Author: Ali

Russian black salt being made in the Tuscan countryside 😉
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I’ve been wanting to make the `Thursday salt´ from Beyond the North Wind by @darra.goldstein for months and finally got there today. I took the battery out of the smoke alarm and we held the smoking charred block out of the window upon taking it out of the oven.
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Now onto the mortar and pestling. Looking forward to sprinkling my dinner with this stuff.

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I love making fermented chutney for non-ferment-eaters who come over for food. This has apple, pear and raisins, as well as onion, garlic and ginger. I think fruity ferments say, “come, eat me” more than sauerkraut. Especially when I serve them in my favourite spotty jug.

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Going without bread is hard, right? That’s why I created this millet sourdough. We’ve been experimenting a #lectinfree protocol and we missed the joy of (and calories of) bread.
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There are a lot of lectin-free breads around, but most use a large proportion of ingredients that are not grown in Italy. I don’t like that in my kitchen.
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Hence aiming for 98% millet 🙂 This loaf uses only 4 ingredients – millet, water, salt and psyllium husk. I got the idea for using psyllium husk (a plant seed shell that absorbs water) from the wonderful @ellys_everyday.
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After building a millet starter, it was super-easy. And kinda super-weird too…you can see why, and all the steps, in my story today.
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Some conclusions on Dr Gundry’s #plantparadox are being formed in our collective family’s brain. I’ll write on it soon, I think.
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In the meantime, I’ll get finishing this loaf!

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Here’s my sourdough pancake going in and then, if you swipe, you’ll see my flipping technique and a beautifully golden crispy result. Am I making you hungry?! Recipe is in my profile, I wrote it up as this month’s #ancestralcookup.

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This is Boza. I’ve been working on creating this Turkish fermented drink for weeks now and after a few false starts, we’re drinking it!
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It’s cooked and blended millet, fermented for 5 days with a starter that I nurtured for a week prior.
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It is unlike anything I have ever drunk before. It’s thick, sweet, tart and fizzy.
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I’ve put some vids and more information in my story.
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Second batch is already on the go, with some of this drink saved and used as the starter.

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I do not look forward to winter. I hate the cold! One of the things I *do* like though is roasting root veg in the oven with some fatty meat atop and heating up our living space at the same time.
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We live in a very small apartment and our oven does a good job of toastying me while it cooks dinner.
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Here we have Italian organic celeriac, beet, sweet potato and onion. If you swipe you’ll see the pork from Flavio at @lavalledelsasso that I placed on top of it. The juices do amazing things to the sweet carbohydrate.
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I was too excited to eat to remember to take a photo of it cooked! However, I did take a quick video of our really messy house while the veg were in the oven. It’s in my stories if you need some ‘messy house’ solidarity 🙂

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I love stuffing pancakes (and then trying to eat them without it all falling out!) Here we have a sourdough spelt pancake fried in ghee and then packed with local salad, cold roast chicken and ample dressing (which includes my favourite nigella seeds).
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Sourdough pancakes are so easy. Three ingredients needed – flour, water and a fat to fry in. You don’t even need a sourdough starter.
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I walk you through how-to in this month’s #ancestralcookup: the recipe is in my profile.

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This is fermented millet and sorghum polenta ‘bread’. It came about from purposely making too much fermented millet and sorghum porridge for breakfast and squishing all the leftovers into a greased loaf tin.
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I’ll slice and fry it till it’s golden and crispy.
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The process of frying up cold polenta is something that’s been done for centuries here. The souring is something that I made up 😉
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The millet and sorghum are Italian, gluten-free, lectin-free and rendered more digestible by the fermentation…and, just as importantly, they taste good like this!

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Roasted garlic, sourdough breadcrumbs soaked in vinegar, parsley and a lot of elbow grease in a beautiful marble mortar. Swipe to see the stages, the finished sauce and my mini sous chef.
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We ate it on roasted root veg, but I’d pretty-much have it on anything!
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The combination is traditional Catalonian and taken from Honey from a Weed. I wrote about this book in my blog post earlier this week. You can find a link to the article (in which I read to you!) in my profile.

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