What’s cooking?

Rye loaves made with 50% spent grain from my ancestral ale and 50% wholegrain rye flour. The left one is flavoured with fennel seeds, the right one studded with raisins and orange zest.
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I didn’t use any sourdough starter with these loaves…the leavening is solely from the yeasts that were left coating my spent grain after the ale-making process.
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They are dense, boozy and delicious!

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I found a copy of Pellegrino Artusi’s famous late 1800s cookbook for 1 Euro in my local herbalist’s shop yesterday. Turns out an old lady who is friend’s with the herbalist was decluttering. I was chuffed as I’ve been looking at it on bookshelves since we moved back here to Italy.
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It’s just in time for the research I’m doing for an @ancestralkitchenpodcast episode I’m recording with @farmandhearth next week. The iconic book has three pizza recipes in it, *all* of which are sweet and have eggs in.
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I feel another ‘historical myth’ needs busting (check my last post for a busted one on olive oil):
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Pizza as we know it was not widespread in Italy until very recently.
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@historicalitalianfood’s book confirms it. So many of the women interviewed say something along the lines of ‘I didn’t try pizza until the 80s’.
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So, I say, if you want to put left over chicken on your pizza (as I have done here!) go do it. Put sweet things on it (I once at Guava on a pizza in Brazil) heck, even pineapple. Just know what the toppings will do to your base so you don’t end up all soggy (unless you want that!)
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The recipe for this sourdough spelt pizza base is in my profile.

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Chewing the Fat by @historicalitalianfood is opening my eyes to the way food *really* was in Italy 3/4 generations back. The interviews Karima has shared with women in their 80s and 90s are astounding. The lives they led, the hardships, the struggle for food, the cooking. I can’t read more than a few pages at a time as it’s so much to take in.
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One of the things these women talk about over and over again is how they used animal fats. Almost every interviewee talks about lard or lardo. Olive oil was just not a ‘thing’ like we in the post-industrial, food-led-by-marketing world think it was.
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I’ve been rendering lard in my own kitchen from local pigs for nearly a decade and using it in a myriad of ways. It’s a magical fat that has not made me fat. Reading the words in this book, I realise lard was and *is* normal and I stand on the shoulders of so many women. Our diets are not the only thing that have been hijacked by mainstream food systems, our history has too.
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Have lard stories? Want to share them with me? I’d love to hear.

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Crusty and rustic, dense and satisfying. Rye is such a delicious and easy grain to make into sourdough. There’s no gluten development, there’s no worrying about kneading. And yet it makes amazing loaves.
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Here are two of my everyday rye sourdough. The recipe is on my site (go to the recipes button on my linktr.ee). I am excited to be exploring rye more this year – hoping to do a starter Q&A soon and then a video course later in the year.
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Do you like rye?
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Have you tried making sourdough rye at home?

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Transforming raw cacao beans to chocolate at home is an amazing experience. I am addicted to the process and rarely have any other chocolate in the house these days.
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Commercial chocolate makers use expensive machines to grind their beans. But you don’t *need* these to make beans into bars at home.
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On January 21st, I’ll be doing a Zoom course that’ll walk you through making chocolate at home. You’ll get the beans in and we’ll do the whole thing together.
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The day is offered free of charge, with the option to support my work by donating. If you want to see the details, click on the first link in my linktr.ee 🙂

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When I met my husband, Rob, he’d already been on a 10-year health journey. He’d given up milk, wheat and was vegetarian. I knew about turning your food world upside down, having previously transformed my own diet in order to lose half my body weight.
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Together we went deeper into healing through food, eating vegan and then raw vegan for 2 years, during which time we juice and water fasted. It was the desire to have a child that took us beyond that. I hadn’t had a menstrual cycle for 5 years and a doctor told me I’d never conceive without drugs.
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Through embracing animals fats like never before, I was able to bring back my cycle and become pregnant naturally. The little man you see in this picture came into our lives.
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And how he has taken us all further still. I couldn’t produce enough milk, so we used the WAPF baby formula and were threatened with child protection services for doing so. He then had emergency bowel surgery at 18 months and 20cm of intestine removed. Both Rob and I have weaved his healing journey with ours since then, working persistently and patiently to discover answers.
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I am so grateful for my family, the lessons that my life circumstances have taught me and the grit and softness that has developed in me through facing them. 2022 doesn’t look all roses, but I trust that the path I’m led towards is one that will open doors of opportunity and I know that every moment of presence I get to spend with these two will be so treasured.
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Happy new year from my home to yours. x

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My first ever home-cured lardo with local back fat from @valledelsasso!
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If you’ve not tried lardo, look out for it; it’s amazing. Traditionally-cured in marble basins for months, it’s mouth-melting and so flavourful.
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I don’t have a marble basin (or a hanging shed) so I played with process a bit, using baking paper and weighing it down with water-filled olive oil bottles!
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The cure was rosemary, juniper, salt and sugar. I left it on for a few weeks (not sure exactly how long, gotta write down what I do next time!), and then rinsed off, re-wrapped and left for a couple of months.
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Having tasted some raw (yum!), we’re going to cover one of my spelt pizza doughs in it today and let all that deliciousness soak into the crust as it cooks.

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How many books do you have on the go at the moment?
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Want some more?!
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I’m reading four right now and holding myself back from many more!
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The four I’ve got on the go are:
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@historicalitalianfood’s Chewing the Fat (top in the stack!)
The Essential Herbal Medicine by Simon Mills
How to Brew by John Palmer
Contadino 2.0 featuring Flavio at @valledelsasso (in Italian, started this *ages* ago and am determined to finish it!)
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Lined up for after these, I have Defending Beef by Nicolette Hahn Niman, Eating to Extinction by @dan.saladino, Wild Brews by Jeff Sparrow and ValdiSieve e Lode (again in Italian, again featuring my farmer!)
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After even these, there are two or three more I definitely want to get to – including Nourishing Fats by @sallyfallonmorell and Taste and the TV chef by @foodgillysmith.
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Will there be time for *anything* else this year?! After recording today’s podcast with @farmandhearth and hearing all the books she is diving into, I’m not sure.
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What are you reading?
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What do you want to read this year?
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Inspire me some more!

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