Year: 2022

I love lardo on pizza. Not only does the fat come out, making the whole thing glisten, but the remaining bits crisp up giving a salty crunch.
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This is #sourdoughspelt pizza (with home-cured lardo) cooked on the stove in my cast iron pan! Thanks to @charlieb_eattheearth who shared this method with me a few weeks back. She made pizza this way on the road when she travelled with her family on @babybusadventures around Europe.
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Hoping to get Charlie on @ancestralkitchenpodcast soon. I’m so interested to hear her experience of attempting to eat ancestrally whilst living, with two little ones, on four wheels.
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Meantime, the ancestral ale we drank with this pizza is in my highlights today, along with more pizza pictures and, if I can get the tech to work, Charlie’s method!
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Let me know if you want to give the stove-top pizza method a go 🙂

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Food cannot be separated from politics, and hence, through the actions we take every day in our kitchens we can make a difference to the systems that we live under.
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I feel super-strongly about at-home, wild-yeast breads as a sane alternative to the whipped-to-fluffy plastic loaves in our supermarkets.
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Thankfully, @thefermentationschool let me get some of my passion onto (virtual) paper by publishing my article, Why Sourdough Bread-Making is a Political Act. The link is at the top of my linktr.ee. Go read and tell me if you agree!!

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I love it when the goodies in my ginger beer make it super-fizzy!
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More pics in stories today.
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Happy Wednesday from my (sunny) kitchen to yours.

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I like to keep breakfast simple. I mostly choose something that’s already in the fridge and I like to have 2 or 3 things on repeat. My creativity has time for expression later in the day when I haven’t got to get a 7-year-old fed, watered and out of the house.
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This is where sowans – the fermented Scottish oat preparation – is a wonder. I grabbed this pre-made jar from the fridge this morning. I poured off the probiotic liquid and drank some whilst I heated up the porridge for my breakfast.
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Add my porridge staples – ground linseed, a few soaked almonds, a spoon of barley miso and a generous drizzle of local olive oil and I was done.
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Despite the Scottish and Japanese influences, all of this was grown in Italy, which makes me smile.
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Check my story today for a couple of videos of how I prepare the sowans. My course on how to do it is available over at @thefermentationschool

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If you want to improve your relationship with food, get closer to it.
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At 20 years old, weighing more than 280lbs (130kg) I knew no other food source than the supermarket. I used to go to my local one, buy kilogram bars of chocolate and eat them, in one go, in my bedroom.
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Many years on, my chocolate has a different story. I source the raw beans myself, roast them on the stove, take the shells off my hand, grind them in my kitchen, mix into a paste and wait for the deliciousness to set before eating.
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Many of the foods I eat have this kind of work behind them – the bread, the lard, the beer. And my relationship with my food and my body has completely changed. There is just no way I’d eat more than a serving of this chocolate at one time; I am satisfied with so much less. Partially it’s the quality, partially it’s the work that’s gone into it, and partially it’s the changes that tipping my life upside down this way has wrought.
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This transformation didn’t happen overnight – it’s been over 25 years since my supermarket chocolate binging sessions – but bit by bit, the deeper I have dived into my food, the closer I have gotten to its source and its processing, the more grounded, satisfied and fulfilled I have felt.
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Besides all of what I’ve written above, the joy it’s brought me is amazing. Playing with your food – in every sense – is such a soul and sense sustaining thing to do.
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These beans brought me a lot of joy in my kitchen this morning. I’d love to know what’s cooking/fermenting.making has brought a smile to your face the last few days 🙂

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Fermented potatoes for lunch (with accidental malt vinegar)!
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These white potatoes were in a 5g salt to 1 cup water brine for 3 days before I drained and baked them.
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Coincidentally, my malt vinegar experiment (which started accidentally when I I left some spent malted grains (previously used for ancestral ale-making) in the fridge for too long) was ready just at the right time. I sprinkled it over the chips!
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I’ve got another potato ferment on the go – sweet potato this time, with rosemary and garlic in the brine.
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Meantime, one more batch of these to eat. Thanks @kirstenkshockey for the potato inspiration 🙂
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Another pic of the chips and one of my malt vinegar fermenting on the grains in my story today!

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What ingredients do you associate with Italian cooking?
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I bet olive oil is near the top of your list. Italians have been using it since time immemorial, right?
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That’s what I thought till I read @historicalitalianfood’s fabulous collection of interviews with Italian women, aged 90+. Again and again (as you can see from my pictures – swipe to read) they used lard. Lard to fry, cured lard for pasta sauces, lard to preserve.
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In these womens lives (they talk about the 1920s-40s and beyond) olive oil hardly ever features.
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The common belief that Italians have always used olive oil is untrue.
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So how did we get it so wrong? And what can that tell us? Have a read of my short blog post (top link in my linktr.ee today) and then dive into the beautiful book ‘Chewing the Fat’ by Karima of @historicalitalianfood. You’ll be amazed and moved.
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And if you don’t already, cook with lard. It is the most delicious and healthy fat plus locally-sourced from a responsible farmer, it’s an ecologically-sound choice

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Yes, we have home-made chocolate today, but really, in my mind, nothing shouts “I love you” more than making your family fresh bread.
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This is a wholegrain spelt sourdough, risen with a wholegrain rye starter. It is one of the breads that works for my family. But bread should not be prescriptive – that’s why when @farmandhearth and I put a bread prompt in the @ancestralkitchenpodcast 2022 challenge, we made it all-emcompassing: “Make a bread that works for you and your family”.
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Whether it’s wheat, spelt, rye, buckwheat, gluten-free, lectin-free, gaps or paleo, there’s a bread out there that will serve *you*. And getting your hands in the dough, being part of the alchemy of bread can bring you much joy!
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I’ll be posting some of my ‘alternative’ (said with a slight cough, as they have all sorts of things inside) breads over the coming weeks. In the meantime, if getting your sourdough starter going is a must, you can get access to the recordings from my ‘Make & Maintain a Rye Sourdough Starter’ Zoom last Saturday by signing up via the link at the top of my linktr.ee. I’ll be sending them out later in the week.
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And the Ancestral Kitchen Ccallenge 2022 is at www.ancestralkitchen/com/challenge.

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I’ve never made pork crackling this good.
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I bought some belly pork (rigatino in Italian) from @valledelsasso for my hubby, Rob. He loves it roasted. I never remember roasting temps, so internet-search it every time. This time, I scrolled a bit and found @recipe_tin’s Crispy Slow-Cooked Pork.
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It went against a lot of the ‘normal’ crackling routine. I didn’t score the fat at all. I cooked it long and slow in a little bath made from foil, followed by levelling it out and then cranking the heat up.
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It was amazing. The fat was airy and crispy all the way across, with no hard bits and no soggy-left-behind bits. The flesh and fat underneath we so juicy and tender as they’d been sort of ‘confit’ed in their juices.
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Next time you have a go at roasting a fatty pork joint, I’d recommend trying this method. You’ll find a *really* detailed post on Recipe Tin Eat’s site.
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More pictures, including the ‘bath’, in my story today.

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