What’s cooking?

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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It’s been a while since we’ve had pizza. Absence does make the heart grow fonder…especially when you top the sourdough with ‘Caprino’, a raw goat’s milk cheese bought from a Christmas-light-illuminated stall at the last local market before Christmas.
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Happy Christmas to everyone I’ve shared with over IG this year. x

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We eat heart a lot. I know there are a lot of recipes that involve cutting, scraping, stuffing etc, but I can rarely be bothered with that. I just bung it in the slow cooker. Well, not quite ‘bung’…I dice it, usually combine it with another non-offal meat (here ossobuco), lots of onion, green veg and mushrooms.
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I got hold of some juniper berries recently. I put those in the pot too, along with kombu, pepper and salt.
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Overnight on low and we’ve got lunch.
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Thank you @lavalledelsasso for bringing us such wonderfully raised and tasty meat, offal and eggs this year.

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Christmas water kefir. I’ve added dried orange slices (they add more fizz than fresh), ginger, anise, cardamon, cloves and cinnamon to the second ferment. I’m thinking of leaving some out for Santa. Do you think he looks after his gut biome?!

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Have you ever felt like a snowball, careering downhill, picking up more and more en route? Right now, that’s me with cacao. I’m diving into its history, nutrition and culinary applications in a crazy way – I don’t think I could stop, even if I wanted to!
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I’m coming at cacao from a slightly different angle to most, however. I’ll certainly make sweetened chocolate for my family, but I am most interested in 100% cacao creations – be that solid chocolate or chocolate drinks.
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For thousands of years, before sugar became diffuse, cacao was eaten (or drunk) without sweetener. It’s only in the last hundred or so years that mankind has made it sweet.
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I’m interested in cacao at it roots, cacao worshipped, cacao drunk with plant compounds, cacao that’s bitter and deep and strong. Not just because ancestral traditions fascinate me, but because cacao is literally powerful medicine and I want to treat my body and mind to it without subjecting it to sugar (something I know I cannot handle).
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Here we have beans that I’ve roasted, cracked and winnowed (de-shelled). I’m grinding them in my marble mortar. Swipe to see the just-made chocolate spread out and then the finished delights.
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I have a long way to go in creating what I want to taste…but this journey is wonderful.
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Check out my story today to see the roasting in progress and more gratuitous chocolate shots.

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Ciaccia coi Friccioli, or Tuscan flatbread with fried fatty bacon bits. This is what happened when I cooked the dough I posted a picture of two photos back.
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It is Tuscan spelt flour, sourdough, peppered with home-cured pork belly from Flavio at @lavalledelsasso.
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And it is YUM 🙂

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This is a ‘scald’. It’s flour (in this case wholegrain spelt) heated on the stove with water until it’s thick. Once cooled, this goes into the bowl (along with flour, salt and starter) when I mix my sourdough wholegrain spelt loaf.
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I rarely make spelt loaves anymore without this. That’s because, prior to learning about it, my spelt loves always went dry and stale really quickly. The scald is like magic – it makes the bread soft and long-lasting.
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I’ve written up the process for my go-to wholegrain spelt sourdough. I’ve made it every week for 18 months…it is that good! You can find the recipe by clicking on the link in my profile.

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Learning Italian, and being an ancestrally-passionate cook, I often end up opening cans of linguistic worms when I get excited about a dish.
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This is often because, up until very recently, Italy did not have one language. Instead, each region, even each town, had it’s own dialect, each derived separately from Latin and often very diverse.
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Friccioli is the Tuscan name for small, yummy bits of pork fat. Elsewhere in Italy, they are called Ciccioli. In the UK, I think the closest we’d get to them are pork scratchings.
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Anyhow, they are in this bread, which may look like a Focaccia. It sort of is a Focaccia, but if you’re Tuscan, you’re more likely to call it a Schiacciata, or because it’s got bits of pork fat in, a Ciaccia.
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I’m just going to translate it as being a delicious bread with yummy bacon bits in! And, because it’s from my kitchen, it’s sourdough and wholegrain spelt.
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This is the second time I’ve made this. I’ll try and get some photos of it cooked before it gets inhaled this time!

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