As consumers, it’s all too easy to accept products as being the sum total of the roles we assign to them. Cereal is just a breakfast option, coffee is just a morning pick-me-up, and chocolate is just a treat after you’ve finished all of your vegetables. But most food – like most of the things that make up the world around us – has a long story to tell, both from farm to table or through history.
One of these tales that has been a part of the culinary narrative for centuries and is only just finding its way back to the spotlight is that of fermentation, namely koji fermentation. Though this filamentous fungus has been used to create seasonings and as a curing agent for thousands of years in China and Japan, it's only recently made inroads into India. One of the people helping to propagate the potential of this sadly underrated spore is Prachet Sancheti, better known by his brand ‘Brown Koji Boy’ (BKB).
Prachet’s nosedive into fermentation was triggered by the pandemic and the need to stay busy, but it was a long time coming. A graduate of the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy, he specialised in fermentation and when COVID brought him back to India, he began experimenting on his own.
His drive comes from a love for taking everyday ingredients and transforming them into exceptional flavours. “Using ingredients like poee and turning it into an amazake, was something I really enjoyed,” says Prachet, “There's a lot of scope within fermentation that helps make ‘familiar-but-not-familiar’ flavours emerge. Rice that tastes like mushrooms, poee that tastes like saffron. It’s almost like molecular gastronomy, something that looks one way and tastes completely different.”
Since then he’s launched a range of retail products which are designed to make koji fermentation more accessible in a home kitchen. He has also launched a number of pop-ups and collaborations across Mumbai and Goa with restaurants, home chefs and bars.
Recently he’s been expanding his spectrum of study to the unassuming cacao bean and challenging it to do more than anyone expected. He, along with many other expert exhibitors from across India will be showcasing the staggering potential of Cacao at The Indian Cacao & Craft Chocolate Festival in Mumbai on the 18th and 19th of February, 2023 at IFBE, Fort.
Where did your fermentation journey begin?
I started my brand about 1 ½ years ago but I’ve been doing this for around 3 years now, basically, I started around the lockdown period. I was always looking to do something within food, maybe not in the kitchen but something that had a more varied impact. So I started playing around with different types of fermentation that weren’t as labour-intensive before I saw a big gap in the market for koji that was widely available in Europe and the states and of course in Asia. I felt there was so much that could be done apart from the few fine-dining places that were looking into it. Those were always set courses and I felt people couldn’t experience them in a way that wasn’t rigidly defined. So that’s why I started creating these products to give a platform to different aspects of koji beyond a fine-dining plate of food.
What can people expect from your workshop on the 18th?
I want to showcase the transformative power of koji and the fermentation process. I’ll explain what koji is, what fermentation is and how I see it in my way. I’ll take them through the process of how koji doesn’t need to be grown on cacao to make certain ferments I’m just using what’s available, the nibs and the powder form, and then how it can be incorporated into different products. Say for example I made an amazake, I’ve turned it into syrup, or a base for a hot sauce or a sweetener. So I just want to expand on how you can play around with cacao through the lens of koji and how the different processes affect the fermentation.
How does sustainability play a role in koji fermentation, specifically with cacao?
With koji fermentation, there are a lot of ways to go zero-waste. For example with cacao, we used the husks to make a pickling bed. Even when I made cacao shoyu or tamari it was from the reused liquid when we had pressed the product to make it solid. Koji gives you a lot of room to play with what aspect you want to explore in cacao fermentation and what works best. You can then decide what to make out of it be it a liquid base, a miso-style solid, or a syrup that can then be used to make beer or another drink. There are different ways to incorporate the cacao plant at the different stages of fermentation. There’s still a lot more to experiment with.
The most awaited creation from this collaboration must be a signature chocolate! What’s on the cards for that?
I have been speaking with a couple of producers to collaborate with in the future, and in the future, I’d like to look at koji as less of a solid and more as a vapour that can be crystallised. For me, it’s all about flavours and I want to figure out how we can get the best value of koji into chocolate beyond just saying that it’s a ‘miso chocolate bar’. I’ve also been collecting orange peels from various bars across Goa and I’m looking into making a zero-waste miso from them and maybe incorporating that in a chocolate bar. In the chocolate space, there’s still a long way to go.
What is it that you love about this space?
Preservation is a big part of it for me obviously, but that’s nothing new, that’s something humans have known for centuries. For me, flavours are a big part of it because once you create a certain aspect or a base, by then it’s not the work we do, it’s the work the microorganisms are doing, we’re just giving it an environment to thrive in. The flavours it creates comes from the release of natural gases and the breaking down of different enzymes. For me, the flavour is what drives me to continue building new products through koji and different ferments. That’s the beauty of it and what drives me to get up and keep creating.