What’s cooking?

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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Blood and chocolate. Together. In a recipe. When I first came across this, it sounded crazy to my ears, but, having read an entire book on the traditional use of blood in Italian cooking and seen 30+ recipes that combine blood and chocolate, it’s kinda seeming natural to me!
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And I want to make it. So very much.
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Finding pig blood from a trusted source has not been easy so far. I want to know how the animal’s been kept. I want to trust the sanitization. I want to know chemicals haven’t been added to it.
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And then, I’ll be able to, with peace of mind, try to bring some recipes to life; recipes that value everything an animal gives when its life is taken for me.
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There’s a video of an excited me showing you the book (it’s only taken me 9 months to read it!) in my story today 🙂

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This is leftover beef tongue. Before baking, I mixed it with sauteed leeks and mushrooms, sourdough millet/sorghum breadcrumbs and lots of duck stock.
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Whilst its smells were filling the room, I listened to @177milkstreet’s podcast (which I recommend!), and cleared my 2020 food photos from my device, making room for the many that’ll I hope to snap this coming year.
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These new days of the year are introspective and warm in our house. I have some wonderful plans and ideas for 2021. I hope you’ll like them as much as I do 🙂

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I love @darra.goldstein’s Thursday Salt enough to fill my flat with smoke on New Year’s Eve! It’s a great excuse to open the window and, as Italian’s say, “change the air”.
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There’s a pic in my story today of Rob holding the charcoaled ‘cake’ out of the window if you want a peek.
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This is my second go at this black salt. We’ve eaten all the first lot! Scroll to see the salt/sourdough rye mix being spread, how it looks after baking and then mashing it up in our Tuscan marble mortar and pestle.
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Happy New Year to you all. Thank you for sharing and being a recipient of my sharing this year. x

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Every Christmas Day, we eat something we’ve never eaten before. This year it was Sarmales, a traditional Romanian dish, of rolled fermented cabbage leaves, stuffed with a pork/millet/veg mix and cooked in stock and fermentation juice.
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The rolls were delicious. The pork was local, from @lavalledelsasso, I fermented the whole cabbage late November (video on my IGTV) and the cooking juice was half duck stock and half sauerkraut juice. We ate them a top Italian sorghum also cooked in duck stock.
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Thank you @irina.r.georgescu for bringing this and much more about Romanian cuisine to life in my imagination.

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Fancy a bit of baking? This is my wholegrain sourdough spelt loaf. It has a portion of ‘scalded’ flour in it which makes it soft and long-lasting. The recipe is in my bio.

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Beef tongue cooked in the slow cooker is already very good. Add a mushroomy/oniony sauce and the serve it in a scooped out loaf so that the juice (made from home-made duck stock) soaks into the crumb and it’s pretty-much transformed into something magical.
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As I tuck in, I think, am I *really* eating tongue?! Tongue is this good?! Why aren’t we all eating it?!
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Tongue from the marvellous Flavio @lavalledelsasso, bread is #lectinfree Italian millet and sorghum sourdough, crazy scooping out idea was delivered to me by a kitchen fairy!
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Check my story today for the steps. I was so excited I couldn’t stop snapping!

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In Scotland, Christmas Eve is traditionally called ‘Sowans Nicht’; Sowans Night, after the fermented oat drink, Sowans.
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I’ve been making Sowans regularly the last few months, from freshly ground local oats.
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And here is my extra-festive take on it: I gently heated the fermented, tart-flavoured liquid with cloves, anise, cardamon and cinnamon. A few minutes before serving, I added some dried orange.
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Mulled Sowans 🙂
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Pretty chuffed with the idea, and the taste! We had our own Sowans Nicht here in Italy and I’m sure we’ll be drinking this more before 2020 is out.

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This is what a beef tongue looks like after 16 hours in a slow cooker. I have exciting plans for it that involve shredding, adding a sauce and serving it in a scooped out bread. To start, I need to peel the tongue. I’m very distracted, however, by the amazing smell and how much my mouth is watering.

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