What’s cooking?

Brewing ale (like baking bread) used to be a household task, performed by women using kitchen equipment and shared yeast.
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Then, in England at least, along came hops, industrialisation, marginalisation and what followed were large-scale operations, run by men. That’s now been honed into the brewing world we see as normal.
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I don’t want to partake in industrial bread, with it’s whipping, chemical additives and packaging so why should I do so for alcohol?
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Bringing ale back into my household, making it accessible and successful is proving quite a ride! Reading, guessing, experimenting, tasting, revising…over and over again.
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Here’s the latest batch, brewing with…shock, horror… commercial yeast. I’m doing it to try and understand whether my attempts at home yeast (which have been many and varied) are making my beer taste the way it does or whether home-malting or my equipment makes the difference.
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Check out the layer on the top of this ferment. The yeasts, not wanting any competition from opportunistic bacteria, have created a physical barrier to keep the sugary grain liquid all to themselves!
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If you want to see more of what I’ve been up to, check out my ancestral ale highlight or support me by becoming a patron of @ancestralkitchenpodcast where I’ve recently shared what I’ve been up to.

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Keeping warm in winter has always been a challenge for me. But here, as in many areas of life, ancestral wisdom has taught me so much.
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I’m writing a newsletter to go out tomorrow which will share what I do – with food, drink and routines – to help keep warm. And it’ll include details of this fabulous beef and barley stew.
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You can get on my mailing list via the link in my profile or by typing ancestralkitchen.com/newsletter into your browser.

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The tin you bake in makes a big difference to your loaf. Two identical rye sourdoughs here, one cooked in a ceramic baker, the other a metal ‘pullman’-style pan.
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We’re so used to seeing tall rye bread with straight edges, so the pullman pan, though non-stick (which isn’t my favourite), creates such a pleasing loaf.
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If you’ve been contemplating my course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics, don’t delay! @thefermentationschool’s 50%-off sale ends today, Monday 28th at 11:59pm PST. There’s a link to the course with the discount already applied in my story today.

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Fermented Chestnuts! I discovered these by accident (“I wonder what’ll happen if I stick these chestnuts in some honey and put them somewhere warm?!”) last year and they were a revelation…so, of course, I couldn’t wait to do them again this year!
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They are boozy (in a delicious mead way), spicy and soft. I’m planning to cover them in home-made bean-to-bar chocolate and then feel like a goddess as I eat them over the festive period!
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If you want to have a go, score, roast and peel your chestnuts. Take time over it, so as to get as many as possible in one piece. Add to a jar along with some whole spices. Top up with a 50/50 (by weight) mix of honey (preferably unpasteurised) and water. Try to get the chestnuts under the liquid. Put a loose lid on. Keep somewhere warm (ideally 22-28C) and stir gently every day. They’ll take a good couple of weeks…keep tasting the liquid to judge how they are coming on!
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I’ll put more pics in my story today and save as a highlight too.

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Think fermentation’s just about kraut, kombucha and sourdough? What about extending it to rubbish; to your kitchen waste?!! These two buckets and the bag of inoculated bran next to them have given me an amazing way to transform my food scraps, through fermentation, into compost.
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Once the ferment is done, I dig it into my container-garden pots. The vegetables that I’ve grown since I started with this method, called Bokashi, have been much bigger, happier and delicious!
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Today’s @ancestralkitchenpodcast is all about Bokashi. It will teach you everything you need to know about what it is, how it works, how you can use it in both a tiny town apartment and a large homestead and what the benefits are to you, your plants, the soil and the environment.
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@farmandhearth and I, thanks to @teraganix have a 2-bucket Essential Bokashi set worth $126 to give away (to someone in the US or Canada). To enter please tag someone who you think would love to get started with Bokashi in the comments of this post. The competition will close next Tues 29th at midnight US time.
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Listen to the @ancestralkitchenpodcast episode to find out more by searching for us in your podcast app or by streaming/downloading from the link in my profile.

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Have you ever tried to make a dough from rolled oats? It’s not easy! The protein in oats, avenin, isn’t ‘sticky’ like gluten so you have to coax the grain into a dough with skill and a few ‘tricks’.
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My tricks: I use warm water and add a little fat. It helps! Apparently my ancestors, the many inhabitants of the United Kingdom who did this before me, didn’t need tricks! The British equivalent of Italy’s ‘pasta grannies’, they whipped up crack-free oat dough with incredible sleight of hand, the technique locked in their muscle memory!
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They then baked it into oatcakes. You can buy oatcakes in the UK (but who’d want to when the home version is so much better?!), but as I learnt from my co-host on @ancestralkitchenpodcast, @farmandhearth oatcakes aren’t really a ‘thing’ in the US.
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They *are* very much a ‘thing’ in our house. I’m sharing the recipe (tricks and all) in my newsletter that’ll go out tomorrow. If you aren’t on my list, head to ancestralkitchen.com/newsletter (link in profile) to receive the recipe.

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