Kōji is a cornerstone of Japanese cuisine, used to produce sake, soy sauce, and many other traditional products including miso. 2 The kōji fungus produces many enzymes that break down larger molecules, facilitating microbial metabolism that enhances the flavor, healthfulness, and preservation of many foodstuffs. ![]() 1 Kōji describes these organisms and the ecology formed when they are grown on rice, barley, soybeans, or other starchy or proteinous substrates for use in fermentation. Making miso starts with making kōji-the Japanese word for the filamentous fungus Aspergillus oryzae. It is rich in umami (discussed later) and has been used for centuries in Japanese cuisine as a savory base for soups, sauces, glazes, and other applications. It is high summer in Copenhagen, July 2018, and Jason White, deputy head of fermentation at a renowned restaurant called Noma, is showing Evans how they make their yellow pea miso, or “peaso.” Miso is a fermented paste consisting of soybeans, rice or other grains, and salt. The conclusion reflects on how this nascent microbiology of desire revises prevalent understandings of domestication.įermentation is domesticated decomposition-rot rehoused. The analysis traces the natural history of kōji’s taste-shaping powers through the biogeographical, ecological, and evolutionary consequences of New Nordic fermentation experiments. We situate the rise of kōji’s allure in the context of New Nordic Cuisine, framed as a high-end response to anxieties about globalization and subsequent nationalisms, a reworking of the scientism of molecular gastronomy, and a postpastoral mobilization of different natures for the reconstruction of regional identity. Focusing on novel misos made with the kōji fungus ( Aspergillus oryzae), we illustrate how chefs sense their microbes through smell and taste, and identify the sources of kōji’s exceptional microbial charisma. Here, chefs combine Japanese microbes and fermentation techniques with Scandinavian substrates to create new products and flavors. In this paper we develop the concept of “taste-shaping-natures”-natures shaping and shaped by taste-to highlight these multispecies interactions, based on practices of translated fermentation in the New Nordic Cuisine. Yet anthropological accounts of evolution and domestication have given little consideration to taste, microbes, or fermentation. Virtually nothing is known about the effects of pollutants/toxicants in individual or populations of tortoises.Taste shapes evolution, microbes make tasty food, and humans and microbes have been shaping each other for a long while. Noninfectious diseases identified in tortoises include various nutritional diseases, hypothyroidism, and neoplasia. Of infectious diseases, viral, bacterial, mycotic, and parasitic diseases have all been reported. Much more information is available on diseases of captive tortoises than on those of wild tortoises. An upper respiratory tract disease has been seen in populations of desert tortoise, Gopherus agassizi, in the Mojave Desert, USA, and certain populations of the gopher tortoise, Gopherus polyphemus, in Florida, USA. Although habitat degradation is considered the most significant threat to wild populations of tortoises, disease is being observed more frequently in certain populations. ![]() Of the various causes of mortality in wild populations of tortoises, the interactions of disease and population dynamics are least understood. Most of the 40 species of tortoises are experiencing population declines.
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