What’s cooking?

Connection is one of the biggest motivators in my life. This simple lunch speaks of it. Heart from Flavio, at @valledelsasso. I walked, with my husband and son, to pick it up. Millet that’s from the Italian soil. Broccoli bought at our Thursday market here in Pontassieve @valdisieveintransizione.
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I love finding connection at my table.
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And I also love finding it here on Instagram. Being ‘out of the ordinary’ and moving many times over the last decade, has often left me feeling more isolated than I’ve wanted. Sharing my kitchen and table here has brought me so much beauty. Thank you for all the conversations.
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One lovely connection, with Andrea over at @farmandhearth, has developed into an Ancestral Food podcast. I’m so excited! Not only do I get to chat about something I really love with someone who gets it, but thanks to technology, we get to share it with others and hopefully build more and more connection, community and love.
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We’re launching on Tuesday. I’ll be posting then, but if you’re in, you can follow us at @ancestralkitchenpodcast

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This ‘bread’ isn’t for eating…it’s for making a 5,000 year old drink!
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I’ve decided to have a go at making ‘Bouza’ the ancient Egyptian fermented beer. I’m using Italian spelt grain (and that’s the only ingredient, other than water).
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First, I soaked the grain. Half of it is being sprouted. I then processed up the other half to make these small loaves. They’ve been ovened for just 15 minutes – they’ve a crust, but the inside is still raw and as such holds the yeasts and bacteria which will ferment the rest of the spelt.
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When the sprouts are ready, I’ll mix them, the water and some sourdough starter together, before breaking up this bread and mixing it in.
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Exciting!!
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I took a picture of the recipe, which is from #wildfermentation, I’ll pop it into my story in a bit.

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When I saw the jar of locally-collected rosehip powder I knew I had to get it. Up until this week, we’ve been sprinkling it on porridge. Then I saw the recipe by @rachellambertwildfoodforaging for rosehip crackers.
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Rachel collects her own rosehip around the coast of Cornwall, where we used to live. It’s somehow comforting to know that rose hips are shared across many miles.
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I altered her recipe, fermenting the oat and buckwheat dough overnight to make sourdough crackers. It took a lot of the sweetness out of the rosehip which gives the crackers a different flavour, I’m sure. Still, they were very good.
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And when I realised we could make moons with the cutters, I took the opportunity get my lunar-inspired, feminine side on.

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Spelt, chocolate barley malt, hazelnut and sorghum porridge sourdough coming out of the oven, cosseted by my much-loved Emile Henry ceramic loaf tin.
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One more little tweak to make and then I’m ready to write this up – it’s a bread that’s gotta be eaten outside this little Italian apartment!
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You can find all my recipes via the link in my linktr.ee.

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We have a constant supply of two types of fermented vegetables in our house. One is sauerkraut, the other garlic. Here’s the latest batch ready for its 6-week fermentation.
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All three of us eat this every day. Garlic is *such* a medicine.
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Practically, all it takes is creating a jar like this every 6 weeks: Buying 8/9 heads, peeling, chopping the big cloves in half, adding a brine (5g of salt per cup of water) and keeping the garlic under the liquid (hence the cabbage leaf you can see). That’s it.
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It takes an hour. Our sauerkraut-making also happens once every 6 weeks. That takes about an hour too. Two hours every six weeks for ample daily fermented veg is a good deal in my book.
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There’s an article on garlic in my linktr.ee and a ‘recipe’ for sauerkraut on the resources page of my website (also linked in linktr.ee).

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These beautiful green tendrils are agretti, a green vegetable that I had never seen before I came to Italy. It’s everywhere at the moment, cooks quickly and simply and tastes a little like asparagus.
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Do you have this where you are?
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Served here with burgers using Flavio’s beef mince @valledelsasso and Italian millet.
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Next I’d like to give it a go as a ‘pasta’. The lady at the grocer’s told me lemon, olive oil and garlic were the way to go and who’d argue with that?!

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I love it when I create a dish here in my little Italian kitchen, for my two boys, that comes directly from an IG friend’s creativity and sharing.
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This is the delicious Pongal, something I would never have known about it if not for @kobofermentary. It’s an ancient Indian dish, traditionally made at harvest festival. I fermented rice that I previously ‘broke’ in the coffee grinder and then toasted it in coconut oil before cooking it long and slow with some tumeric.
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To top it, I bloomed cinnamon, cardamom and anise in coconut oil, then added dried coconut.
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Not very traditional – I left out the dahl and swapped out ghee (both sue to my son’s sensitivites) but very, very delicious.
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And, excitingly, in zero-waste mode, I even have a use for the water I soaked/fermented the rice in; I’m going to wash my hair in it!! Check out my story today for the details 🙂

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Every time I make Sowans, the Scottish oat ferment, I have both a drink and an oat ‘porridge’ ready to use. There’s quite some competition for how it’s used!
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Sometimes, we cook up the porridge and eat it for breakfast with crunchy decorations! Other times, I reserve it for this: Spelt and Fermented Oat Porridge bread.
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The crust is crackly, nutty spelt and the crumb is soft from the addition of the porridge. It also helps the bread last longer.
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There’s a slice shot in my stories. Wish I could feed you some!

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