Yeah to Sicilian avocado! Here on my lectin-free sourdough toast, with ground linseed and this year’s beautifully peppery extra virgin olive oil from @aziendaagricolapodereruggeri. A totally Italian, and totally yummy breakfast.
I made chocolate the ‘old’ way and I’m so chuffed! Two videos here of cacao beans I roasted, winnowed and ground, by hand, with no added cacao butter, into chocolate.
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This is very close to how the Mesoamericans used to do it thousands of years ago. The taste is just amazing.
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I’ve spent the last few weeks reading about the staggering nutritional benefits of cacao. I am *totally* convinced that, judiciously consumed it is a health food.
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And I’m not complaining!
Now I’ve started home-curing my own bacon, I can’t stop. It’s so good to eat and amazing to witness how the salt, sugar and herbs transform the meat.
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Here’s my pork belly, from Flavio at @lavalledelsasso about to go into the fridge for a 5-day cure. I ground bay leaves, juniper berries and pepper as aromatics and they smelt amazing. It’ll be interesting to see how the taste differs from my last batch that used rosemary.
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If you want to have a go at curing and are new to it, bacon is a good place to start.
Multi-tasking doesn’t really count as a vice if I’m making the most of an empty house and super enthusiastic about what I’m doing, does it?!
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Here’s a sorghum fermentation experiment. I’m making it into a boza-style drink, so it’s about to go somewhere warm for a few days.
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And the notebook has plans that I’m hoping to bring to fruition as the year goes on.
Cured heart from the farm up the road @lavalledelsasso, stuffed with sourdough rye breadcrumbs, bacon, onion, sage, garlic and nutmeg and cooked long and slow in an onion, carrot and stout mix.
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I’ve served it on celeriac, mashed with tumeric, garlic and lard.
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A real comfort food. We loved it.
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Rolling the heart was fiddly, but the result satisfying enough for me to want to try it again.
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The recipe was from my @rivercottagehq book on smoking and curing by @lambposts. It could easily be made #lectinfree by using lectin-free breadcrumbs.
Three high hydration wholegrain sourdough rye loaves. These freeze really well and will do my boys sandwiches for a while!
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Recipe for Everyday Sourdough Wholegrain Rye loaf in my profile.
More than half of the flesh we eat is organ meat. We’ve taken organs on in such a way that I often kinda forget there’s other meat (apart from sausages, obviously!)
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Here’s why I choose organs:
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For health: They are the most nutrient-dense part of the animal. Why buy supplements when you could spend *so* much less on nutrients in situ?
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For economy: They are far less expensive than other cuts.
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As an act of integrity: I see it is necessary. If I’m going to take an animal’s life, let me do that act rightfully and eat all that it offers.
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Here we have a cow’s heart. Usually, I unfussily fry it or throw it in a slow-cooked stew. This time, however a recipe in @lambposts Smoking and Curing book written for @rivercottagehq caught my eye.
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I brined the heart for a day in salt, sugar, spices and stout. Then I stuffed it with pancetta, sourdough crumbs, onions and garlic. Now it’s in the slow cooker with onions, carrots and stout.
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A few hours yet before we can tuck in.
If you look carefully at the crumb you can see the little bits of malted barley in this sourdough spelt inspired by the recipe for Lithuanian Keptinis in Naturally Fermented Bread by Paul Barker @cinnamonsquare.
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I made it with pale malt, a light malt. Next time, I’m going to have a go with some more strongly-flavoured malt…chocolate or coffee malt maybe?
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If you’re more of a cruster than a crumber, swipe to see its crust. ‘Twas gooood!
On the Polish/Czech border are the Krkonoše Mountains. There lives, according to myth, Krakonoš, the God who gave sourdough to the people. He also invented Kyselo, a sourdough soup with mushrooms and caraway seeds. When the mountains are misty, it is said that he’s cooking up a batch of Kyselo.
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I got lost in learning about this myth, and other Western Slavic fermented cereal soups, yesterday. It feels like magical manna that helps me create and alchemise in the kitchen. I feel so grateful that technology can bring this kind of information to me and allow me the grace and joy of borrowed ancestral food wisdom to improve my health and delight my taste buds.
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So here’s go number three at a sourdough discard soup, my take on this wonderful tradition. I managed to temper the discard well enough this time so it is completely lump-free! I’m half way through writing the recipe up, so if you want to recreate in your kitchen, you’ll have a guide.
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If you know anything more about the traditions of fermented cereal soups, come, tell me. I can’t get enough!
I am knee-deep in cacao’s pharmacology; past page 100 in the 700 page ‘The Secret Life of Chocolate’. And I’m beginning to see that, wisely applied, cacao is truly a medicine.
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‘Wisely applied’ is something we have strayed a *long* way from.
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The West loves chocolate with milk. But milk binds to the polyphenols in cacao, stopping their absorption.
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Sugar increases their absorption *but* simple sugars suppress immunity after consumption. Complex carbohydrates, on the other hand, break down slowly, helping our body take on the polyphenols whilst not doing the damage associated with simple sugar.
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And Ancestral Wisdom knew this: the Mesoamericans took their cacao in drinks with maize and minimal added sugar.
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I couldn’t research without playing! I’ve made another batch of 100% cacao chocolates. This time I roasted the beans longer and lower than generally suggested and I made half the batch with cacao butter, half the batch with coconut oil. Taste-testing today 🙂
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Check my story today for chocolate-filled videos and pictures.
