Author: Alison Kay

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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My first try of fegatelli. These are a Tuscan food that’s been eaten since at least the 14th century. Chopped and flavoured (with fennel seed and bay leaf) pieces of pig liver, wrapped in caul fat.
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I cooked them in the oven, sat a top some local autumnal veg.
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They were so good. Lots of wonderful fat that soaked into the veg, deep liver, aromatic herbs and just enough salt. I am consistently astounded by how good meat products are here. Thank you @lavalledelsasso
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Liver so very often turns people off. These could be the cure 🙂

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Honey from a Weed is a book with such wisdom *and* such beauty. An ode to real food and lives fully lived. Having finished it, I have written a ditty to it. You can read, look and listen (I included two audios) via the link in my profile.

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This is my Boza after just one day of fermentation…it’s gone bonkers! Several hours after I took this pic, I open the proofer again to find it had overflowed and I had a mess to clear up…
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Boza is a traditional Turkish drink. This is the first time I’ve made a fermented drink out of cooked carb – in this case millet. Ostensibly, I’m doing it for my son, who we’ve seen wonderful strides with, health-wise, since starting on a lectin-free diet. Millet is lectin-free and he loves my fermented drinks!
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Really though, I’m doing it as much for me..there’s just such a wonderful alchemy to fermenting, and fermenting something new – a challenge, that have to use my nous with – brings me so much joy.
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I hope we’ll be drinking this soon!

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Have you tried black fermented garlic paste? It is goooood. To me, it tastes like a heavenly umami-laden smooth prune paste. I hadn’t heard of it until last week and now, of course, I want to make it…but a quick online search makes me realise it’s complicated!
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Here it is, a top ricotta, a top left-over sourdough pancakes.
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I often intentionally make too many pancakes, so I can snaffle them out of the fridge and make myself a treaty supper…like this one.
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There’s a tiny bit of fermented garlic paste left in the jar. I might get to taking a vid of it to show you before it goes.
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AND the recipe for my sourdough pancakes is this month’s #ancestralcookup. The recipe is in my profile.

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Chestnuts have historically been one of the most important foods to Tuscans. There are vast tracts of the trees here and often the carbohydrate-rich fruit was the only thing that was available for sustenance during harsh times.
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They are an amazing food – gluten-free, starchy and sweet. I most often use chestnuts ground into flour, but I thought I’d have a go at cooking up some of the dried nuts. I half-followed a recipe from a locally-authored cook book, using onion, wine, stock, bay and fennel.
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Here’s the result. You can see how I did it in my story today, where I walk through the process. This stash will last us the best part of a week – they are so very sweet that topping your meal with three or four is enough. Isn’t the shine on them in this pic wonderful?!

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