What’s cooking?

Lunch: Fennel seed-studded sausage from the farm in the hills (it is *so* good – one day I’ll get to making salume myself), salad with leaves from @radiciumane, topped with capers and olives (because I live in Italy!), served with home-made local spelt sourdough, spread with home-rendered lard (from the same piggies who gave us the sausage, those of my #farmerman @valledelsasso)
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5,000-year old beer would’ve been really good with this, but it isn’t quite ready yet – you can see the filtering and second-fermenting in my story today.

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New batch of the ancient fermented grain beer, Bouza!
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I’m still following #wildfermentation instructions (because @sandorkraut is The King!) but again using local spelt instead of wheat. I’ve flavoured these three ways: One is cacao nibs, another barley malt and caraway seeds and the last chestnut and rye malt.
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I took some videos of how I strain it and will post them into my story tomorrow. For now this will sit for a day or so to bubble up and I’ll get on with making bread from the spent grain.

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Why just ferment, when you can ferment *and* talk about fermenting as well?!
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I’m in heaven 🙂
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So much bubbling happening in my kitchen right now, this pink-hatted lady (a jar of the Turkish fermented drink, Boza) is not alone.
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Tune into today’s episode of the podcast to find out what is happening in my kitchen as well as what is fermenting in @farmandhearth’s kitchen (and possibly under her bed too – it has been known!).
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I think we got 14 different ferments in total.
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I wonder what the record is? I want to go for that 🙂

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Oškvarkové pagáče are a traditional Slovakian soft biscuit made with layer upon layer of blended up lard cracklings. As soon as @almostbananas told me about them, I knew I wanted have a go.
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We rendered some lard with fat from @valledelsasso at the weekend. Instead of eating the cracklings right from the pan (like we usually do!), I bagsied them and blended them up ready for baking.
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My interpretation of this recipe isn’t very traditional. I left out the dairy and eggs and instead made the dough (which is 100% spelt here) a sourdough ferment. I had such fun spreading the lard paste on it and folding and they smelt unbelievable cooking – probably the hardest photography without eating I’ve ever done!!
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Check out my story today for lots of pics and vids of the process.

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Fermenting this ground unhulled millet has reminded me of visiting the English coast as a child and seeing little shops filled with glass jars of layered sand! The colours of the different parts of the grain are so pretty, and when I stir it I can’t help but watch and smile.
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It’s been in a warm place for 5 days so far, and is starting to sour. I’m hoping that in a few days I’ll have a tasty probiotic liquid and some tangy ground millet to make into a porridge.
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Looking around for something else I can ferment now 😉

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The fussiest loaf I’ve ever made, but boy, it’s worth it.
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Let me sing its praises:
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With spelt as the main grain, it’s nutty and easier on the tummy than wheat. The ‘porridge’ part (I used sorghum for this, but you could use another grain) makes the crumb soft and helps the bread last. The chocolate barley adds a beautiful colour and bursts of dark, smokey, rich flavour and the hazelnuts give crunch and extra fragrance.
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My recipe, which you can find by clicking the link in my profile, will let you know what to expect and walk you through every step.
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It’s not difficult. I promise. You could make it. And then eat it 🙂

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Sourdough Spelt Sausage Plait.
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We were going to make pizza. And then I decided, after spending a large part of the morning recording a podcast episode with @farmandhearth that I didn’t have it in me. So a quick change and I was making sausage plait for the first time in, I think, decades!
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It’s simple filling that just involves mixing herbs, onion and squeezed out sausages. And it worked really well wrapped inside the dough intended for pizza! Where sausage met dough on the inside that magic soaking-up/going-a-bit-soggy happened.
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Check my story today (I’ll save it to the highlight ‘recipes’) for the details.

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I have spent hours trying to find nixtamilised corn (also known as ‘masa’) in Italy with no success. There’s corn everywhere here (think polenta) but no one appears to cook it as the original users (mesoamericans) did – with pickling lime – to increase the availability of amino acids and release the niacin.
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That’s a little suprising to me, considering the devastating problems the Italian region of Veneto had with the niacin-deficiency disease, Pellagra, not so long ago (there’s a great episode of the podcast Gola about it, if you’re interested).
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So, true to my usual form, I’ve decided to try and make masa myself. I’ve got myself some corn kernals and tracked down pickling lime. When it arrives, I expect to make a mess!
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Once the masa is made, I can bring to life an authentic fermented corn cacao atole – one of the ways cocoa beans were originally, and deliciously, drunk.
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In the meantime, I can’t stop experimenting, so I tried with ‘normal’ Italian polenta. I soured it for 2 days with a blob of my bread starter. I then cooked it up and added some of my home-roasted, ground cacao seeds. This breakfast was the result, which I then topped with ground linseed and melted ghee.

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