What’s cooking?

You know that *amazing* smell when you open a jar of pesto? I always thought it was dependent on the cheese or the pine nuts. Turns out it’s not!
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This is lacto-fermenting basil. A nudge from @savage.craic gave me the impetus to use our crazily-growing back yard basil this way. I added 3% salt and pounded (actually, I should say my son Gabriel did the pounding – check out my story today if you want a smile :-)).
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The brown liquid on the top doesn’t look particularly nice, but when I open the jar (which I topped with a small layer of olive oil) it smells like the most heavenly pesto your nose has ever sniffed. No cheese, no nuts…it’s just basil, salt and oil.
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Now I want to grow even more basil next year just to get to sniff this (and I haven’t even tasted it yet!)

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I scribbled this down when listening to @sandorkraut being interviewed by @flora_brewing back in June and I’ve been wanting to get it up on my feed since then!
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Because how true is this?! It’s what most of my kitchen is based on.
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Grains, water, time – oh my gosh, sourdough bread!
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Veg, salt, water, time – fiery, exciting ferments.
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Sugar, bacteria, time – fizzy, delicate, delicious drinks.
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Fermentation is a joy and it is simple. It creates connection and it sparks meals with such flavour. I use bowls and jars I got for pennies and ingredients that are local and simple. And by the magic of microbes I get deliciousness!
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Love to hear what your all-time-favourite-ferment is.

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My “Sourdough Porridge, Polenta and Polenta Bread” video series is ready to go! I’ll be sharing it first with my newsletter community. Just got to rope Rob, my hubby, into showing me how to use the newsletter-creator he made for me. Hopefully it’ll go out next week.
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If you want the videos in your inbox, or if you want to be on my newsletter and aren’t, use the link in my profile to pass me your details.
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In the meantime, I’ll be off to eat all the the fermented porridge I made in order to shoot the videos 🙂

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Sandor’s #wildfermentation recipe for 5,000-year old beer uses sourdough starter. Now I’m used to brewing it (I’ve been doing it 6 months), I’m keen to start making it mine.
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Instead of creating a new starter each time, here I’m ‘backslopping’ my yeasts from a previous batch into the new brew. Looks active, doesn’t it?
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And I also want to try creating a starter that cultivates yeasts alone, not lactic acid bacteria too. That’ll make my brew less sour.
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Feeling like I’m starting to spread my ‘brewster’ wings!

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I love opening the tin and seeing how my un-scored loaves want to express themselves with their bursts.
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This loaf is spelt, made with a technique new to me – I heated 2/3rds of the water to 80C and mixed it into the flour. After letting the mix return to room temperature, I added a tiny amount of starter along with the rest of the water and then let the bread rise overnight at room temperature.
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I cooked it in a lidded ceramic tin and, when it was almost done, I took it out of the tin completely and put it back in the oven for 5 minutes.
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The crust is very thick and crunchy. The inside is spongy and has bigger holes that I usually see. I’ll be playing around with this technique a bit more over the coming weeks. Thank you @ellys.everyday for passing it to me 🙂
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Will pop some more pictures in my story today.

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Underneath this home-made cheese is half a savoury spelt muffin.
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The cheese was made by leaving raw goat’s milk out on the counter until it soured and then straining the mixture through a muslin.
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The muffin was leavened with my pineapple sage yeast water and is streaked with beetroot from our garden (you can see the purple dough in my yeast water story).
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Delicious for supper after a podcast-recording afternoon 🙂

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I have my own definition of food perfection. That definition includes the words fun, engaging, useful, honest, real and healthy.
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These little nuggets are literally just cacao beans. I bought them from a farm in Nicaragua. I roasted, cracked and shelled them. I warmed my marble mortar and pestle and then set my husband Rob’s biceps to work grinding the beans into a paste. On my gosh the house smelt good.
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When he’d had enough (after about an hour and a half – he is dedicated as this stuff is good!), I plopped the paste into some chocolate moulds.
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Because there is nothing other than cacao beans in these (no extra fat) and because I don’t want to use an expensive machine that pulverises my beans into a smooth paste, my chocolate isn’t as runny. So, as you can see, it’s not, by societal definition, ‘perfect’.
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But I don’t care! These little gems taste amazing! I can eat them as is, I can melt them into a porridge or I can mix them with warm milk or water, add some spices and make an ancestral cacao drink.
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They tick all my boxes.
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If you’re into chocolate (is there anyone who isn’t?), and haven’t yet listened to last week’s @ancestralkitchenpodcast episode ‘The Secret Life of Chocolate’, I would totally recommend it. You’ll learn things you didn’t know about this wonderful food stuff – I promise! Link to stream or download is in my profile. or you can find us in you podcast app by searching for Ancestral Kitchen Podcast.

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Spelt pancakes leavened with left-over pineapple sage yeast water topped with yogurt made from local raw goat milk, ground Italian linseed and some artistically ‘thrown’ local olive oil.
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Pancakes need not be complicated. My staple mix is simply flour, water and a leavener – here it’s a yeast water, but it’s more often sourdough discard. There are instructions in the recipes section of my profile. And if you need further encouragement there are more pictures in my story today!

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