What’s cooking?

Fermented oat bake…I knew as soon as I tasted this that I’d got the recipe right this time!
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Oats can be so much more than porridge – this is a savoury bake with eggs, bacon and cheese.
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The oats are fermented which gives their flavour more depth as well as making them more nutritious. Check my profile for a link to a video showing you how to ferment oats if you need guidance.
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And I’ll be sending the recipe out in my email newsletter tomorrow. Sign up via the link in my profile (it’s the first option) if you’d like to receive it.

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Beautiful chard grown in fermented-kitchen-waste-enriched soil in my container garden!

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“For every complex problem, there’s an answer that is clear, simple and wrong”
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Today’s podcast is an interview with an amazing woman – Nicolette Hahn Niman. She’s a mum, an author, a rancher and a lawyer. Her book Defending Beef is such a great tackling of the charge that cows are destroying our planet.
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This is information and a conversation that needs to be heard. We talk about how to create a sustainable food future, the problem with global science reports, Nicolette’s move back to meat after 30 years as a vegetarian and how she balances her farm, her family and her work all whilst being able to prepare and cook real food.
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Thanks to @chelseagreenbooks, we have a copy of Defending Beef to give away! To get your name in the draw, comment below, tagging someone who you think would love to hear this episode. We’ll close out the draw a week today – the 26th, and drop you a note if you’ve won!!
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Book giveaway is US-only, podcast episode is available wherever in the world you live 🙂

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Pesto is not necessarily what you think it is…
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Basil? Yes (well at least if you live in northern Italy, in the south it’s more likely yours would be tomato-dominant). Oil? Yes. Garlic? Yes.
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Butter?? Yes! Butter has been and still is an ingredient of some pesto.
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Cheese? Hmm, maybe, in more recent history. Nuts? Again, perhaps in the post-industrial era.
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And pesto’s not always been a pasta-only condiment. Historically, the job of green pesto was a general condiment and it was most often stirred into soup.
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I’ll post some more surprising details of what pesto has been and is in my story today (and save in my local food highlight).
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Meantime, here’s my traditional pesto. Basil from the garden, olive oil, garlic and salt. I didn’t happen to have any cheese or nuts and I could see my basil was bolting. It’s delicious – I love to eat it on fried eggs.
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Do you make pesto? Have you tried without cheese and nuts? Have you found not pasta-ways to allow it to express its deliciousness?! I’d love to hear!

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It’s super hot here. This rye sourdough discard spice bread usually takes about six hours to ferment, but is ready for baking today in less than three!
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I’ll take 35 minutes of the oven churning out more heat in order to smell and then taste this beauty!
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The recipe is in the “what to do with your sourdough discard” section of my forthcoming @thefermentationschool course Rye Sourdough: Mastering The Basics which will be out in September.

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On Sundays, I like to cook something up that’ll make my life easier over the next few days. Yesterday it was this: a one-dish, cast iron ground pork and vegetable dish.
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I always start off with onion and garlic, but the veg, type of meat and spices vary based on what I have and what I feel like.
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This did Sunday lunch for us, went into my son’s packed lunch that I prepped last night and today I heated up the leftovers, sliced a thick hunk of spelt sourdough, spread it with lard and my own lunch was done in a few minutes!
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The template for this recipe will be going into the @ancestralkitchenpodcast cookbook that @farmandhearth and I are working on…we are so excited about sharing our favourite recipes with you!

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This is soup. Or it will be, once I’ve tamed all that gorgeous natural gelatin into a liquidy submission with some heat!
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My son wasn’t keen on the “blobby bits” (i.e. the cartilage) in my oxtail stew. So I hid them by blending the stew up and renaming it a soup. After leaving it for a day in the fridge this is what I found!
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So not only does he get the “blobby bits” without realising, but he’s also getting all that collagen in the jelly goodness.
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Sometimes it’s just about tweaking the packaging, as it were. A skill I’m acquiring through necessity as my son ages!
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Happy weekend to you all.

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I love sauerkraut. But making it can often seem like a chore. There are other things I’d rather be doing…baking some bread, reading about the joys of lard, trying to replicate a dish I just heard about…
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Creativity in the kitchen is important. Anything we can do to to minimise the time we spend on the routine – the things we want but the making of which doesn’t fire us up – allows us more time to engage with our passions, which keeps those fires of inspiration burning!
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Sauerkraut doesn’t need to take all day, bread doesn’t have to be complicated, your sourdough starter should not run your life, herbal ‘supplements’ can be easily incorporated into food…all things that @farmandhearth and I talk about in this week’s podcast. Listen in to hear some easy ways to make your kitchen quicker and simpler.
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And if you’ve got your own ‘easy way’, a time/energy-saving method that you’ve honed, do let us know!
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You can find us as @ancestralkitchenpodcast on your app, or download/stream via the link in my profile.

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