Month: April 2021

This – a photo of me aged 20 – is the most personal picture I’ve shared since starting my Ancestral Kitchen profile here a year ago.
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And it feels delicate. But at the same time, I am so moved to share – as it helps illustrate *why* I do what I do in my kitchen everyday and just what it has helped heal in my life.
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In the second episode of @ancestralkitchenpodcast, I say to my co-host Andrea:
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“You can look at someone and think, oh, they’re thin, or they’re beautiful, or they’ve got good skin – I had terrible skin, and I spent my entire adolescence overweight and being bullied….and it’s through going into that, and addressing the problems that I had, and facing them, that I’ve managed to move to where I am.”
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Not only has facing my food issues brought me to *such* a joyful, healthy, unusual and tasty place with my food creations, but in that process (which is still ongoing!), I have healed and am healing so much more than just my body.
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I hope that by sharing my kitchen joy plus a little of my story (including this picture), I’ll impart the depth, joy and healing available through food. I’ve changed mine and it’s changing me.
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You can download the three currently-released Ancestral Kitchen podcasts, including the ‘Meet Alison’ episode, via the link in my profile or by searching for it in your podcast player.
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If you have comments or would like to share anything of your food story, do let me know. Even though I may seem all official and that, with a podcast, I’m just me, in my kitchen, getting on with the things that need doing 🙂

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I’ve cooked cow’s heart 4 times in the last 6 weeks! I was determined to find out the easiest/tastiest way to cook a whole heart.
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I’ve brined a whole heart, brined sliced heart, slow-cooked a whole heart, slow-cooked sliced heart and fried sliced heart.
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And my conclusion: Slow-cooking a whole heart is by far the easiest. No fighting to slice the muscle-meat, no faffing with extra soaking. And the taste leaves nothing to be desired. It is so good. On top of this, you also get a divine broth to use as sauce or in other dishes.
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Heart is so often overlooked. It’s not expensive, it’s lean, it’s really tasty and, slow-cooked, it’s really easy. As soon as you get it home, put in in your slow cooker with a lot of water, an onion and some carrot/celery then turn it on low and leave it overnight.
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And if you cook a whole one, you’ll have tonnes of leftovers. Chunks of it even freeze well when cooked.
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Here’s one of our recent lunches: heart with a gravy made of the broth, local vegetables, my sourdough and home-made lard.
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Hearts and lard back-fat thanks to @lavalledelsasso and all the veg thanks to wonderful Italian producers.

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My beer’s ready!
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And I’ve learnt so much the last week.
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This is a 5,000-year-old recipe which has Egyptian roots. It uses barely-cooked bread to provide most of the fermentation power. I made mine with local spelt, which I malted (sprouted) myself.
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When you think of beer, you think of men, right?! Me too, until I listened to @rootkitchens talking on @missingwitches earlier this week. Until recently it was *women* who were the beer-makers. They took it to market, wearing pointy hats so they’d be noticed, carrying it in a cauldron. Sound familiar?! They did this until society starter a smear campaign against them, these women, these ‘witches’.
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I feel like I’ve opened a box and have so much more reading to do.
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And I feel heartened to know that I am stepping in the footprints of my English female ancestors as I bring this brew to life in my kitchen.

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This is a Yes But Hot Cross Bun.

Yes, a Hot Cross Bun.
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But…
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It’s sourdough.
It’s local spelt.
It uses flax egg, not a real egg.
It doesn’t have any sugar in.
It’s topped with lard!
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Toasted Hot Cross Buns where one of my favourite foods when I was younger. When I was younger, I ate a lot differently to how I do now. This year, spurred on by @ellys_everyday fabulous recipe, I wanted to bring them back and show my son how to make them.
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He doesn’t eat egg, so we used flax. I don’t eat sugar, so we left out all the sweeteners and halved the dried fruits.
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The smell was heavenly (don’t spices rock?!). The taste was wonderful. Amazing how, when you’re not used to sweet, you taste sweet so intensely.
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And the lard, I’d never have guessed, but boy, it works!
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I asked my two boys what they thought of my ‘modified’ tradition. The big one said, “I’m not complaining”, the small one said, “Mum, they are looovely!”
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Success.

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Ancestral chocolate recipes? Yes, please!
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It’s super-sunny today. The video’s a bit bright. But I couldn’t not share! I’m so excited (as you can probably tell).

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This sourdough bread was made with spent sprouted spelt I sieved from my beer. I am astounded by how good it is. The crumb is so soft and the flavour really deep.
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It feels incredibly good to have sprouted the spelt, made bread with it, made beer with the bread and now be making bread again with the big grains I sieved out. To watch the process come full circle in my hands has been a wonder.
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In addition to the big sprouted spelt berries used here, I also had another type of sieved ‘waste’ that was much finer, like soaked flour. This isn’t gong to waste either – I’ve got porridge plans for it.
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I’ve podcast news too – finally we are on iTunes! If you use iTunes, go ahead and look for us – Ancestral Kitchen – we’re real 🙂 Thank you to my hubby for helping me navigate the Apple world from a non-Apple device. I’m showing my gratitude to him by dedicating my first batch of spelt beer to him 🙂

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Spelt beer made to a 5,000-year-old process is coming to life! After 2 days of fermentation (in the inside of my slow cooker as it’s the biggest thing I had!), water, spelt sourdough starter, spelt under-cooked bread and sprouted spelt has become ‘beer’.
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Here are my 4 bottles, which I’m flavouring with interesting things and leaving for a day or so to carbonate.
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And the stuff in the bowl is the left over ‘mash’. I just can’t bring myself to let this out of my kitchen, so my next task, whilst the beer is maturing, is to make bread with it.
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It feels so whole to be seeing this through from grain to bread to beer and to bread again.
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Planning to put all the videos I couldn’t help taking in my story. I have a new highlight – Bread & Beer 🙂

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