Hello there!
You might be wondering what this is.
In Good Taste is a newsletter for home cooks, fermenters and the ferment-curious.
Would you like to learn how to make delicious and gut-friendly krauts, kimchis, kefir and kombucha? All the Ks basically. Plus other stuff like pickles, preserved lemons, vinegar, mead and natural sodas?
Have you made some of those things but want ideas about how to eat them?
Are you interested in boosting your gut microbiome, reducing food waste and preserving the seasons?
Then this is for you.
What you’ll get
A weekly newsletter with a ferment or ferment-adjacent recipe.
Learn the science and practicalities of fermenting and how to think creatively about preserving what’s around you.
Serving suggestions and ideas of how to cook with the things you’ve made.
Cultural Fun, my round-up of recommendations for non-microbial cultural diversions. Plays, exhibitions, books, podcasts etc.
Discounted tickets for workshops, supper clubs and other events.
Why upgrade to paid?
Access to the archive. The newsletter itself is free and each issue remains so for a month after publication but older posts and access to the archive are for paid subscribers only. Those who want can treat it as a week-by-week course into the basics of lactofermentation, beginning with sauerkraut and moving on through brine pickles and kimchi but there’s no obligation to do so.
To support my work. Like many of the good things in life both fermenting and writing take time. If you like what I do and can afford it, do consider upgrading to a paid subscription to ensure I can carve out the hours to research, create and share these recipes.
More benefits forthcoming! Including access to online courses, a weekly trouble-shooting and advice ferment clinic and and a monthly paid-subscribers-only email.
About me
I’m Clare Heal, a classically trained chef and self-taught fermentarian. I live in London and run Sycamore Smyth, a one-woman catering company and cookery school. I teach popular fermentation workshops in London (at the Dusty Knuckle and the Garden Museum) and beyond as well as full-day, field-to-ferment courses in Oxfordshire.
Food has always been an abiding interest - my first word was apparently “more” - and before I trained as a chef I was a newspaper journalist so writing is also a fundamental part of who I am. It makes sense to combine to two as I have done here. It will hopefully be useful and interesting and mildly amusing.
Good taste
I find the idea of taste fascinating. Like a sense of humour, everyone thinks they’ve got good taste. Does it even exist? Is it genuinely a more refined aesthetic sense? Or just a collection of snobberies based on subtle indicators of class and wealth? I’m not sure. But I do think it’s important to know your own taste and to interrogate why you like what you like.
I guess this newsletter is my version of William Morris’s dictum that you should “have nothing in your house that you do know know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” I know all these things to be cookable and I believe them to be delicious.
Thank you
For being here and subscribing and adding to the culture. You have wonderful taste!