Author: Alison Kay

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!
.
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.
.
The crust is crackly, nutty spelt and the crumb is soft from the addition of the porridge. It also helps the bread last longer.
.
There’s a slice shot in my stories. Wish I could feed you some!

… Read More

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.

… Read More

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!
.
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 😉
.
Pigs raised over the hill by Flavio at @lavalledelsasso. Thank you!
.
How do you like your bacon?

… Read More

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.
.
I don’t ferment half-heartedly; there were cosy in my DIY proofing box for a week and have a wonderfully sour, complex flavour.
.
I compliment it with ground linseed, crunchy nuts, olive oil and miso. It’s yummy!
.
Progress videos and more photos in my story today. There’s a highlight called Sowans, if you want to see more.

… Read More

Sourdough discard soup with celeriac, carrot and sausage, topped with lard-fried breadcrumbs for a soup-complimenting crunch.
.
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.
.
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.
.
You should try making it while it’s still winter(ish). It’s so very good.

… Read More

Ancestral cacao-diving continues in our apartment. And look at these! I think, aesthetically, they are very beautiful, but the light brown marks are a commercial-chocolatier’s nightmare: bloom. It’s where the cacao butter hasn’t cooled down ‘just right’.
.
Traditionally, chocolate was only ever used in drinks and this bloom didn’t matter.
.
But when I eat these, instead of melting them into a drink, I can taste the effect. There’s more grain; it’s a bit drier.
.
I’m not sure exactly why it happened this time, and not the other dozen times I’ve gone through the process. But, just like teaching myself sourdough or kombucha, I carry on and I learn.
.
And, while I experiment, we’ve made it to the ‘mythology’ section of the 700-page ‘The Secret Life of Chocolate’. Who isn’t interested in why and how people believe what they believe? It’s fascinating! My son and hubby are very happy making it one of our family evening-reads. Perhaps that makes us weird, but I wouldn’t have it any other way!

… Read More

We render lard from local back fat in a slow cooker. It’s simple – dice the fat and put it on low. Every couple of hours, pour the liquid off. By the end of the day the ‘scratchings’ left over are small and you have containers full of lard everywhere.
.
I then work some magic with the left-over bits. I transfer them to a medium-hot cast iron pan and cook for 30 minutes more, stirring occasionally. This not only creates wonderfully crispy bits of delicious fat that we can sprinkle on our food, but also seasons my cast iron pan nicely!
.
Zero-waste, a shiny pan and smiling faces at the table.

… Read More

When you have a kid who ‘can’t have’ certain things, it kinda breaks your heart. So, at least if you’re me, you try and make up for it by making exciting things that they *can* have.
.
That’s why I started making Boza, the originally-Turkish lacto-fermented cooked millet drink. And I can report, according to this little man, it makes awesome smoothies.
.
The little chef chose his own additions – banana, linseed, water kefir grains, lettuce and coconut oil. All whizzed up with the lacto-goodies and sustaining complex carb of the sweety, tangy, fizzy Boza.
.
I’m almost there with getting the methods for making this ferment clarified and working towards documenting them. I’m hoping to have something up in the virtual world over the next month or two.

… Read More

I’m working on ways to cook heart. It’s become a lesson in brining, which, a month ago, I’d never done. I’ve brined cow heart twice now – once with stout, once with local red wine. It softens the meat, and gives a lot of flavour. Like this there’s no need of a fussy, high-flavoured sauce. The one you can see here is basically cabbage!!
.
But brining is a lot of work and a lot of salt/sugar. I’m a practical soul, so if I can make it just as good more easily (and less saltily), I will.
.
I’m getting another cow heart on our next pick-up (which we do on foot, with huge cool bag!) from @lavalledelsasso and I’ll slow-cook this one without brining. Let’s see what it’s like.
.
In the meantime, we have a lot of heart stew to eat. That’s a good thing.
.
Have you brined?

… Read More

Chocolate malt sourdough experiment number 2 is a finished recipe! This time, as well as the deliciously smoky malted barley and added sorghum flour porridge, I used local hazlenuts.
.
Thanks for the nut nudge @morgancarsandbread – it worked!
.
I have created so many sourdough spelt recipes the last couple of years – bread, naan, pizza, muffins – that I’m thinking it’d be scandalous not to try and compile them somehow and offer a Sourdough Baking with Spelt course.
.
It’s been filed as something I really want to do. There are a lot of things I really want to do! I’m not complaining though. I like enthusiasm 🙂

… Read More