What’s cooking?

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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I strive for joy, beauty and connection. But at the same time, I am acutely aware of pain, ugliness and disconnection. Engaging with these things is hard work, but they move me…to act with integrity, with hope and with courage.
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And sometimes they also move me to write; to try to share the things I view as ‘wrong’ when I look around me.
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I’ve written this article for the website www.preventanothercorona.org.
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You can find it as the first button on the linktr.ee in my profile.
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If my words resonate with you and you feel inclined, please share them. There is so much media being dedicated to Corona reactions – masks, distancing and vaccines. There needs to be more focused on fixing the things that caused Covid. For the sake of preventing it happening again. And for the sake of our species’ future existence.

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I’ve been on such a fermented porridge ride recently, that I’d almost forgotten my beloved sourdough pancakes.
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Almost…
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This morning’s breakfast: Super-sour sourdough spelt pancakes with my favourite filling – miso, ground linseed and olive oil.
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The process of how to make these is linked in my profile. They are easy. And delicious. And they’d make a great Christmas or Boxing Day breakfast. You could go a bit festively bonkers with the toppings if you wanted…although miso is always good on them in my book 🙂

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My hubby, Rob, ran this raw, goat, lustrously blue cheese down the hill from @aziendaagricolapodereruggeri. It’s probably the last visit he’ll make there until Spring, as the goat’s aren’t producing milk over Winter.
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This piece, toasted, on my plate was the last bit of that last purchase…and he said I could have it. I must be a wonderful wife 😉
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To stop us being sad about the end of the 2020 milk, enter the Brussels Sprouts! My favourite green. I bought these organic beauties from the local health food store.

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Every time we grind grains for sourdough, I am astounded by how deep and rich the bread tastes.
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We have a Marcato Marga manual grain grinder. It’s quiet, beautiful and therapeutic. I organise everything whilst my husband (and occasionally my son) grinds. All three of us listen to a podcast/book or I read aloud.
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Then I take the flour and facilitate the wild yeast fermentation. We don’t usually get to eat the bread until the next day, but when we do, it’s something magical.
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Here is this week’s result: Italian rye sourdough. In my stories you can see pictures of the process. I’ve a saved highlight called rye sourdough where you can see further rye adventures too!

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