Adam James

• LC: You mentioned over email that parts of your childhood were spent in places as far-flung as Moscow. Can you tell me a little more about where you grew up, and if there are any early food memories that have stuck with you?

• AJ: I was born in Naarm, Melbourne, and then we swiftly moved to Chicago, where we lived for the next four years. My parents were diplomats. We came back to Australia briefly before the next posting, which was Beijing. That was when I was six until about ten. 
  
  While we were there, we had this amazing ayi (aunty), who used to cook for us. She was a beautiful woman with a heart of gold — although probably planted as a spy, in reality. That was apparently pretty common practice in the ’80s.

I can't remember many landmarks, or even what country we were in sometimes, but I can remember a bowl of noodles exactly.

•  Anyway, she cooked amazing but simple food: lots of bao, and she would often share her lunchbox with us too. I remember she was horrified that we couldn't use chopsticks, so after school she'd give me and my brother a bowl of oily peanuts and we'd have to transfer every peanut from one bowl into another.
  
  I'd say my most vivid childhood memories are food-related, both in China and Russia and from travelling around. I can't remember many landmarks, or even what country we were in sometimes, but I can remember a bowl of noodles exactly.
  
  Anyway, after China, we came back to Australia for a bit, and then my parents went to Moscow, so I started boarding school in Adelaide at twelve. During the holidays, my brother and I would go back and forth to Moscow. A woman named Tanya used to look after us while we were there, and she made this amazing borsch, which has always been one of my go-tos. Moscow winters were freezing, around minus 20, so there's something about that memory of coming back to a hot bowl of borsch that's really stuck with me. 
  

• LC: Was it during childhood that you became interested in fermentation? Do you have any distinct first memories of eating fermented foods?

• MR: Consciously, fermentation entered my life a little later. But there were things I'd been eating as a kid without realising they were fermented.
  
  These are douchi, which I've made from black soybeans. They're very common in Chinese cuisine and almost taste like Vegemite, they’re super-umami little morsels. I remember them vividly from eating out in Beijing. They'd be on the side of soups or sprinkled over stir-fried cabbage. I didn't know they were fermented; I just remember eating them like peanuts because they were super yummy.
  
  Later, I dabbled in sauerkraut, basic pickles and hot sauces when I had Tricycle. But one of the real aha moments was in Japan, when I tried kanzuri, a chilli paste from Niigata made from tōgarashi chillies. They bury the chillies in snow to draw out the sugars and amino acids, then mix them with yuzu, koji and salt and age it for a couple of years.
  
  I had it in a sake bar in Kyoto maybe 15 years ago. I'd had a few sakes as well, but I remember thinking, What is this? Why have I never had this before? That really set me off to learn more about koji and sent me further down the rabbit hole of fermented foods in general.
  

• LC: Tassie doesn't seem like the most obvious place to settle for someone so globetrotting in their youth. What first brought you down here?

• AJ: Well, firstly—I mean, look at it. It's fucking beautiful. That kind of answers the question.
  
  I first came down here 20-odd years ago. My partner at the time and I were travelling around Australia in an old Bedford van, living the dream. We'd spent two years driving around the country without ever making it down to Tassie.
  
  We were back in Adelaide and about to move to Naarm, but thought, Let's just go and have a look around Tasmania. It was going to be the full stop at the end of the trip before we got back to reality and found boring jobs or whatever it was going to be.
  
  Instead, we made some really good friends pretty quickly and never really left.
  

• LC: And was cooking already part of your life at that point?

• AJ: That's actually when I started cooking, because I needed to pay for petrol. I'd always loved food and cooking, but I'd studied politics at university and thought I was going to do postgraduate study.
  
  On the road, I started cooking for a crust. There were some fancy restaurants and some beach shacks too.
  
  By the time we finished the final leg of the trip, we'd decided we wanted to open a café, and a space in the Salamanca Arts Centre presented itself. We started Tricycle with basically nothing except enthusiasm—and probably naivety.
  
  It was a two-year plan. We were going to set it up, flip it and keep travelling. But it went really well, and one thing led to another. We bought a house, had a mortgage and then had a son together. Suddenly two years turned into ten. Eventually we decided to part ways and let the business go too.

• LC: So it was at Tricycle that the foundations for Rough Rice were laid?

• AJ: Definitely. We were very seasonal in our approach at the café, and Tasmania has four really distinct seasons. We wanted to be able to use ingredients from summer in winter and vice versa, and the best way to do that was to preserve them.
  
  The chefs, Megan and I, all became really interested in learning preservation techniques from around the world. And the fascination just grew from there.
  
  Rough Rice really started as an offshoot of the cafe. Initially I did some markets out at Mona and sold super-small-batch condiments through Tricycle. Then Tricycle sold while I was away on a Churchill Fellowship studying fermentation.
  
  I came home and didn't really have a plan, so I just started moving things along. That was about eleven years ago now.

• LC: And where does the name Rough Rice come from?

• AJ: Brown rice in China is called rough rice. The pop-ups I was doing at Mona were basically little rice bowls with different ferments and pickles, rough rice was the mainstay. It's a great vessel for everything I do. 

  
  

• LC: I think of fermentation as quite scientific, but having seen you in the workshop earlier, it seems like intuition plays a big role too. Do you measure and document what you are doing, or are things more by eye and taste these days?

I've studied enough different practices around the world to trust my instincts, my nose and my palate.

• AJ: There's definitely a science to fermentation, but I tend to do things more instinctively. I think I've been doing it for long enough that I don't need to weigh every gram of salt or count every vegetable that goes in.
  
  I'm aware of all kinds of variables, and I've studied enough different practices around the world to trust my instincts, my nose and my palate.
  
  I'm also always tasting things. Even if I'm not actively processing anything, I'll go and pull some pickles out of a jar just to make sure things are sitting where they should be—and because I want to eat them as well.
  
  I use my finger as a thermometer and my palate to gauge salinity and acidity.

• LC:Do you take notes?

• AJ: No. Don't tell the council, it's all just up here.

  
  

• LC: With so many variables involved, is there still a sense of anticipation when you open something that's been fermenting for a long time?

  
  

• AJ: I've generally got a good idea of what something is going to look like, and for the most part I can check it throughout the process. But there are still so many variables. There's a whole myriad of bacteria and yeasts floating around, and you're hoping that through the techniques you're using, you're encouraging and discouraging the right ones.
  
  Even if you're following a strict scientific method, things like the water or salt you're using, or the water density of the vegetables, affect the outcome. There are thousands of combinations.
  
  With something like a miso, where I've been really diligent and haven't checked it for six months or so, there's definitely still a lot of excitement. Ten years ago there was probably more anxiety as well. Even so, when I have that first taste, I'm still a kid in a candy shop.

• LC: You've worked with such a broad range of ingredients. What determines what you work with—is it flavour, curiosity, waste, seasonality?

• AJ: I like to source local and seasonal. 
  
  The exceptions are turmeric and ginger. I love rhizomes, and it's just not the climate for them here, so I've been growing them on a friend's farm in southern Queensland and bringing them down. I think that's the only thing I use that isn't from Tasmania.
  
  Most of the vegetables come from within 40 or 50 kilometres, with a lot from just down the road. I've got some great growers in Penna and the Coal Valley, and I get oysters from the Tasman Peninsula. But for fruit and vegetables, most of it comes from the Huon.
  
  There's a great community of growers here who are doing the right thing—growing organically or biodynamically and really working with the seasons.

  
  

• LC: And how does Tasmania's climate affect the fermentation itself?

  
  

• AJ: Fermentation is all about time. It's a bit of a cliché, but often good things do take time. You have to surrender to it a bit.
  
  I'll taste something and know it isn't where I want it to be, so I'll put it aside and maybe check it in a month, six months or even a year. Often the flavour has moved in the direction I was hoping for.
  
  That's one of the advantages of living in a cooler climate. When you get Tasmanian avocados or tomatoes, they're in peak season. They take longer to grow, but the sugars are higher as a result, and they just taste better. I think the same can be said for fermentation here.
  
  Things often take six months or more to really develop. Through the cooler months they go almost dormant, and I've found that after that super-slow period, when things finally start to pick up again, that's generally the sweet spot.

• LC: Speaking of time, you have perennial brines here that have been alive for years. How old is the oldest?

• AJ: The oldest would be the Mothership. That's actually where these radishes have just been plucked from, and it's in its eleventh year now.
  
  Then there's a turmeric and ginger one that's based on the nukazuke method, which is in its eighth year. There's a borsch that's also eight years old, and I've got a master paocai brine that's in its tenth year.
  
  

• LC: Can you estimate how many different vegetables have passed through something like the Mothership?

  
  

I often refer to it as edible compost because it's a way of not letting things go to waste.

• AJ: There'd be more than 30. It gets fed whatever is going—if I've got a glut of something from my own garden, or there's produce that's going to waste from one of the farms I'm working with, it gets fed that.
  
  Really, you're feeding it with the Lactobacillus covering all these different vegetables. I often refer to it as edible compost because it's a way of not letting things go to waste.
  
  Some things go in and become pickles, but a lot start as pickles and then get whizzed up and become part of my sauces. Recently I had to take around 80 kilos of pickles out of the crocks to make room for the annual turmeric influx. I freeze-dried them into a powder, so essentially it's pickle powder. Which is amazing and punchy.

• LC: I also wanted to ask about your extraordinary collection of ceramic crocks. They're beautiful objects, but the different forms are functional too, aren't they?
  

• AJ: Yeah. The crocks themselves are all locally made, apart from one of the onggi I brought back from Korea. The shapes are loosely based on designs I've come across around the world. There are forms from Pixian in China, Georgia, Korea and Japan. 
  
  I've worked with about half a dozen different ceramicists from around Tasmania to design them over the years, and the different shapes are definitely suited to different purposes.
  
  Vinegars or loose sauces are really good in more of a qvevri shape, which is essentially an amphora. They have a particular circulation quality: if you stir things around you get this lovely vortex, which is really good for redistributing bacteria and yeasts. Those vessels have been used in winemaking in Georgia for thousands of years.
  
  Straight-edged or more cylindrical shapes work really well for thicker pastes, and I tend to use them for the perennial ferments too. Things like doubanjiang and miso I make in vessels that slowly move out and have a fair bit of surface area on top.
  
  Each has its own purpose. It's amazing ancient technology.
  
  It's something I take a lot of pride in and really enjoy. I can't throw, but I love working with the ceramicists.

• LC: You've been doing this for more than a decade now. What are you curious about at the moment? Are there particular processes you're exploring or experimenting with?
  

• AJ: So many.
  
  I'm doing a lot of work with koji—Aspergillus oryzae grown on rice. But instead of turning that into miso or soy sauce, I've been putting different flavours through it with salt. That's been really interesting and a lot of fun, and no one seems to be doing much in that space, which I find a bit perplexing.
  
  I've also been putting together a documentary concept about fermentation culture in Japan, and through researching that I've been discovering all these processes I knew very little about. There are things like shiokara, salt-fermented squid, and narezushi, an ancient precursor to sushi made by stuffing karashigoi carp with inoculated rice. I tried some once, and it was one of the most challenging things I've ever eaten, tasted like a stinky, fishy blue cheese mixed with off yogurt.
  
  And then there's so much more in China as well…

• LC: When we first met, you mentioned you spent time in Kyushu learning about katsuobushi. Can you tell me more about that?
  

• AJ: I went to this place called Makurazaki, right at the southern tip of the island, to learn about the production of the katsuobushi from Sezaki-san, a fifth-generation maker. 
  
  He showed me through the whole process. The skipjack tuna comes in whole; first they break it down into four loins, then it gets poached and smoked for up to a month in these amazing pits. After that, it's inoculated with a specific Aspergillus culture and ferments for another year-plus.
  
  It's incredible. I have no idea how anyone came up with the technique.
  
  He and his family also play Mozart to the katsuobushi while it’s curing, Mozart number five to be more specific. He was playing experimental Jazz to another batch while I was there as well.
  
  

• LC: Naturaly
  
  

• AJ: It's an extraordinary process, but because it takes such a long time and so much labour, it's not really a profitable business. That's something you see again and again with these traditional processes: there are shortcuts that make things more financially viable, but then there are people continuing to do it the long way.
  
  If the documentary comes together, he'll be the first person we go back to film.

• LC: You've recently moved from central Hobart further out into the Huon. Has living here changed your relationship to your work?
  

• AJ: This property is far more ideal than my previous setup, where everything was literally in one space.
  
  Now, with a young family, sometimes my working day gets reduced to a matter of minutes. Sometimes it doesn't happen at all. But I can sneak off to the workshop and potter around, have my time in that space, then come down and help out as needed. And I've got the garden to potter in as well.
  
  More than anything, being surrounded by trees and hearing the river and the birds—it's a very beautiful environment to be creative.

• LC: Does what you make through Rough Rice find its way into how you eat at home?
  

• AJ: Always. Eating around here is often a rushed exercise, but there'll usually be something incorporated from one of the crocks in nearly every meal, and always something from the garden too—even if it's just a herb.
  
  For me, there's a lot of satisfaction in creating part of our everyday meals and nourishing ourselves and the kids as well. They love pickles. They love acidity.
  
  It's incredible. I have no idea how anyone came up with the technique.
  
  

• LC: Finally, if time itself is your main ingredient, what has it taught you?
  
  

• AJ: Probably just to surrender to it a little bit. Don't try and rush things.
  
  Living out here, I feel like I can appreciate time a little more—and never want to wish it away.