March 2020 Archives

My sourdough wholegrain spelt pizza cooked in a home-kitchen oven definitely improving. A 24 hour ferment seems to make the dough easier to handle. This one has Italian tomato paste, portobello mushrooms, raw fontina cheese, oregano, fresh tomatoes, garlic and olive oil.

Come, sit at my table and I’ll tell you a story. A tale of kitchens, recipes, creativity, baking, sharing and eating packed full of love, sorrow, yearning, passion, wonder, hope, change, curiosity and joy. It’s my life and I’m honoured … Read More

What to do with your kid when you can’t go out due to the Italian lockdown? Make Celeriac chips, of course 🙂 We cut the root very thinly, then mixed up melted coconut oil, tumeric, nigella seeds, black pepper and a little cumin. He’s painting the yellow on and then I’ll bake them in a hot oven, turning half-way, for about 35 mins. It’s important, I remind him, to space them out to help them crisp up.

I am so in love with dehydrated, crispy walnuts. I soak for a day and then rinse them and line them up to go on at 40C for pretty much another day. They end up with all the bitterness rinsed away, light and so crispy, toasty that they are a delight. Oh, and of course the anti-nutrients have gone too…almost forgot about that!

Before I came across #westonprice, hummus always disagreed with me. Then I learnt how traditional cultures have always processed grains. Since then, I’ve sought out hulled beans (it was in Italy I saw them first: ‘decorticata’), soaked them in water with a little acid medium the night before I cook and then cooked them for at least an hour and a half. Here what I made yesterday: hulled fava beans, blended with ground sesame seeds, garlic and olive oil.

I’ve been making 100% wholegrain spelt sourdough pizzas for about a year now. I feel like I’ve got the dough and the fermentation sorted, but the transfer to the oven and cooking to perfection is still a work in progress (it hasn’t helped that, in that time, I’ve moved my family from the UK to Italy and we’ve passed through many kitchens!). My 5-year old loves eating the results, whatever. That makes me a happy Mumma.

Me and my boys can’t be the only ones that eat our spare water kefir grains, right? We went through a stage where they weren’t reproducing, but having tried some really dark unrefined cane sugar they are going crazy and I have so many. This lot is for my son, age 5, to munch on…he goes crazy for them!

One of the reasons I moved my life to Italy in my hands: easily-accessible, local, organic food. Back in the UK, it took a lot of work for me to find UK grown and milled rye flour. Here, near Florence, there’s a fully organic farm, championing ancient grains and regenerative agriculture, literally a few miles from my house. That mans I can make sourdough, 85% wholegrain, rye bread that is hyper-local. It’s what I believe food should be and I feel such deep joy at being part of its creation in my kitchen.

I love chestnut flour. This is my first go at a sourdough ‘Pane Marocca’: a Tuscan chestnut flour, wholemeal wheat flour and potato. All ingredients are Tuscan and organic. It is sweet and nutty. This is the closest I have stayed to a recipe (thank you lievitonaturale.org!) for ages and now I’m going to go off on a tangent and change it to suit my two boys: I’ll use spelt instead of wheat (for my husband) and sweet potato instead of white potato (for my son). I think it might even end up as muffins…we’ll see. For now, I’m going to enjoy this one..

Month: March 2020

My sourdough wholegrain spelt pizza cooked in a home-kitchen oven definitely improving. A 24 hour ferment seems to make the dough easier to handle. This one has Italian tomato paste, portobello mushrooms, raw fontina cheese, oregano, fresh tomatoes, garlic and olive oil.

Come sit at my table and I’ll tell you a story.