The first time you open a bottle of Tónico Fermentado Dorado, this is the bowl to make. It's how we eat it at the kitchen most weekday lunches: hot rice, a few drops of Tónico, herbs, an egg if there's one in the fridge. Five minutes, one pan, real flavor.

Why this works

Koji-fermented chickpea is doing the heavy lifting. The fermentation breaks proteins down into glutamates — the same compounds that make aged Parmesan and slow-braised broth taste deep. You don't need much. You don't need to cook it in. The rice is warm, the koji blooms, the sesame oil ties everything together.

What changes if you have it

• Toasted seeds. A teaspoon of toasted sesame or pumpkin seeds adds crunch and another note of fat.
• A spoon of tahini. Whisk into the bottom of the bowl before the rice goes in. Suddenly creamy.
• Wilted greens. Spinach or chard wilted in the pan you cooked the egg in. Tip them straight onto the rice.

What not to do

Do not heat the Tónico in a pan. The aromatic compounds — the ginger, the turmeric, the black pepper — burn off above 70 °C. Treat it like a finishing oil. The bottle stays on the table, not on the stove.

The bottle

We make the Tónico in Pejibaye de Jiménez, Costa Rica, in batches of about a hundred bottles at a time. Koji-fermented chickpea, plantain vinegar, fresh ginger and turmeric, garlic, black pepper. That's it. Read more about how it's made →