Author: Alison Kay

This cake it both delicious and fascinating. It’s Castagnaccio: Tuscan Chestnut Cake, made with flour from just-harvested local chestnuts.
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Its flavour is a wonder – rich, deep, sweet, smokey.
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Its history is profound – chestnuts have, at times, been the only sustenance available to the communities in mountainous regions of Italy. So many dishes were creatively concocted by the generations who literally grew-up on chestnuts.
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Cucina povera, and its world-wide equivalents, gift us so much and it feels amazing to continue to honour the seasons, the produce and the simple recipes.
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Many people here with Italian ancestry have contacted me saying they can’t wait for the chestnut flour to appear in their local Italian deli. This is the way to use it!
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I’ll be cooking this live, a week today, Nov 12th at 7am PST/4pm CET, on Zoom with @farmandhearth and our podcast patrons. If you’re interested in cooking along and aren’t a yet a patron, do check @ancestralkitchenpodcast to find out how to come along.

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This sourdough pizza has the last of the garden basil in its pesto topping. I’m so grateful for the beautiful herbs my garden has given me this year – basil, parsley, chives, pineapple sage (which is currently in beautiful flower), mint and tarragon.
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The garden’s slowing down now and I’ve filled four of my containers (I’m a container-only gardener) with #bokashi – fermented kitchen waste. This will, I hope, mean that come January I will have refreshed soil ready for another year of growing.
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The pizza-making, however, continues a-pace. Gabriel, my 7-year old, mixes all the doughs. He is our #pizzaiolo in the making! The recipe for the spelt flour sourdough base is in my profile.

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I’m back on it with the ancestral beer! Here we have three bottles of rye beer made to a 5,000-year old recipe (inspired by @sandorkraut’s process in #wildfermentation) from home-sprouted grain. They are about to go down for a second fermentation which will develop the flavour and give some carbonation.
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Like my previous batches, I’ll be using the spent grain from this process to make bread and porridge. This time however, instead of using the grains straight out of the ferment, I’m going to try dehydrating the larger pieces and then grinding them into flour.
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This is a particularly interesting brew for me as, instead of using sourdough starter to kick the fermentation, I’ve ‘borrowed’ some of the millet starter I use to make Boza (see my story if you want to know what Boza is) and have tried using that. This second starter has a *much* stronger yeast profile (rather than the strong bacteria profile in the sourdough starter) which should mean my beer is far less sour.
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Some videos and more pictures in my story today.

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My days off Instagram have given me the longed-for chance to write more. Here’s the first, of hopefully more, pieces.
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My aim here is to give a simple and clear definition of ancestral food. In my ‘previous life’ (which feels like centuries ago), I used to try and give simple and clear instructions on how to use Microsoft’s software. Gosh how I savour the opportunity to write about this instead.

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I bought a new ceramic loaf ‘tin’ – my second one with a lid. I like lids on loaf bakers a lot – they create really good crusts.
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I have an @emilehenryfrance baker I bought 3 years ago. It was a splurge as they are not cheap…but I’ve never looked back. I wanted another, as I often bake 2 loaves at once (and freeze one) and turned to @tescoma_italia where I found a reasonably-priced one.
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Here’s one of my first loaves in it – the dough hit the top of the lid! It’s created all sorts of crust magic, so I might try it again 😉
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I’ve posted a pic of the crumb and the loaf from my other tin in my story today. The recipe for the bread is in my profile.

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I have been on a quest the last six months: To find raw cacao beans that I was happy with. I want to roast, process and turn them into 100% cacao chocolate here at home.
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They needed to be:
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Single-origin, ethically-farmed.
Not the favoured Criollo variety (it has way too much caffeine for me)
In bags that aren’t 75kg!
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After a lot of virtual digging, I found these Nicaraguan beans grown close to @tropical_homestead and I’ve got myself a 3kg sack.
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They *nearly* fit all my criteria. The only bonus would be to have them come over to Europe on a sail boat @fairtransport.shipping 🙂
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I’m likely to transform my chocolate into one of the pre-Columbian drinks I’ve learnt about in the wonderful book The Secret Life of Chocolate. If you want to hear more about how to drink cacao like our ancestors did, go to the interview @farmandhearth and I did with the author @nocturnalherbalist on the @ancestralkitchenpodcast (link to the podcast is in my profile).

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Have you ever fermented sweet potato?
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Most @sandorkraut fans know about sweet potato fly, the fermented drink from Guyana, but here I’ve instead fermented cooked sweet potato.
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I started doing it when Gabriel was a baby, inspired by a recipe in the wonderful cookbook Nourishing Traditions. Here, I’ve used whey as a starter (in cubes that I’d previously frozen), but you could use any starter – if I didn’t have any whey, I’d have used kraut juice or some of my ginger bug.
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After mashing the skinned cooked potato with the whey, I covered and left it in a warm spot for a day. We then reheated it for breakfast. I topped mine with ghee, took a picture and then liberally doused it with ground linseed and soaked, dehydrated almonds.
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Here’s a reference I think only works for those who grew up in 1980s UK (but perhaps I’m wrong?) – it tastes like prawn cocktail Skips. Remember those? If not, I can try to elaborate: It’s delightfully fizzy and sweet with tomato-acid hints. Delicious!

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What an epic episode today’s podcast is. I had my notes, as usual, but @farmandhearth and I went ‘off-piste’ pretty early in the episode and it was fascinating to see where we ended up!
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I have a chequered history with comfort foods, having spent my teenage years obese. As you will hear, I used to stir white sugar into extra-creamy yogurts and eat condensed milk out of the tin.
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And I found it amazing, talking to Andrea, to realise just how far I’ve shifted. That old me is so far gone…but not without many, many years of conscious research, change and effort, really good quality food and much support from my hubby, Rob.
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Listen in to hear us talk about the difference between a comfort food and an addiction, snacking, Epicurus, instincts, and how, the deeper we delve into ancestral foods, the more real pleasure we get from food.
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You can find @ancestralkitchenpodcast on your favourite podcast app or you can stream/download it from the link in my profile.

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