Hey, this is Christopher Kimball. You know, many folks have asked if they could travel to the same places we do while visiting the same cooks, the same restaurants, the same markets. Well, now you can.

Starting next year, Milk Street will be offering culinary tours in partnership with culinary backstreet. We're going to Oaxaca, to Athens, to Istanbul, and Mexico City.

And you'll get to meet and learn from many of the same people who have changed the way I cook. Along with a very small group of fellow travelers, you'll visit our favorite bars, restaurants, and street food stalls.

You'll step into the kitchen at hands-on cooking classes with some of our favorite teachers. And you'll meet farmers and artisans who are way off the beaten path.

So if you want to change the way you travel and cook, you might want to check this out. Trips are capped at just 12 guests, so please reserve now. Learn more at 177milkstreet.com slash tours.

Hi, this is Christopher Kimball. Thanks for downloading this week's podcast. You can go to our website, 177milkstreet.com, to stream our television show, get our recipes, or take our free online cooking classes.

Enjoy the show.

This is Mr. Radio from PRX. I'm your host, Christopher Kimball.

Dandan is when the workers in the field would get fed by somebody who would come through with the long pole, with two buckets, one on either end of the pole.

And the noodles are in one bucket, and then the sauce is in the other. And the key to successful dandan noodles is to make sure that the sauce is super, super flavorful, because otherwise you'd need too much sauce.

Joanne Chang is owner of the Boston-based bakery and cafe flower, as well as co-founder of the restaurant Myers and Chang, with her husband and Christopher Myers.

She uses her degree in applied mathematics and her love of food to make money and also to make her customers happy.

But before we get to my conversation with Joanne, I'm speaking with Brad Leoni, who is the kitchen manager at Poin Appetit, also host of the web series It's Alive with Brad, which is all about fermentation.

So let's just start with the obvious question, which is what is fermentation?

Well, fermentation is where you take in a vegetable and you're either adding some water to it or some salt or some spices, but essentially what you're doing, and this is something that's been happening for as long as people have been cooking food to my knowledge, is it used to just be a method of preservation before refrigeration, but you're essentially controlling the rot of vegetable.

So, what is the problem with a lot of vegetables?

And our bodies are geared to where that actually is beneficial to us.

So, are pickle vegetables fermented or is that is pickling different than fermentation?

Yeah, that's a good question. They can be both, but typically, pickling is not fermented. Pickling usually involves a lot of pickling, you'll make a brine, you'll heat it, you'll pour it over the vegetables, and then you'll let that kind of do its own little thing, and then you chill it, and that becomes like a pickle, or you can just do like...

I did a half-sour pickle, and that you just pour brine and put the whole thing in the fridge, and then you can do vinegars, and you can chop up some carrots or radishes, and soak it in some rice wine vinegar and some salt and sugar.

So, what is Koji fermented rice? How does that work?

Yeah, so Koji is a rice grain that is inoculated with a mold, but it's the backbone in, say, making miso, and yeah, it's a pretty neat ingredient.

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