Month: March 2020

The first online #ancestralcookup will be Beef & Barley Stew. I’m just writing it up and will have the details ready tomorrow. If you’re enthusiastic about real food and fancy joining a group of at-home cooks in making this dish over the next 2 weeks, I’d really love to have you cook a long. It’ll be super-flexible; you can use the ingredients that suit you. And it’ll be really tasty – we’ve eaten it 3 different ways the last few weeks and been super-comforted and nourished by it each time.

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What I had in the fridge: onions, cauliflower, the end of a piece of fontina cheese and half a jar of tomato paste.

What I made: A tomatoey-cauli, fish bake!

I chopped the onion finely and broke up the cauliflower into small florets. I put these in a bowl with the tomato paste, added a drained tin of mackerel, two cloves of chopped garlic, a generous sprinkle of dried oregano and a dash of red wine vinegar. I greased a dish with lard, tipped in to mix, flattened it down and then grated the fontina on the top. I baked it, at 180C (350F) for 20 minutes covered and then a further 25 minutes uncovered.

We ate it with sourdough bread spread with local lard. The cauliflower was still a little hard and contrasted really well with the gloopy cheese. The boys loved it!

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Are you an enthusiastic home cook? Would you like to cook along with other stuck-at-homers to a recipe you could easily adapt to what’s in your fridge? I’ve been feeling a little isolated in my quarantine kitchen so am working on Ancestral Cook-Up, a bi-weekly community cook where I’ll share a tasty, traditional foods recipe template that we can all have a go at. I’d love you to cook it with me and share your pics and thoughts. Check the link in my bio for information – I’ll be posting the first dish in the next few days.

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6am on a Friday morning and I’m standing, with my husband, in a room of half open, half-filled boxes. We’ve sold our house. We have to be out of it in 3 hours and on a plane later that day – we’re moving countries. There’s been a huge misunderstanding: the van that arrived last night to take our things across Europe could only take 1/3 of what we own. I’m now looking at the 2/3rds of our possessions splayed across our front room, in chaos. We have to throw or give it all away to charity shops (in the next 3 hours without a car!). I say goodbye to my much-used two slow cookers along with countless other much-loved stuff. It’s only stuff, right?

I’ve missed slow cooking so much. It suits me. It suits ancestral traditions. Finally, a few weeks ago, I felt able to get a new one.

Curls of beef and barley stew are scenting my #quarantinekitichen here in Italy.

And part of me feels much more content.

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Raw goat’s milk, still warm, from a farm up the hill a few miles. It took me a while to find a farm and then organise an order, but I am so very happy to have #realmilk back in my family’s life. And my son was in love with the warmth! We drank a little each and then I poured the rest in two jars; one for kefir and the other to sour for curd cheese and whey.

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I fall in love with food every time I work with it. Local cauliflower under brine with tumeric and nigella seeds ready for some bubbly lacto-fermentation action. Magic in so many ways.

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