Author: Alison Kay

When I saw the jar of locally-collected rosehip powder I knew I had to get it. Up until this week, we’ve been sprinkling it on porridge. Then I saw the recipe by @rachellambertwildfoodforaging for rosehip crackers.
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Rachel collects her own rosehip around the coast of Cornwall, where we used to live. It’s somehow comforting to know that rose hips are shared across many miles.
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I altered her recipe, fermenting the oat and buckwheat dough overnight to make sourdough crackers. It took a lot of the sweetness out of the rosehip which gives the crackers a different flavour, I’m sure. Still, they were very good.
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And when I realised we could make moons with the cutters, I took the opportunity get my lunar-inspired, feminine side on.

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Spelt, chocolate barley malt, hazelnut and sorghum porridge sourdough coming out of the oven, cosseted by my much-loved Emile Henry ceramic loaf tin.
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One more little tweak to make and then I’m ready to write this up – it’s a bread that’s gotta be eaten outside this little Italian apartment!
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You can find all my recipes via the link in my linktr.ee.

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We have a constant supply of two types of fermented vegetables in our house. One is sauerkraut, the other garlic. Here’s the latest batch ready for its 6-week fermentation.
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All three of us eat this every day. Garlic is *such* a medicine.
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Practically, all it takes is creating a jar like this every 6 weeks: Buying 8/9 heads, peeling, chopping the big cloves in half, adding a brine (5g of salt per cup of water) and keeping the garlic under the liquid (hence the cabbage leaf you can see). That’s it.
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It takes an hour. Our sauerkraut-making also happens once every 6 weeks. That takes about an hour too. Two hours every six weeks for ample daily fermented veg is a good deal in my book.
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There’s an article on garlic in my linktr.ee and a ‘recipe’ for sauerkraut on the resources page of my website (also linked in linktr.ee).

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These beautiful green tendrils are agretti, a green vegetable that I had never seen before I came to Italy. It’s everywhere at the moment, cooks quickly and simply and tastes a little like asparagus.
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Do you have this where you are?
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Served here with burgers using Flavio’s beef mince @valledelsasso and Italian millet.
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Next I’d like to give it a go as a ‘pasta’. The lady at the grocer’s told me lemon, olive oil and garlic were the way to go and who’d argue with that?!

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I love it when I create a dish here in my little Italian kitchen, for my two boys, that comes directly from an IG friend’s creativity and sharing.
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This is the delicious Pongal, something I would never have known about it if not for @kobofermentary. It’s an ancient Indian dish, traditionally made at harvest festival. I fermented rice that I previously ‘broke’ in the coffee grinder and then toasted it in coconut oil before cooking it long and slow with some tumeric.
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To top it, I bloomed cinnamon, cardamom and anise in coconut oil, then added dried coconut.
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Not very traditional – I left out the dahl and swapped out ghee (both sue to my son’s sensitivites) but very, very delicious.
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And, excitingly, in zero-waste mode, I even have a use for the water I soaked/fermented the rice in; I’m going to wash my hair in it!! Check out my story today for the details 🙂

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Every time I make Sowans, the Scottish oat ferment, I have both a drink and an oat ‘porridge’ ready to use. There’s quite some competition for how it’s used!
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Sometimes, we cook up the porridge and eat it for breakfast with crunchy decorations! Other times, I reserve it for this: Spelt and Fermented Oat Porridge bread.
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The crust is crackly, nutty spelt and the crumb is soft from the addition of the porridge. It also helps the bread last longer.
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There’s a slice shot in my stories. Wish I could feed you some!

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Doing chocolate research is satisfying 🙂 I’m learning about *so* much more than ‘just’ chocolate. Here’s my tuppence-worth (does anyone non-British say that?) about vanilla.

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My second batch of home-cured bacon is delicious. This time, the cure had salt, sugar, bay, peppercorns and juniper berries. When I took the lid off the spice grinder and sniffed, it nearly blew my head off!
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I like my bacon crispy, but it’s *really* hard to cut bacon thinly by hand, so chunky and cast iron-panned has to do me. Chef also gets the first dibs on the liquid fat left in the pan! I love to pour it over my bread 😉
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Pigs raised over the hill by Flavio at @lavalledelsasso. Thank you!
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How do you like your bacon?

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This may not look like a traditionally Scottish food, but it is. Here’s my morning oat porridge, which has been made from fermenting the ‘crumbs’ that are left behind when you roll oats.
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I don’t ferment half-heartedly; there were cosy in my DIY proofing box for a week and have a wonderfully sour, complex flavour.
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I compliment it with ground linseed, crunchy nuts, olive oil and miso. It’s yummy!
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Progress videos and more photos in my story today. There’s a highlight called Sowans, if you want to see more.

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Sourdough discard soup with celeriac, carrot and sausage, topped with lard-fried breadcrumbs for a soup-complimenting crunch.
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This is a version of the recipe you can find linked in my profile that is gluten and lectin-free, being made from a millet starter that I keep.
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I can’t believe I went so long without putting discard in my soup. Next, I want to try and find some smoked sausage, so I can work on a more traditional rendering of this dish, which I based on the Polish soup called Zurek.
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You should try making it while it’s still winter(ish). It’s so very good.

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