Miso Project
“This year, we are celebrating beans!” When Slow Food USA announced the theme of the Plant a Seed 2022 campaign to be hardy, nutritious AND accessible legumes, we didn't spare a second brainstorming every which way we could enjoy beans. A bean feed was the obvious answer. But we also wanted to stretch the limits of our collective bean-eating experiences, adding a novel, maybe even outlandish, way of eating beans and one that would embody the diverse backgrounds and knowledge sets within our community.
What we cooked up was a collaboration with San Francisco based Shared Cultures, a small batch fermentation company specializing in koji started by Eleana Hsu and Kevin Gondo in 2020. Their mission is to build community by bridging food cultures through miso and other modern fermented food products. They take flavors we know (morel mushrooms! butternut squash!) and amplify them through ancient methods. The end results are delicious packaged items anyone can integrate into their meals.
In the summer of 2022, we called Eleana and Kevin and shared our idea of making a true “California” miso, using the Santa Maria Pinquito Bean and flavors reminiscent of the Santa Maria BBQ traditions in the Central Coast. Luckily, they were just as excited as we were, and thus began our very special Santa Maria Pinquito bean miso collaboration.
After an experimental batch to determine sugar levels of the bean and its reaction to the koji and fermentation time, we committed to supplying Shared Cultures with 100 pounds of Rancho Gordo Santa Maria Pinquito beans. Tasting the experimental batch, we decided to pay respect to the bean’s origins in Santa Maria BBQ; where meats would be seasoned with a simple rub and slowly grilled over an open pit of smoldering red oak, and among the ample side dishes was always a brothy bowl of sweetly spiced pinquito beans.
In January 2023, we joined Shared Cultures in their San Francisco kitchen space to prepare the mixture that would become miso. Just preparing the ingredients for the miso is a multi-day process! Organic heirloom rice from Koda Farms is inoculated to make koji, the starter culture, and beans are cooked and cooled the day before. It all comes together in the miso mash with salt from San Francisco Salt Co. harvested from the Pacific Ocean, and the addition of Oaktown Spice's bold Santa Fe spice blend. What comes out is a rusty-colored grainy blend, more “rice and beans” than miso, as Eleana jokes. However, the taste was already phenomenal, not to mention how it embodied the myriad of natural resources found regionally. With a whole lot of muscle, and especially Kevin’s barrel-packing expertise, the miso mash was packed up to ferment away for a couple of months.
Eight months later, the miso had matured and was ready to be unpacked from the barrels and readied to be distributed. Time and some vigorous enzymatic activity had super-charged the fermentation mash with some serious flavor. The miso was intensely savory and earthy, with a smoky sweetness reminiscent of slow cooked beans, evoking the flavors of those huge community cookouts famous in California's Santa Mari region.
Pooled on top of the full barrels was tamari, the thick and glossy by-product of miso aptly dubbed “liquid gold.” (And while there wasn’t enough here for retail sale, Shared Cultures does sell tamari from other ferments here!).
And now it was time for our miso’s public unveiling: Fermentation Happy Hour and Miso Launch on September 15th at Hammerling Wines celebrating all things fermented and featuring our very special Santa Maria Pinquito bean! Lou from Rancho Gordo had a big old pot of Pinquitos cooked simply and deliciously, letting the bean’s natural flavors shine. Brian & Jeannette from Café 15 whipped up a bean salad and chicken dish starring none other than the new miso. Decked out with fermentation gear, Elizabeth at Preserved (with Willow as her sidekick) joined the stage lineup with a sauerkraut demo. Last but not least, Wendy & Felipe from Fox Tale Fermentation Project came all the way from San Jose with their emporium of brews and ferments. They supplied the most vibrant and mouth watering green gazpacho and cultured green sunflower spread paired with a selection of beers, with fabulous names and stories like Loquacious Loquat and Rosy Cheeks. Eleana and Kevin brought together the whole program with tastings of their ferments and on stage sharing their knowledge of misos and the ups and downs of owning a small food business in San Francisco. Above all, the evening became a community fermentation love fest - truly building community through koji!
For the final stretch of this momentous project, from September to October, restaurants around the Bay Area featured the Santa Maria Pinquito bean miso on their menus, in a range of dishes and cuisines. Talk about taking miso to new heights! We’re especially grateful to our partners who donated a percentage of sales to Slow Food East Bay.
So finally, nearly two years on, we can say we’ve come a long way in promoting the humble Santa Maria Pinquito bean, and hopefully have even added to its legacy. From the Ark of Taste to our Plant a Seed garden plots to a sensationally savory ferment included in a vinaigrette and basted on roasted carrots, with our partners’ efforts this bean has been sown across our diverse food scene. We have so much to thank for Shared Cultures for bringing this miso to life, and are grateful to have been invited into their space to learn more about how they’ve connected their heritage with their passion for fermentation and integrating local and foraged foods in their products.
Let’s keep eating beans in all manners and forms, saving seeds, and finding ways to engage with our local small food businesses who make our food systems that much more healthful and scrumptious.
