Hi, I’m Alison; here’s what I share in my bi-weekly newsletter: Real-world information on cooking ancestrally How to give our bodies nutrient-dense food without it costing the earth All things sourdough, focusing on ancient grains Fermentation – particularly fermented drinks … Read More
I first read about Rutherglen Sour Cakes in F. Marian McNeill’s book ‘The Scot’s Kitchen’. Her description was short, but intriguing: There was an ‘elaborate ritual’ around their preparation which was ‘clearly from a pagan source’. When I then saw that they were wild fermented, I knew I had to find out more.
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Rutherglen Sour Cakes were prepared in Rutherglen, close to Glasgow, Scotland, to celebrate St Luke’s day (October 18th). 8-10 days before this, oats and water were mixed up into a dough and left to sour. The eve before the fair, a group of women would gather to prepare the sour cakes. They’d sit in a previously-chalked semi-circle in front of the fire. Sugar and aniseed or caraway would be added to the now fermented dough. Each woman (ceremonially, they were called ‘Maidens’) would hold a wooden board and beater on their lap. A piece of dough would then be passed between them in an east/west direction, each lady batting the oat dough down on their board. By the time the cake got to the end of the semi-circle and was handed to the designated baker, called ”The Queen’, it would be ‘as thin as paper’.
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This ceremony was last witnessed in 1854, as far as I know. And, at least online, no-one has tried to re-make Rutherglen Sour Cakes as an authentic wild ferment.
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This picture is my fourth attempt. I’m getting used to wild souring the dough – it’s easy to tell when it’s ready using your nose. The shaping is best done using a board and a rolling pin. I don’t think I’ve got mine paper-thin yet, but I’m not doing badly!
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Rolling them out, alone in my kitchen, brings so many emotions. This process was once so tied to place, to women, to ritual. I feel the weight of what I, what we, have lost: community, sacredness, ceremony, connection, seasonality. At the same time I feel immense gratitude for the path life has shown me, my family that supports me and the beautiful souls that I have connected with (a lot of them here) that *get* it.
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And I remember food is never solely about feeding ourselves.
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(Check my story for more pics and some historical sources.)
If you’ve ever asked ‘What fermented drinks can I make?’, today’s @ancestralkitchenpodcast is for you. We cover over 20 fermented drinks – all of which, between us, @farmandhearth and I have made at home. We’ll tell you what they are, where they come from, how they are made and why we love them!
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You’ll come away super-informed and inspired; ready to start fermenting (and loving) your next drink 🙂
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You can subscribe to Ancestral Kitchen Podcast on your app, or stream/download from the link in my profile.
Today’s episode is dedicated to covering the wide world of fermented drinks – all accessible to you, makeable in your own kitchen, right now. We talk about over 20 different fermented drinks, including scoby ferments, whey ferments, grain ferments, wild ferments and we tell you how you can incorporate these super-health-giving, delicious foods into your life.… Read More
Making nutrient-dense food for a children’s party can seem like a tall order. Yes, my son will eat virtually all of the ancestral food I make at home, but this is different:
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1 – It’s really special day and I want to mark that by giving him out of the ordinary food, and
2 – There are going to be 15 other kids there who are used to eating ‘normal’ food. I really want them, for my son’s sake, to like the food.
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Here’s the chocolate cake I developed for Gabriel’s 9th birthday. It’s made of spelt flour, has no refined sugar, is risen by the power of sourdough and is egg and dairy free.
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In the tests, my son, Gabriel and husband, Rob, loved it…but I was still nervous on the big day!
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Thankfully, it went down brilliantly. Every little one there finished their piece and I saw some of them come up and raid the plate for stray crumbs!
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Job done. Phew!
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@farmandhearth and I are putting together a spelt sourdough cookbook for @ancestralkitchenpodcast (it’ll be our second cookbook!) and this recipe will go in there 🙂 You don’t have to have a children’s party imminent in order to make it!!
We have a special bonus for today! Alison reads the article she recently had published in the Weston A. Price journal Wise Traditions: So Much More Than Porridge: The Rich Culinary History of British Oats Recipe for Traditional Scottish Oatcakes … Read More
Does this sound familiar: Get all excited about a cookbook, buy it, then realise that, in order to get the recipes to work with how you eat, you need to change a load of things?!
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I’ve been there many times. To the point where I now consciously check my excitement at a possible book (which feels *so* sad!) as I know I probably won’t want to cook most of the things in it.
So, what a treat it is to have recipes from someone whose kitchen looks like yours! Thank you @farmandhearth for sharing some of your go-to recipes, including this one for Soaked Cream Biscuits, in our @ancestralkitchenpodcast cookbook!
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I am using spelt flour here, but Andrea tells us in the recipe that we can use any type of flour, including gluten-free. I don’t have fresh cream (I’ve not got my own cow as she does!), but I do have access to grass-fed, organic soured cream.
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There are more pictures, including the end result, in my story. You can also see my bashed up baking tray in the story too – and tell me I’m not the only one who uses kitchen equipment until it literally dies?!!
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If you want a cookbook with simple recipes you’ll be totally happy to make, it is $12. There’s a video of it pinned to the top of my feed. And you can find a link to it in my profile 🙂
Fermenting oats into sourdough oatmeal or porridge is easy and has so many benefits: The oats will be softer, cook more quickly and be easier to digest. The resulting oatmeal will be more nutrient-dense thanks to reduction of the mineral-leaching … Read More
Have you heard that you should be ‘eating more protein’, but not had the time to figure out how much more or how exactly to get it into your meals, especially that all-important breakfast? This article will explain protein recommendations, … Read More
I don’t like rice much. So I end up using every other type of grain imaginable to make rice-style dishes! Here we have whole oat groats cooked in stock on the hob for an hour and a half, topped with pork meat balls cooked with the last of the winter vegetables – leeks and broccoli.
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When you cook whole oats like this they give that same creaminess we associate with porridge. So as I taste I’m getting creamy, stock-rich and chewy in the same mouthful.
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Do you cook with whole oat groats?
