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Have you ever fermented sweet potato?
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Most @sandorkraut fans know about sweet potato fly, the fermented drink from Guyana, but here I’ve instead fermented cooked sweet potato.
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I started doing it when Gabriel was a baby, inspired by a recipe in the wonderful cookbook Nourishing Traditions. Here, I’ve used whey as a starter (in cubes that I’d previously frozen), but you could use any starter – if I didn’t have any whey, I’d have used kraut juice or some of my ginger bug.
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After mashing the skinned cooked potato with the whey, I covered and left it in a warm spot for a day. We then reheated it for breakfast. I topped mine with ghee, took a picture and then liberally doused it with ground linseed and soaked, dehydrated almonds.
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Here’s a reference I think only works for those who grew up in 1980s UK (but perhaps I’m wrong?) – it tastes like prawn cocktail Skips. Remember those? If not, I can try to elaborate: It’s delightfully fizzy and sweet with tomato-acid hints. Delicious!

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A little over 200 years ago the industrial revolution started a chain of events that has led to our disconnection from not only the source our food, but also the thousands of years of handed-down skills and wisdom surrounding it. … Read More

What an epic episode today’s podcast is. I had my notes, as usual, but @farmandhearth and I went ‘off-piste’ pretty early in the episode and it was fascinating to see where we ended up!
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I have a chequered history with comfort foods, having spent my teenage years obese. As you will hear, I used to stir white sugar into extra-creamy yogurts and eat condensed milk out of the tin.
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And I found it amazing, talking to Andrea, to realise just how far I’ve shifted. That old me is so far gone…but not without many, many years of conscious research, change and effort, really good quality food and much support from my hubby, Rob.
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Listen in to hear us talk about the difference between a comfort food and an addiction, snacking, Epicurus, instincts, and how, the deeper we delve into ancestral foods, the more real pleasure we get from food.
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You can find @ancestralkitchenpodcast on your favourite podcast app or you can stream/download it from the link in my profile.

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Think you have to give up comfort foods when you start eating ancestrally? Listen in to hear Alison and Andrea share their own comfort foods and discuss the fine line between a comforting food and an addiction. … Read More

Have you tried black garlic?
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If you have, maybe you get why I’d have a go at fermenting it into a drink. It’s got a deep, dark, smoky, molasses-like flavour.
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This experiment is something @savage.craic enthused me into! It’s black garlic, unrefined sugar and a lot of ginger bug. I whizzed mine up with an immersion blender. Within 24 hours of leaving I could hear the tiny bubbles doing their thing.

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Crusts: Love them or hate them?
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I’m in the love camp. A fresh crust from a just-baked loaf is heaven for me but an end-of-the-loaf crust is still a treat.
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Here’s a sourdough spelt loaf with a oat porridge stirred into the dough. I claimed the crust and topped it with home-rendered lard, scrambled egg and a lot of parsley.
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If you are the bread-maker, never feel guilty for nabbing the crust 😉

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There’s been an ancient beer lull here. My grains stopped sprouting. No sprouting means no malt and no malt means no beer. Rob’s been pining for it, so I had to do something!
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Step in @molinobongiovanni who sell organic grains. I bought (from top left, clockwise) farro spelta (spelt), avena (oats), miglio (millet) and segale (rye). a little bit of each has gone in to soak, and then hopefully to sprout!
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In the meantime, I’m heading off on a beer starter culture adventure. So far, I’ve been following @sandorkraut’s Bouza recipe in #wilfermentation, which uses a sourdough starter. The sourness in the resultant beer is sometimes overpowering and I’m ready to spread my wings and try another way of inoculating my ferment that’s yeast-led, rather than bacteria-led. Will report back on how it goes!
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Luckily, Rob likes *almost* everything I create. On a good day, I think it’s because it’s generally tasty. On a not so good day, I’m sure it’s because he loves me 😉

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Still working on the sourdough non-dairy muffins!
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This latest batch – chocolate and hazelnut – went to be ‘taste-tested’ by the 12 little ones that make up my 7 year-old son’s class! Reports back were that they were great…but Mumma’s not totally satisfied by the recipe.
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I tried to make the outside less crust-like by steaming the oven. It worked well, but overall they are still a bit ‘bready’ for my liking; I want them more ‘muffiny’ – think that translates to softer.
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Next round will include fruit pulp.
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I shared the recipe in my newsletter that went out yesterday. If you want to receive it, click the link in my profile. If you do so before end of tomorrow, you should automatically get send this issue and therefore the recipe.
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You could be eating these very soon 😉

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The beginnings of a fermented gingerbread about to go down for a 2-plus month fermentation. And I couldn’t be more excited!
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I mixed this dough up alongside @elliemarkovitch (using Zoom, across an ocean!). She did hers with rye whereas here I used local spelt flour along with chestnut honey from @thecreatorscastle.
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Thanks to Annie at @kitchencounterculture for the nudge. I’d been researching long-fermented flour recipes for a while, having gone down a rabbit hole when I heard that Pain d’Epices was originally fermented for 3 months. When I saw her posting about a @sandorkraut inspired fermented gingerbread, I knew I had to get doing it.
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This dough is now on the bottom shelf of a cupboard downstairs in my apartment. Our flat is on a hill, cut into the Tuscan soil, so it tends to stay the coolest down there.
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Will I be able to resist getting it out and checking/sniffing it between now and December? Probably not. But that’s half the fun, isn’t it?!
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Some pics of the process in my stories.

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I’ve known they were coming for a while, yet still, as we rounded the corner to the local farmers’ market last night, my heart skipped a beat upon seeing the chestnut lady setting up stall!
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I knew we only had 30 Euros in our pockets. And I knew that had to cover all our veg needs, yet, like a kid at Christmas, I really wanted to get some nuts to roast and some flour to bake with!
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Rob dug into every pocket he had looking for change whilst I tried to work out exactly *just* how many what greens we needed for the week.
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Down to the last few cents, we managed it, coming home with not only lots of kale and broccoli, but also a bag of marroni (think chestnuts but bigger) flour and a couple of handfuls of the nuts to score and roast in the oven.
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These nuts are from a region of Tuscany called Mugello, which Wikipedia tells me is the heart of Tuscan chestnuts. I feed so grateful that it’s here on my doorstep and that there are people who are willing to take it upon themselves to steward and nurture the land and its produce.
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I’m on to making some Castagnaccio with this flour. It’s an age-old Tuscan chestnut cake. I’ll be demoing it and talking all about chestnuts in the live Zoom cook-up @farmandhearth and I are doing for our podcast patrons on November 12th. If you’re interested, go to @ancestralkitchenpodcast to check out how to become a patron and join us.

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