The best fermentation foodie workshops across the country

Never has gut instinct played such a literal role when it comes to our travel choices, but growing interest in gut health is leading to more Australians making travel choices with their wellbeing in mind. Jennifer Ennion joins a fermentation workshop to find out what it’s all about.

“This is not rotten food," assures Cornersmith Picklery teacher Jaimee Edwards. Laughter erupts in the tiny store in Sydney’s Marrickville.

“When food perishes, it’s the breakdown of protein," Jaimee continues. “When food is fermented, it’s the breakdown of carbohydrates."

It’s a small but important difference and the roomful of beginner fermenters takes note. Most of us have travelled here to learn about gut health and how we can manage our own. I’ve been wanting to learn how to make fermented foods for years and the growing gut-health catchcry from nutritionists has spurred my interest. My biggest concern, however, is knowing when not to eat something. Jaimee assures me that making fermented food at home is safe. She simplifies the process: “It’s the yeast and bacteria on the surface of our produce [that, when] deprived of oxygen, turn the carbohydrates of the produce into lactic acid and the lactobacillus that we want."

It’s this lactic acid that preserves food and makes it safe for consumption. It’s basic enough, until I learn that all the food we jar today will ferment on our watches. I snap into student mode.

The fermentation process

We start with likely the most well-known of fermented foods – sauerkraut. It’s surprisingly simple: four kilograms of green cabbage, finely shredded, with two tablespoons of salt, plus seasoning. I opt for the classic Eastern European additions of caraway and juniper. We bash the cabbage with the end of a rolling pin until we can squeeze water out of it, add the seasoning and pack it tightly into a jar, ensuring we leave a layer of brine on top. It’s a lot of fun and we sip on a fermented tonic and chit-chat as we label our batches.

Next is kimchi, a Korean staple. Again, it’s easy but this time we use daikon (a winter radish), wombok (a Chinese cabbage), leek, ginger and garlic. We also add a touch of salt, sugar and chilli. It’s messy business as we pound, crush and stuff the vegetables. By now, chopping boards are covered with juice and vegies off-cuts. The picklery is buzzing with talk and laughter, and I can see the workshop is just as much about a great morning out as it is about learning a new culinary skill. It’s also about putting in place some long-lasting habits to improve our health, as opposed to adopting a green-smoothie-like fad.

“I want to avoid fermented foods going down that path," says Jaimee. “There is no one thing that you can consume, and it’s certainly not kombucha, that is going to deliver you optimum health," she says.

It’s this desire to improve our health that has seen fermentation workshops bloom across the country. Food continues to play a big role in our travel choices and, just as many of us travel to explore food markets and eat at award-winning restaurants, we’re also now holidaying for our health.

What’s the attraction of a fermentation workshop?

There is a mix of men and women attending Cornersmith’s two-and-a-half-hour Fermenting Vegetables workshop and an array of ages. I join a trio of women in their early fifties, one of whom has travelled from the New South Wales South Coast. The ladies met at university 30-odd years earlier and are starting a new tradition of catching up during culinary classes. So far, they’ve ticked off three. Chris Anthony, 34, from Sydney is attending solo and rounds out our group. He’s signed up because he is tired of seeing cabbage “left looking sad at the back of the fridge" after his regular vegie delivery.

“I’m trying to be healthy and not to be wasteful," he says, as we start making brines.

Although Jaimee may have discovered fermentation a decade ago, thanks to her Russian heritage, she says more people are spending their leisure time learning about the benefits – and travelling to do so. The frequently sold-out fermentation class is the second most popular at Cornersmith, after “preserving for the season", and there has been strong growth over the four years the picklery has been running. Most attendees are Sydneysiders but many are visiting from Newcastle and the Blue Mountains and making a weekend of it.

The class I’m attending goes all too quickly, but I leave smiling, a jar of fermented green tomatoes in my hands. I’m inspired to continue my journey with fermentation, and the feeling doesn’t dissipate weeks later, as my tomatoes thrive in their little jar taking pride of place in my kitchen.

5 places to try fermentation workshop

– The Fermentary , in Victoria, is the place to go to make kvass (a fermented drink), learn about SCOBYs and try pickling.

– Green Living Australia runs half-day workshops in Queensland that focus on vegetables, kimchi, kefir and yoghurt.

– Buchi Kombucha , also in Queensland, doesn’t just centre on making the popular drink, but also offers workshops on cultured desserts, kimchi and miso.

– Foley’s Frothing Fermentations, in WA, offers a beginner’s guide to fermenting vegetables at home.

– Get Fermented is for people living in and travelling to the tropics, with classes about water and milk kefir, in the Northern Territory.

Fermenting: the facts you need to know

1. Put the fermenting food in a spot you’ll remember out of direct sunlight, not forgotten in the pantry

2. Summer ferments will happen much faster than in winter

3. If attending a workshop, take extra glass jars

4. To avoid air pockets in jars, slide a knife down the inside edge of the jar

5. Check your ferments every couple of days

6. The higher the sugar content in produce, the faster it ferments

7. The fridge slows the fermenting process down but doesn’t stop it

Video credit: Visit Victoria/Tourism Australia

The Grampians just might be the ultimate antidote for the metropolis, writes one returning Aussie ready to disconnect from the modern world and reconnect to the Great outdoors.

There are no kangaroos back in Chicago: they’re all here in the Grampians/Gariwerd . In the heart of the Grampians National Park’s main gateway town, Halls Gap, pods of eastern greys are eating grass beside my parked rental car beneath the stars. Next morning, when I see the backyard of my rented villa on the edge of town for the first time, there are kangaroos feeding beside a slow-moving creek, lined with river red gums.

Five hundred metres up the road, 50 or so of them are eating by the side of the road in a paddock. I pull over to watch and spot three emus. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos fly overhead towards the tall green mountains just beyond town.

‘Kee-ow, keee-oww’… their calls fuse with the maniacal cackle of a kookaburra (or 10). Gawd, how I’ve missed the sound of them. Far above, a wedge-tailed eagle watches, and there you go: the ‘great birds of Australia’ trifecta, all half a kay from the town limits.

Exchanging city chaos for country calm

kangaroos near Halls Gap, Grampians National Park — The park is renowned for its significant diversity of native fauna species. (Image: Visit Victoria/Robert Blackburn)

I’ve come to the Grampians to disconnect, but the bush offers a connection of its own. This isn’t just any bush, mind you. The Grampians National Park is iconic for many reasons, mostly for its striking sandstone mountains – five ridges run north to south, with abrupt, orange slopes which tumble right into Halls Gap – and for the fact there’s 20,000 years of traditional rock art. Across these mountains there are more than 200 recorded sites to see, created by the Djab Wurrung, Jardwadjali and Gunditjmara peoples. It’s just like our outback… but three hours from Melbourne.

I’ve come here for a chance at renewal after the chaos of my life in America’s third-largest city, Chicago, where I live for now, at the whim of a relative’s cancer journey. Flying into Melbourne’s airport, it only takes an hour’s drive to feel far away from any concept of suburbia. When I arrive in Halls Gap two hours later, the restaurant I’m eating at clears out entirely by 7:45pm; Chicago already feels a lifetime ago.

The trails and treasures of the Grampians

sunrise at Grampians National Park /Gariwerd — Grampians National Park /Gariwerd covers almost 2000 square kilometres. (Image: Ben Savage)

Though the national park covers almost 2000 square kilometres, its best-known landmarks are remarkably easy to access. From my carpark here, among the cockatoos and kangaroos on the fringe of Halls Gap, it only takes 60 seconds’ driving time before I’m winding my way up a steep road through rainforest, deep into the mountains.

Then it’s five minutes more to a carpark that serves as a trailhead for a hike to one of the park’s best vantage points, The Pinnacles . I walk for an hour or so, reacquainting myself with the smells and the sounds of the Aussie bush, before I reach it: a sheer cliff’s edge lookout 500 metres up above Halls Gap.

walking through a cave, Hollow Mountain — Overlooking the vast Grampians landscape from Hollow Mountain. (Image: Robert Blackburn)

There are hikes and there are lookouts and waterfalls all across this part of the park near town. Some are a short stroll from a carpark; others involve long, arduous hikes through forest. The longest is the Grampians Peaks Trail , Victoria’s newest and longest iconic walk, which runs 160 kilometres – the entire length of Grampians National Park.

Local activities operator Absolute Outdoors shows me glimpses of the trail. The company’s owner, Adrian Manikas, says it’s the best walk he’s done in Australia. He says he’s worked in national parks across the world, but this was the one he wanted to bring his children up in.

“There’s something about the Grampians,” he says, as he leads me up a path to where there’s wooden platforms for tents, beside a hut looking straight out across western Victoria from a kilometre up in the sky (these are part of the guided hiking options for the trail). “There are things out here that you won’t see anywhere else in Australia.” Last summer, 80 per cent of the park was damaged by bushfire, but Manikas shows me its regrowth, and tells me of the manic effort put in by volunteers from town – with firefighters from all over Australia – to help save Halls Gap.

wildflowers in Grampians National Park — Spot wildflowers. (Image: Visit Victoria)

We drive back down to Halls Gap at dusk to abseil down a mountain under the stars, a few minutes’ walk off the main road into town. We have headlamps, but a full moon is enough to light my way down. It takes blind faith to walk backwards down a mountain into a black void, though the upside is I can’t see the extent of my descent.

Grampians National Park at sunset. (Image: Wine Australian)

The stargazing is ruined by the moon, of course, but you should see how its glow lights up the orange of the sandstone, like in a theme park. When I’m done, I stand on a rocky plateau drinking hot chocolate and listening to the Aussie animals who prefer nighttime. I can see the streets of Halls Gap off in the distance on this Friday night. The restaurants may stay open until 8pm tonight.

What else is on offer in The Grampians?

a boat travelling along the Wimmera River inDimboola — Travelling along the Wimmera River in Dimboola. (Image: Chris McConville)

You’ll find all sorts of adventures out here – from rock climbing to canoeing to hiking – but there’s more to the Grampians than a couple of thousand square kilometres of trees and mountains. Halls Gap may be known to most people, but what of Pomonal, and Dimboola, and Horsham? Here in the shadow of those big sandstone mountains there are towns and communities most of us don’t know to visit.

And who knew that the Grampians is home to Victoria’s most underrated wine region ? My disconnection this morning comes not in a forest, but in the tasting rooms and winery restaurants of the district. Like Pomonal Estate, barely 10 minutes’ drive east of Halls Gap, where UK-born chef Dean Sibthorp prepares a locally caught barramundi with lentil, pumpkin and finger lime in a restaurant beside the vines at the base of the Grampians. Husband-and-wife team Pep and Adam Atchison tell me stories as they pour their prize wines (shiraz is the hero in these parts).

dining at Pomonal Estate — Dine in a restaurant beside vines at Pomonal Estate. (Image: Tourism Australia)

Three minutes’ drive back down the road, long-time mates Hadyn Black and Darcy Naunton run an eclectic cellar door out of a corrugated iron shed, near downtown Pomonal. The Christmas before last, half the houses in Pomonal burnt down in a bushfire, but these locals are a resilient lot.

The fires also didn’t stop the construction of the first art centre in Australia dedicated to environmental art in a nature-based precinct a little further down the road (that’s Wama – the National Centre for Environmental Arts), which opened in July. And some of the world’s oldest and rarest grape vines have survived 160 years at Best’s Wines, outside the heritage town of Great Western. There’s plantings here from the year 1868, and there’s wines stored in century-old barrels within 150-year-old tunnels beneath the tasting room. On the other side of town, Seppelt Wines’ roots go back to 1865. They’re both only a 30-minute drive from Halls Gap.

Salingers of Great Western — Great Western is a charming heritage town. (Image: Griffin Simm)

There’s more to explore yet; I drive through tiny historic towns that barely make the map. Still part of the Grampians, they’re as pretty as the mountains behind them: full of late 19th-century/early 20th-century post offices, government offices and bank buildings, converted now to all manner of bric-a-brac stores and cafes.

The Imaginarium is one, in quirky Dimboola, where I sleep in the manager’s residence of an old National Australia Bank after a gourmet dinner at the local golf club, run by noted chef and teacher, Cat Clarke – a pioneer of modern Indigenous Australian cooking. Just south, I spend an entire afternoon at a winery, Norton Estate Wines, set on rolling calico-coloured hills that make me think of Tuscany, chit-chatting with owners Chris and Sam Spence.

Being here takes me back two decades, when I lived here for a time. It had all seemed as foreign as if I’d driven to another planet back then (from Sydney/Warrane), but there seemed something inherently and immediately good about this place, like I’d lived here before.

And it’s the Australian small-town familiarity of the Grampians that offers me connection back to my own country. Even in the better-known Halls Gap, Liz from Kerrie’s Creations knows I like my lattes with soy milk and one sugar. And while I never do get the name of the lady at the local Ampol station, I sure know a lot about her life.

Kookaburras on a tree — Kookaburras are one of some 230 bird species. (Image: Darren Donlen)

You can be a local here in a day; how good is that? In Chicago, I don’t even know who my neighbour is. Though each day at dusk – when the kangaroos gather outside my villa, and the kookaburras and the black cockatoos shout out loud before settling in to sleep – I prefer the quieter connection I get out there in the bush, beneath these orange mountains.

A traveller’s checklist

Staying there

Sleep beside the wildlife on the edge of Halls Gap at Serenity .

Playing there

abseiling down Hollow Mountain — Hollow Mountain is a popular abseiling site.

Go abseiling under the stars or join a guided hike with Absolute Outdoors . Visit Wama , Australia’s first environmental art centre. Check out Dimboola’s eccentric Imaginarium .

Eating there

steak, naan bread and beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap serves a great steak on naan bread.

Eat world-class cuisine at Pomonal Estate . Dine and stay at much-revered icon Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld. The ‘steak on naan’ at Halls Gap brewhouse Paper Scissors Rock , can’t be beat.

Dunkeld Arboretum in Grampians National Park — The serene Dunkeld Arboretum.

For Halls Gap’s best breakfasts head to Livefast Cafe . Sip local wines at Great Western’s historic wineries, Best’s Wines , Seppelt Wines and Norton Estate Wines .

two glasses of beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Sink a cold one at Paper Scissors Rock.