Year: 2022

What wonderful meal out have you tried to recreate at home? Was it a success?
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Many months back I went to a sourdough pizza restaurant in Florence. I had a pizza spread with onions slow-cooked in chianti wine and then topped with gorgonzola. Oh my, it was good.
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Finally I got round to trying something similar. I cooked sliced red onions for ages in olive oil the added a lot of red wine, cooking it down until the liquid had all gone. I spread that on my sourdough spelt pizza (recipe in profile) and topped with a local raw milk pecorino and the last of the basil from the garden.
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It was very good.
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Next on the list is the other delight I ate there – focaccia stuffed with head cheese 🙂
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So I want to hear from you! What have you tried to recreate? Did you have to guess the ingredients? Did it live up to your memory?!

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If you are on the run in Florence and want some street food, one of your options is ‘Porchetta’. There are stalls selling it all over the city. It’s pork, rolled with spices, roasted, sliced and laid in the middle of a bread roll.
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Here’s my home version with an ancestral twist. I roasted belly pork from @valledelsasso with fennel seeds, garlic, salt and pepper. Beet from the garden (thank you #bokashi compost!) roasted beautifully with some local beans under the pork, catching the juices. I then made a spelt sourdough focaccia with some cold oat porridge in the dough (makes it so soft – I’ll put more pics in my stories). We cut it, stuffed the sliced pork in and served with the veg, some gorgeous crackling and (as just in the distance you can see) some sauerkraut.
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I love good street food, but I love sitting down at the table eating whilst the house still smells of roast pork and baking bread more!

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Can you imagine the crunch? Sourdough doesn’t have to be white to have a crust that’s heavenly. This is 100% wholegrain spelt, high hydration, baked in a ceramic tin made by @emilehenryfrance.
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The recipe for this loaf is in the resources section of my site (along with many more recipes), which is www.ancestralkitchen.com. There’s a wholegrain pizza recipe there too 🙂

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On the left, in slices, we have llymru, a traditional Welsh oat fermentation that produces a delicious sour jelly-like treat.
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Oats, until the middle of last century, were *the* staple of the Welsh. And just like the more famous oat-eating Scots, this population came up with many ways to prepare and eat the grain.
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Here oats are fermented with buttermilk for a few days then strained. The liquid is then cooked and ‘set’ into this jelly.
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Further north, in Scotland, oats were also fermented, but there it was into a dish called sowans. Unlike the llymru you see here, sowans doesn’t use a ‘starter’ to get going – solely wild yeast/bacteria. I have a course on how to make sowans in your own kitchen over at @thefermentationschool (link in my profile) if oats are your thing.
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Meantime the oat discoveries continue here! I’m writing an article for the Wise Traditions journal on oats and am thinking a little cookbook might want to be born from all my recipes!
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Getting some more pics and video up in my story/highlight today.

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What would you eat first?
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The order in which we eat our foods fascinates me. I’ve historically been a “save the best for last” girl and I thought everyone did that till I quizzed my hubby, Rob, who eats he most appealing thing on his plate first.
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I think perhaps there’s more wisdom in his choice. Often the last few years I’ve saved the best till last and then been to full to eat it. In the past, I would have eaten it anyway but I don’t anymore and am often sad that the ‘prize’ ends up going in the fridge for later!!
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What do you go for first? And is it always that way? I think the ‘best’ food is subject to change, based on our moods, tastes, the weather and much more.
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This was my supper one night this weekend. And here’s my order:

First: The sourdough rye spice bread covered in salty butter.
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Second: The fried egg yolk (with lemon and thyme salt sprinkles) with half of the super-sour rye discard pancake.
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Third: The nobble of local ‘fresco’ pecorino cheese.
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Last: The lard-crispy egg white and the last of the pancake.
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Would you follow suit?!
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(Recipes for the rye spice bread and pancakes are part of my course Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics at @thefermentationschool – link in profile)

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