PRESERVE FOODS WITHOUT REFRIGERATION
PASCAL BAUDAR TEACHES THE ANCIENT ART OF FOOD PRESERVATION.
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER NYERGES
This is a view of the diversity of foods that
Pascal Baudar has pickled and fermented for longer-term storage. (Photo: Pascal Baudar)
Growing up in Belgium, young Pascal Baudar’s grandmother taught him about some of the local basic wild foods.
“But I really got serious about this when I was living in California in 1999 and I began to work with some chefs. I not only wanted to create some unique products, I also wanted to find a way to extend the harvest of wild foods,” he explains.
Once he was living in California, he undertook the study of wild food identification and pursued the preparations of wild foods in a unique way.
“I look at food as an artist,” the way a top chef is concerned about the presentation of food on the plate, Baudar pointed out.
He worked at creating unique food products from wild plants, but he was disenchanted with chefs, who were more concerned about speed and cost, and went his own way.
Baudar, wild food researcher and instructor and the author of three books on the preservation techniques of wild foods, points out that there are about 50 methods of food preservation, which include drying, yeast fermentation, pickling with vinegar or salt, lacto-fermentation, the use of alcohol and many variations of these.
“‘FERMENTATION IS A VERY SAFE PROCESS …’”
Pascal Baudar with a copy of his
Wildcrafted
Fermentation
book
01 Holding up a cabbage, Pascal Baudar says, “Think of this as the world
… there are good guys and bad guys,” referring to good and bad bacteria on the cabbage.
02 Baudar begins the preservation process by thinly slicing the cabbage.
03 Everything is sliced finely in preparing to make sauerkraut.
04 Baudar slices radish greens and roots.
LACTO-FERMENTATION
During a small, private class, Baudar is demonstrating simple lacto-fermentation techniques, showing methods that’ll help preserve foods without modern refrigeration. These methods have stood the test of time. And although Baudar has focused on the use of wild foods, ordinary, cultivated garden crops could be preserved using these same methods.