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Most of my meals aren’t dreamy instagrammable shots. They are simple, the work of previous days, repeatable and hopefully as local and nutrient-dense as I can get them.
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Here’s pig’s liver from @valledelsasso (choose pigs liver over beef liver if you find the strong flavour difficult – it’s milder). I try to eat liver twice a week – sometimes simply fried like this in the cast iron pan, sometimes mixed with ground beef in meatballs or bolognese.
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We’re eating it with the last of the Brussels sprouts from @radiciumane (I’m so sad when Brussels sprouts finish, they are one of the best things about winter!). Plus there’s sourdough bread made from the spent grain from my home-made ale topped with home-rendered lard.
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The three cups have the actual rye/oat ancestral ale in them (yes, my 9-year old drinks our ale). It’s low in alcohol, isn’t bitter and feel like a digestive tonic.
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@farmandhearth and I are super-excited to announce our @ancestralkitchenpodcast cookbook…coming tomorrow. It includes 20 meals from our kitchens that you can take into yours play with and enjoy!

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What’s your ideal for an oatmeal cookie? Crunchy throughout? Chewy inside with crisp outer? Smooth or jumbo oats?
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Oat cookie experimentation means there are lots to try at the moment in my house! There are two types here – one with egg, one without. They were both made with a long-matured dough (the first picture): honey and oats left for 9 weeks to ‘ferment’ before being mixed up with butter/spices and baked.
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Turns out I prefer the non-egg, crunchy-throughout ones 🙂

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Sourdough oatcake pop tarts!
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When I came up with a recipe for sourdough oatcakes I never imagined sandwich-ing two of them together with a fruity jelly to make a pop tart. But man, it works, and I am ever-so-grateful to @mrsachase for taking my oatcakes and coming up with this idea in her kitchen!
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The recipe for the sourdough oatcakes is on the resources page of my site (ancestralkitchen.com). Check my story today for some step-by-step photos (I’ll save them to my oats highlight).
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You could also make a version of these pop tarts using a traditional Scottish, unfermented, oatcake (again, recipe on my site). The Scots didn’t ferment many of their oat products – I’ve got a newsletter going out tomorrow talking in depth about that fact. If you’d like to receive it go to ancestralkitchen.com – there’s a sign up at the top of every page.

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Ale in medieval England was made with a portion of malted oats. Until now, I’ve not been able to replicate this as standard oats won’t sprout (they are heat-treated as threshing damages them).
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But then I learnt about naked oats, with their paper-thin hulls. And I scoured Italy for a supplier. Having sourced them, I’ve soaked and sprouted them and here we have my first brew with malted oats included 🙂
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Note the wooden spoon. I use kitchen equipment to brew. If you want to know more, check @ancestralkitchenpodcast #54 where I get super-enthusiastic about all things ancestral ale.

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Imperfection is so damn sexy!
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In food, I equate perfection with mass production: Industrialisation required us to not only make food ‘keepable’ (hello packaging and chemicals) but also the *same*each*time*. And I find that so boring!
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Imperfection shows that your food is REAL. It’s been made with hands, in an environment that changes everyday.
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Imperfection is how we learn what works and what doesn’t; what we like and what we don’t like; how each litte thing we do influences the end result.
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Imperfection is so interesting. Each time I make chocolate at home the eating part becomes an adventure – it’s always a different experience.
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We swim in a food system that teaches us to want the same thing, exactly that way, again and again. I encourage you to rebel by making some imperfect food with your own hands today!
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If you want to have a go at the bean-to-bar chocolate, I have a low-price course that’ll walk you through it! Click on the link in my profile and scroll down to the courses section, or go to my story today, I’ll put a clickable link there.

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Oats have been used with meat and spices in sausages for many centuries. Here’s my first attempt at bringing them to life in my kitchen: oats, leek, pork, lard and lots of spices. After making them into sausage shapes I prepared them for steaming (the traditional way of cooking) by wrapping in parchment paper and then aluminium foil.
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Check my story today for pictures of in-progress sausages and the finished product!
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They were delicious and I want to try them again so have been researching sausage casings and way to stuff. I don’t have a machine that can sausage-stuff, so it’ll be by hand which I’m sure my 8-year old will love!

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First go at sourdough spelt halušky – Slovakian pasta/noodles.
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I love being inspired by other cuisines and Naomi (@almostbananas) showed me (and all the other @ancestralkitchenpodcast patrons!) how to make these on camera from her Slovakian kitchen.
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They aren’t authentic – I didn’t use potato as my son can’t eat it, and I served them with an Italian twist: pancetta, kale and pecorino. But they were good and so much easier to make than sourdough pasta.
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We used a spaetzle-maker (I’ll put pictures in my story) and my son pushed the batter – which had been fermenting overnight – through the holes into boiling water.
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If you’re daunted by sourdough pasta, these might be worth a try in your kitchen.
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And do check out Ancestral Kitchen Podcast #49 where I talk with Naomi about traditional Slovakian Food; it’ll make your mouth water!

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Up to 2 years ago, when I thought of beer, I thought ‘bitter’ and ‘it’s a man thing’.
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So when I started researching historical brewing I was floored to find out that, for most of history, in most of the world, women have been the brewers.
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Add to that the fact that the brews my ancestors in England would have made in their kitchens (yes, kitchens!) was sweet, not bitter and I realised that everything that I thought I knew about beer was wrong.
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If you’re curious, listen to today’s @ancestralkitchenpodcast. In it, I share much of what I’ve both learnt and experimented with the last two years.
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I’d love your feedback on this episode! Tell me what you knew, didn’t know, what surprised you the most and how you feel after hearing what @farmandhearth and I share 🙂

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My new *free* sourdough course is all about your starter. 10 video tips that’ll help super-charge your starter whether you’re new to sourdough baking, have tried and failed at a starter or are experienced but would like some extra help.
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You can sign up for the course via the button ‘*Free* course: 10 Tips for Creating & Maintaining a Sourdough Starter’ in the courses section of my profile link.
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Do pass this on to any other sourdough bakers (or wanna be sourdough bakers) you know!

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Have you ever lived without an oven?
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For several months I had no oven. I had to change how I cooked. That’s nothing on kitchens a few hundred (let alone a few thousand) years ago though; ovens are a really recent thing.
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Before ovens, in England, many dishes were steamed instead of being ovened.
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Here’s my most recent steamed oat pudding. These were common in the UK (where in many parts oats were the staple cereal) and were often as simple as oats, stock and a bit of onion. Here I’ve added pork, walnuts and orange too. I steamed this for two hours in a glass bowl resting raised off the bottom of a large saucepan that had two inches of simmering water at the bottom.
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It’s delicious and the recipe will be going in the book on oats I’m dreaming of writing!
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See my story today for more information (and details of how I messed up the first one of these!)

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