Koji

Amylase turns starch to sugar with no heat and no added sweetener at all.

The mould that makes the drink. Feed it back in and the umami compounds.

Same mould, longer time, more salt. One is the ancestor of the other.

Shio koji: a slurry that seasons and tenderises in the same twelve hours.

Protease breaks the surface protein so the skin browns faster and darker.

Buried in koji overnight, raw cucumber turns sweet and slightly translucent.

A 48-hour koji cure does what dry-ageing needs forty days to achieve.

Culture on culture: the mould sugars read as sweet corn against the sour.

Two enzyme sources and shared tropical esters; the cure tastes of the fruit.

Both push isoamyl acetate hard. The mould smells like the fruit, exactly.

Koji jasmine notes over cocoa butter reads as a very expensive milk sweet.

Both built by fermentation on sugar; koji adds the umami wine never has.

Two wild-fermentation funks; koji adds glutamate to a drink that has none.