SmartCompany Holiday Gift Guide 2023: Tegan Jones recommends food and fermentation

Being a technology reporter and a huge nerd, a huge chunk of my life is spent in front of a screen and playing with gadgets. To help balance that out I do a lot of cooking from absolute scratch. I turn kitchen scraps into stock, pickle things, had a sourdough starter before Covid, and have a three-year-old miso fermenting in my cupboard. So this small business holiday gift guide is for my fellow cooks and food lovers – or those who want to be.

Another way to utilise these ideas is to make your own gifts for friends and family. I love whipping up cookies, jars of spice blends, preserves, and pickled goodies for loved ones. As I type this I have citrus dehydrating for lavender lemonade and chilled mulled wine cocktail kits.

Fermentation station

We talk a surprising amount about fermentation at SmartCompany, mostly thanks to startups like Cauldron, ULUU and Nourish Ingredients.

Today I’m looking at it at a much more localised scale.

Fermenting is something I properly fell in love with during the various Covid lockdowns. I ended up making vinegar mothers, yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, and of course, my beloved aforementioned miso.

There were a couple of local stores that helped me along that journey. The first was  — a wholefood chef who offers classes as well as sells scoby, starters and grains online to help kickstart your at-home fermentation journey.

I also highly recommend her book, Ferment.

Image: Holly Davis

I’m also a fan of The Fermentary in Melbourne. You can get great fermented and pickled products made by them (including black garlic, which rules), or buy the gear to make your own.

When it comes to miso, you need koji rice to get started. This is a fermented rice culture that has been inoculated with aspergillus oryzae, or, koji mold. You can buy this yourself to make the koji rice at home but it’s not something I’d recommend for beginners. Plus, you can buy it locally instead!

The Fermentary will do this for you, but another great option is Enokido Miso, which is a staple of the Saturday morning Carriageworks markets in Sydney. You can buy an array of its miso products in person or online, as well as miso and sake-making kits. I’m a big fan of the chickpea miso paste.

Local Aussie produce I love

Image: Bruny Island Cheese

I’m increasingly trying to buy local when it comes to my produce and ingredients — especially as a South Coast gal who grew up growing a lot of her own veg.

So here are a few other small Australian businesses I enjoy buying from for holiday gifts or to use in making my own:

Good and Fugly: If you regularly jump on the ‘odd bunch’ produce deals at Woolworths, this is a fantastic alternative for hampers or to include in your Christmas Day meal. Good and Fugly takes that “imperfect” (superior, in my opinion) produce and delivers it straight to your door.

Bruny Island Cheese: If you haven’t gotten to visit Bruny Island Cheese, pop it on your Tassie bucket list. In the meantime, you can order online! Back in October, the company won the Super Gold Medal and Trophy for the best Aussie cheese at the World Cheese Awards. It also has a cheese and beer club you can sign up for if you want a Bruny Island bev and cheese pairing situation in your life.

Hartshorn Distillery: I became obsessed with its utterly unique sheep’s whey vodka and gin during Dark Mofo many moons ago. Great on its own and for cocktail concoctions.

A limited edition bottle of the sheep’s whey vodka. The Dark Mofo bottles were always my favourite.

Demoiselle Distillery: An Australian absinthe distillery in New South Wales that utilises homegrown botanicals. It also makes incredible small-batch gin. You can buy online as well as find them at Carriageworks and Marrickville markets. Having spoken to one of the owners recently, each bespoke gin flavour is entirely dependent on the harvest, so you may not see them again. That resulted in snapping up a lychee one very quickly.

Coffee Connex: A close friend introduced me to the incredible infused coffee beans from this NSW powerhouse. It’s become an absolute staple in my household. I personally enjoy making homemade cold brews from the chocolate x macadamia and maple x walnut infusions.