What’s cooking?

I render lard in a slow cooker. After it’s been going 6/7 hours and there’s not much more liquid fat coming out, I rescue the cracklings and transfer them to the cast iron pan to crisp up further.
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We then eat these cracklings (they are called niblets in our home!) on everything. They are wonderful on salads or cooked vegetables, sprinkled over sourdough or as ‘croutons’ on soups before serving. I love oatcakes topped with them (I’ll post a pic in my story!) and include them in bread-making, as our ancestors have done for many years.
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I’ve got a recipe on my site (in the resources section of www.ancestralkitchen.com) which has a recipe for a sourdough version of a traditional Italian crackings bread – pan di ciccioli. If you have cracklings around, it’s a delicious way to enjoy every part of the lard-making process!
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How do you eat your cracklings?!

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Everything we eat is an opportunity for us to get closer. Closer to the plant, the farmers, the soil and the environment, yes…but *also* closer to ourselves – to understanding what we care about and why, involving ourselves in the process, using our bodies, and in doing so learning on a deep level something ‘more’.
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That something ‘more’ is beautiful and it’s what being engaged with our food offers us.
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But we have to be gifted this opportunity to get closer to our food and then have the strength to heed the call. It ain’t easy. When I was 18, driven by addiction, I regularly visited the local supermarket and bought kilogram bars of sugar-laden white chocolate. I took these bars home and ate them alone in my bedroom, often in one sitting. I used chocolate as a way out.
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Nearly 30 years later, I sit here shelling home-roasted cacao beans that I chose based on their variety and the farm they came from. I will make these into a 95% cacao chocolate in my own kitchen, without the help of machinery that costs chocolatiers thousands of pounds. The resulting chocolates will last me at least a few weeks and I’ll make tea with the cacao husks that come off in the process.
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It was my failing health that gifted me the opportunity to start doing things differently. For so many people who I talk to here, that’s also the case. My prayer is that we’d all be gifted the opportunity to see there’s another way (and want to take it) *without* being ill…through curiosity, taste sensation, farm visits, reading, a friend, a podcast.
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Because tasting chocolate like this, supporting farmers, bringing back to life ancestral traditions, giving a damn…they are things that can fill a life with *such* joy and make it *so* worth living.

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Long-matured oat and honey cookies.
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I finally have a good-looking cookie…I can’t tell you how many cookies my family have had to eat to get to these photogenic ladies 🙂
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I wanted to keep them simple. The dough is based on equal amount of oat flour and honey, ‘fermented’ together for 6 weeks. Then, before baking, I add butter, spices and baking powder.
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Along the way I’ve learnt how cookies baked with butter are liable to spread more than those baked with oil (as the dough is more solid and therefore more susceptible to ‘melting’ in the oven) and also how refrigerating dough before baking really helps cookies hold their shape better.
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This recipe will go into the oat cookbook I’m dreaming of writing. If, in the meantime, you love oats, check out my $8 course ‘Fermenting Oats’ at @thefermentationschool. Or, if you fancy having a go at a long-matured/fermented cookies in general, there’s an article on my site explaining how to make them. You can find a link in my bio under the recipes section.

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When I read Rebecca Holden’s article about how she has become ‘one of the herd’ at the dairy farm she looks after, I was mesmerised and knew I wanted to bring her and her work to listeners of @ancestralkitchenpodcast.
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Our chat touched me; I was left in awe of the daily life of @hafodcheese. I learnt much about the incredible sensitivity of the cows, how Rebecca communicates with them and what they’ve taught her. She showed me how it’s *all* interconnected – the landscape, the cows, the husbandry, the team, the milkings…they all create the beautiful raw cheese produced onsite (which I’m really hoping to try this summer!).
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We also talked about another thing super-exciting to me: the heritage black oats that the farm is including in its rotation as part of the @thegaiafoundation revival project.
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If you’re subscribed, the episode is in your feed. If not, find us on your podcast app (@farmandhearth and I are at Ancestral Kitchen Podcast) or you can stream/download from my site (link is in my profile)

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My 9-year-old son’s breakfast:
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In the glass is Boza, the ancestral fermented drink made from millet that is traditional in Turkey and the Balkans (you can hear more about it in the latest @ancestralkitchenpodcast episode ‘What Fermented Drinks Can I Make?’). It’s fizzy, sweet, tangy and full of probiotics; my son loves it.
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On the plate is apple and pecorino cheese (both from the local cooperative @vicaspontassieve) and a home-made bean-to-bar 95% cacao chocolate from my last batch.
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It’s really important to me that I can put together my son’s breakfast quickly. He eats at 6.30am. This plate is flavourful, nutritious and, importantly, it only took me 5 minutes to put together. That means that not only could I get all his stuff ready for school and tend my ferments, but I also got an early morning cup of tea and a quiet sofa moment before the day was unleashed!
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If you want to have a go at my son’s two favourites, video courses for Boza and Bean-to-Bar Chocolate are available in the ‘courses’ section of my website 🙂

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Do you love liver like I love liver?
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Or is liver a food you can’t stand?
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I’ve rarely come across such a divisive food. I love it and I know lot of people who do. But I also hear from many @ancestralkitchenpodcast listeners who *really* want to love it, but just can’t.
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If you want to love liver, but aren’t there yet, here are my suggestions:
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1/ Start with chicken liver, it’s the mildest
2/ Make pate (@almostbananas has an amazing beef liver pate recipe that doesn’t taste like beef liver!)
3/ Combine it with muscle meat (I make a burger that is 3:1 ground beef to pork liver – you can also add it (and other offal) to meatloaf and lasagna)
4/ Learn different ways of cooking it (Janine at @offallygoodcooking has a veritable encyclopedia of offal recipes on her website)
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And if all fails, or whilst you’re weaning yourself on (because you want to be weaning yourself on – liver is the most nutrient-dense meat there is) you can opt for liver capsules. @one_earth_health, current sponsors of the podcast, have a 5% discount for listeners – check the show notes of our recent episodes.
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And, before I go, if you’re a liver-lover, how about a raw liver tonic?! @offallygoodcooking makes one and talked about it in the recent two-parter interview she did with @fornutrientssake and @nourishthelittles of @modernancestralmamas. The episodes, a deep dive into all things offal, were so informative – go listen! @farmandhearth and I are hoping we can get Janine to you on Ancestral Kitchen Podcast soon 🙂
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p.s. On the plate: Pig liver from @valledelsasso, home-made spelt sourdough (book coming soon!) spread with home-rendered lard, local salad and, in the espresso cup, 24g of sauerkraut (yes, I measure my sauerkraut…that’s for another post!)

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Rye sourdough breads work so much better if they are made with with a large portion of pre-fermented dough. That means, instead of making a starter with 10% of the flour weight (which is what I do with my spelt breads), I will most often preferment around 30% of the flour.
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Here’s a rye preferment that’s been rising overnight. It’s about to go into a mix with more rye, some salt, some water and a touch of honey.
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Making rye bread like this means the yeasts and bacteria which rise my bread will have a chance to do their job without being degraded by a ‘nasty’ enzyme in rye which can ruin the whole show – the acidic environment created by the large preferent protects them!
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I’ve posted a video in my stories today showing the ready-to-use preferment. It’s a clip from my course at @thefermentationschool Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics.
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If you’ve been think of trying your hand at rye sourdough this course is for you. It’ll walk you through creating a wholegrain rye starter, two breads, a cake and pancakes, even if you’re completely new to sourdough baking.

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