What’s cooking?

Soup with a difference! (in fact, with at least three differences)
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1 – It’s got sourdough in it! Yes, I used some discard. What a revelation…talk about hearty. I mixed my rye starter with home-made stock, veg and sausages. It thickened the soup up and gave us a tangy carb hit too.
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2 – It came from the lovely @dreamtemplearts family. This is the first time I’ve been passed a recipe I was looking for (it’s based on Zurek, a Polish sour soup) via a one to one IG connection. That warms my heart 🙂
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3 – It traditionally includes All Spice berries. I have not been able to find these in Italy, so instead used a similar flavour profile – cinnamon bark, nutmeg and cloves. I would never have thought of putting these flavours in a savoury soup. It added to the roundness and warmth.
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This one isn’t going anywhere. I already have plans to make it again and when I’ve got my favourite version, to write it up. If you’re looking for discard uses, keep watching.
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And that’s Russian Black Salt on the top in case you’re wondering…there’s a highlight on my profile for process pics of it.
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I’ll go back to my Polish soup induced warm haze now 🙂

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My first go at a #lectinfree (and hence #glutenfree) sourdough pizza. It’s different to my usual spelt, in that the crust was not as crispy and the crumb more cakey…that’s what you get with millet and sorghum as flours. But it was very much enjoyed here.
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And I gotta talk toppings…home-cured bacon from @lavalledelsasso, local red onion and tiny brussels sprouts picked up at the local farmer’s market here in #Pontassieve. I fried it all first, hence the dark colour. Lard-fried brussels on pizza are *good*…seriously, give them a go!

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Finding creative ways to use everything that comes into and is part of my kitchen feels like part of the reason I am here.
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It is satisfying, helps me feel as if I am living with integrity, and brings me such creative joy.
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Here we have a Spelt sourdough. It’s dough had a special addition – I cooked up the oat solids from the bottom of my fermenting jar of Sowans (a traditional Scottish ferment) into a smooth porridge and included them in the mix.
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They bring softness to the crumb and their super-fermented tang adds to the flavour of the nutty spelt. Having said that, even if it’d been a taste disaster, the sound of my knife cutting the crusty crumb would have been enough to win me over.

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Lunch for my hubby, pulled together in 20 mins, but with many more moments than that in its offering:
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Millet and sorghum #lectinfree sourdough that I made yesterday. This one’s flavoured with tumeric, onion and nigella seeds… I’m experimenting!
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Chicken (along with a blob of reserved juice/smaltz in the middle of the plate). I roasted this Monday, I love the ease of leaving it in the fridge and serving simply during the days that follow.
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Salad, made this morning in quantity big enough to last us 4 or so days.
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Topped with sauerkraut and fermented garlic (made at least 6 weeks ago) and sided (is that a verb?!) with a fermented cabbage leaf (made in November) topped with fermented sliced jerusalem artichoke (made last week).
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He was happy (as always…his gratitude fuels my creation) and I was pleased enough to want a photo.
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What are you eating for lunch today?

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It’s a cold morning. I’ve sent my son and husband off to catch a train to school. Now, I’m focused on me. I’ve cooked up some swats – fermented ground oats – and topped the white clouds with linseed, crunchy nuts, olive oil and miso. Now I get to sit and watch the birds feasting on persimmons outside my window.
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I hope today brings you a warm plate of food and some moments to be still.

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My Christmas book haul!
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Starting at the bottom:

The Secret Life of Chocolate. This is an astounding book. 700 pages of chocolate history, pharmacology, symbology…years of research. It includes ancient concoctions, which I hope to be able to bring to life. It is the most expensive book I’ve ever bought and I’m totally in love! Thank you @nocturnalherbalist for sharing your knowledge.
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A History of English Food #clarissadicksonwright. Italy is my soul’s home, but the UK is my birth home. I want to know more about its food history.
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@lambposts Steven Lamb’s River Cottage series book on Curing and Smoking. The bacon I cured a month ago used Steven’s process. I love his clarity and simplicity and wanted more. Expect creations to follow!
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And a book in Italian: Il Contadino 2.0, that tells the story of Flavio, the creator of @lavalledelsasso, the local farm where we source all our meat. His journey is an inspiration and I can feel the enthusiasm in the words bouncing off the page (even with a dictionary always in tow when reading!)
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Stupidly, perhaps, I am reading all four books at once! I couldn’t not. Swipe to see where I’m at with each of them.

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Not perfect, but getting there! My latest #homemadechocolate saw me roasting the whole, raw cacao beans in our oven, rather than the cast iron pan.
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I then cracked the seeds and took the husks off by hand.
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After that I tried grinding in the mortar and pestle… it was virtually impossible to get anywhere near fine cocao, even for my hubby’s strong arms, so I swapped to our high-power coffee grinder. That did a reasonable, ‘stone-ground’ job.
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Then I added a small amount of melted cacao butter, stirred and plopped the mix into my moulds, filling some of the chocolates’ middles with freshly grated orange zest, others with hazlenuts.
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The taste and texture is the best of my attempts so far. The roasting isn’t burnt (success!) and grinding better means less need for cacao butter, which improves the flavour. The liquid chocolate was a bit thick, hence the little holes in the chocolates you can see…but I think chocolate tastes best with eye shut anyway, so who cares?!
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See my story for some of the process pictures.
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I already know what I want to change for the next batch. Just need to eat these ones first…

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This is the season of Jerusalem artichokes, which are a traditionally-foraged food here in Italy. They are full of prebiotics, which I guess is why they are notoriously hard to digest. I’m working on that though, having read that when they are lacto-fermented they don’t cause the same problems.
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So here we have Jerusalem artichokes, along with some garlic and spices, ready for a 5 day ferment.
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Interestingly, the name is thought to come from ‘girasole’, the Italian word for their species, the sunflower. This was apparently mis-pronounced when Italian immigrants settled in the US, and turning into the word Jerusalem.
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I think I prefer Sunchokes, their other name 🙂

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Sausage soup made with half home-made duck stock and half sauerkraut juice. It’s the first time I’ve tried cooking with fermentation juice and it works!
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The heavenly sausages are from @lavalledelsasso and I also added some nigella seeds (I am having a prolonged love affair with these little’uns!).
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Cooking with sauerkraut and soured liquids has a long heritage in parts of Europe. I can see (or should I say, taste) why. We argued over who was having the leftovers, I caved in and let my son have them 🙂

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I’ve written up the recipe for the Sourdough Wholegrain Rye I’ve been making pretty much every week for 2 years. It’s doesn’t require attention or kneading during the dough phase and there’s no fussy shaping needed either.
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It makes a dense, tasty, rustic loaf.
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You can see the process via the link in my profile. I’ve included a couple of videos in the recipe so you can be confident about how your loaf should look.

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