until I fall over someday and die. But it’s just the way it is. I just don’t know how to do anything else either. I mean, I guess my next job is probably be a Walmart greeter because I mean, this is my only real skill set you know.

Vegan Ventures: There’s over 60 recipes in this book where people can create these dishes but what else do you want people to really take away from your book?

Aaron: I think the big over arching message of the book is it’s ok to fail. I failed so many times. I failed people, I failed myself, I failed my business, I failed on dishes, I failed my partner. Failure is an absolute part of being a human right but, I think that people get really crushed by failure and I think it’s important for people to be able to dust themselves off and realize like hey, you’re not alone. Nobody, no matter how perfect they try to present themselves is perfect that you can be okay.

There’s an example I used to always give. I have a personality where I’ll take a piece of paper and I’ll start to write something and then I miss say something. So I crumple of the whole paper and throw it away and start over again. Because the presentation you want to give somebody is that I just did it perfect in one shot. What I say is cross out the word and rewrite it and keep going. Show all the mistakes that you’ve made. Show all the marks, show the crumpled up paper even and flatten it out. Show all of those failures and those things and wear them. Not necessarily proud but be okay with it.

Because the more and more you’re okay with the fact that you’re a complex human being who has the ability to fail, the more likely you’re gonna be able to be successful. And the reason why is because each failure won’t crush you. You keep going. I can say this to anybody who’s cooking, just keep going because look at me. I’m starting to come into some mild success right now. I’m 48 years old, I’m going to be 49 next March. Some people are rising stars and some people are late bloomers. I’m a late bloomer. I hopefully haven’t fully arrived yet to where I’ve realized my career completely. I hope I have a few more decades left. I’ve been in for 30 years. Hopefully, I have another 30 years before I expire from this and go into the void. So yeah, be okay with f***ing up.

Vegan Ventures: Why is it that people should buy this book?

Aaron: I think that what this book and many other books do, ‘cause I’m not going to say this is the only book that’ll do it for you. I think that if you’re vegan and you’re interested in our perspective, it’s going to be a great book to buy, but there’s so many books from Jeremy Umansky, and Richie, and Kirsten Shockey, and it goes on and on. Books by Joseph Needleman, HT Huong from science and civilization in China. There’s so many amazing books that you could get into to learn about fermentation from different cultures and different places.

I think that our book is amusing. I think it offers really fun recipes for people, but I would say. The reason why you want to do these ferments and the reason why you want to make this food is that it’s one small link in the chain of human history where we connect the craft of our path to where we are right now. I think it’s really important for us to remain human and to maintain our humanity and to continue to keep alive our heritage foods, our craft foods. Fermentation is a huge part of that.

Clearly, if you look back in time, pretty much all roads lead back to Asia in the creation of fermented foods and raid out through trade and raid out through war and all sorts of things all throughout the rest of the world. A particular type of fermentation, lactic acid bacteria fermentation and mold fermentation and things like that. There’s alkaline fermentation in Africa and things like that that started off separately, but it’s all really cool to explore.

Vegan Ventures: What is a recipe you feel people should start with right away?

I think you should start with lactic acid bacteria fermentation. It’s fairly quick and you can have a product in like a week or so. So that would be like sauerkraut, things like that. I think also the versatility of doing sauerkraut, some pickles, and things like that, people are going to be really surprised

You know, the term pickle gets kind of interchanged with things. When we talk about fermenting, we’re talking about using things in a brine of salt versus pickling, which is using vinegar. Both of them achieve acidulation. Acidulation is what makes a food acidulated, which is to say it’s more shelf stable.

What ancient folks figured out is that if you take vegetables from right now and you salt them. That inhibits bacterial growth and allows the lactic acid bacteria, which is a set of bacterias that go to work on carbohydrates and things like that in vegetables and as a byproduct create lactic acid, which creates that lower pH, that piquancy that we taste and acidity that we taste in like a pickle. That also creates an environment along with being anaerobic because of the brine, creates an environment that is extending the shelf life of food.

So it was out of necessity and then it also turns out it creates incredible amount of Vitamin C and makes it more helpful in a lot of different ways. There’s probiotics, it’s good for your gut. So all these kind of cool benefits. How cool is that that people figure that out?

One thing I always talk about is, think about koji. What the hell is koji? Koji is a mold that was originally completely toxic to human beings, poisonous. Some people in China, like 2600 years ago figured out how to domesticate the mold. To make it not only edible, but make it useful. What it is that they did is that they were able to set that mold onto grains like rice especially. To be able to have that rice be broken down by the amylase that’s present in the mold so that the sugars are super present. So that they could use that now very sweet, sweet rice as a base for making alcohol. Then they added yeast to that, they made alcohol and they continued that and aerated it, they made vinegar and it just goes on and on.

The fact that folks in Okinawa who live in a warmer environment were able to develop aspergillus luchuensis, which is a form of a koji mold that works well in warmer environments like Okinawa. It has a byproduct citric acid so that the alcohol that they make from it tastes like citrus but there’s no citrus in it. How amazing is that? People figure that out without microscopes. People are f***ing amazing. People are amazing and you know how they did it? They did it through trial, error, and failure.

Look at me, I’m a complete failure.

Vegan Ventures: What are some recipes in the book you’re most excited about?

Aaron: I really want people to make vinegar. It’s slow, it takes patience, it takes tending, takes care, and the result, especially if you have fruit trees in your yard or if your neighbor has fruit trees and they let all their fruit drop on the ground. You can go grab their persimmons or their apples or their pears or whatever. Anybody who lives in Portland who is listening, I have an orchard ladder you can borrow. Just send me an email and then just go over and pick some fruit and put it into a big thing and let it ferment into vinegar eventually through a couple of processes. That’s just a really cool one.

I think that when somebody makes something, like their own vinegar, how empowering is that? Right now, where we’re at with our food systems. Is that people are very very beholden to corporate interest. People who are homogenizing and trying to grab lots of share right. My generation, Gen X, we’re really into DIY, do it yourself. So do it yourself and feel how cool it is when you have your pantry full of your own apple cider vinegar and it tastes so different by the way. It tastes so much better.

So I think getting people into doing vinegars and then on similarly getting them to do kombuchas and water kefir. Because those ones are much faster. Water kefir, you can turn around in 2 days and then you can continuously brew water kefir and it’s very helpful for your gut. The other ones, lactic acid bacteria ferments like sauerkraut are cool and everything and I think it’s a really easy entree. I think that’s a good way to go. Then when they get some equipment, they can go to the book and they can learn how to make tempeh, they can learn how to make Koji beets, like we do the Reuben. Once you learn all that, once you learn how to make miso, lactic acid bacteria ferments and then Koji charcuterie. You can make your own reuben, right? Then you don’t have to come here and buy from this jerk over here. You can just go and make your own at home. That’s a nice feeling isn’t it?

Vegan Ventures: Finish this sentence, “Fermentation is…”

Aaron: Fermentation is craft and to me, that’s one of the compelling reasons why I do it.