What’s cooking?

There is a dish called Rubbish Bin Pasta. If you’re American, I guess this translates as Trash Can Pasta. It’s from Naples and called Sicchie d’a Munnezza.
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The original is pasta served with nuts and dried fruit in a tomato sauce. I often take the essence of this dish (i.e. use whatever you have left!) and re-imagine it using yesterday’s extras and other orphaned veg.
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Here’s my home-made sourdough wholegrain spelt pasta topped with what I had and then sprinkled with sauerkraut… because most things are sprinkled with sauerkraut here.

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This loaf was an experiment. I wanted to use the oat ‘swats’ (i.e. the bit left at the bottom) from my traditional Scottish drinking fermentation, Sowans in bread.
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I include a portion of roux-like pre-cooked flour and water in all of my spelt sourdoughs. It helps the loaves stay soft. Here I chose to take the waste oat paste from the bottom of my Sowans fermenting jar, and cook it up, before mixing it into the dough.
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Turned out nice, don’t you think? I wish I could give you a taste. There’s a video of me cutting the loaf in my story today, along with a pic of what the ‘swats’ are (trying to describe it above was not easy!)
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Thank you @rootkitchens for opening the door to Sowans for me. I have loads of ideas for how I can use it.

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Why score your loaf, when you can open the oven and see this?! It’s so alive and enthusiastic, I almost want to hug it.
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The recipe for this sourdough wholegrain spelt loaf is this month’s #ancestralcookup. You’ll find detailed instructions on how to create it via the link in my profile.

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I am filling my head (and tummy!) with chocolate. Researching, learning, trying out, tasting.
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I have decided that I want to roast the raw cacao beans I buy before making chocolate. This for two reasons:
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1 – Cacao beans are fermented and I did not do that fermentation. I don’t feel comfortable with exposing my family to potential moulds/bacteria that might still be present on the beans. Roasting kills any baddies.
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2 – I like the flavour! Acid is decreased and that toasty yum comes out.
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I am learning that, like all stages of the chocolate-making process, roasting is challenging. I don’t have posh kit; I used my cast iron pan. Unfortunately, I burnt them a bit.
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I then cracked and shelled the beans by hand.
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I do not do well with sugar, so am on a quest for the best 100% cacao chocolate I can make. Once ground, I added a 50/50 mix of cacao butter/coconut oil and mixed.
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The taste is good. The texture is finely-gritty, let’s call it ‘stone-ground’!
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Next batch won’t have any burn 😉
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Pictures and video do this much more justice than my words. Check out my story today for a chocolate-covered walk-through!

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This is Borş. An interesting word and food stuff. In Romania, the tradition I’ve learnt it from, it is sour liquid made from fermenting bran in water. Once filtered, the probiotic-laden liquid is used as a base for soups and as a drink.
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It is historically a food made from ‘waste’; the bran that would have been thrown away. In that respect it’s similar to the Scottish ferment ‘Sowans’ that I make – that was traditionally made with ‘waste’ from the milling of rolled oats.
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I am electrified to learn that traditions of disparate populations would basically *do the same thing* with waste from their local grain. That’s ancestral food wisdom at its best.
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So, living in Italy, I made this modified version with home-ground local spelt. All I’ve added is water. This is day 2 (I expect it to take 5-7 days). You can see the fervour of the ferment – the bran has been lifted above the water line thanks to bubbles!.
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I will use home-made Borş in our Christmas dinner, which is going to be a Romanian dish of stuffed fermented whole cabbage leaves. I made an IGTV vid yesterday of me prepping the whole cabbage leaves for fermentation, if you want to check it out.
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In the meantime, I’m drinking this liquid. It is good. And @irina.r.georgescu says I can even use the spent bran as a face-mask…photo may follow!!

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These are fermented millet and sorghum polenta bread slices which have been fried till crispy. I love them for breakfast, topped with ground linseed and dehydrated, super-crispy nuts
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They are also good for a quick supper. I make the loaf (check my story today for more info) at the weekend and then have something I can pop in the cast iron pan weeknights to crunch up while I pull together the rest of our meal.
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The fermenting is important (to me, at least!). It is easy, brings a yummy sour flavour and makes them easier to digest.

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I have made this loaf every week for the past 18 months. It is a winner – pure and simple. Nutty spelt, zero-waste, crunchy crust, soft crumb, lots of rise, slices well and stays soft.
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It’s so good; I’d love you to enjoy it too, so I’ve written the recipe up as this month’s #ancestralcookup. There’s a link to it on my profile.

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Roasted carrot soup. It has four ingredients (carrots, onions, garlic and stock) and is super-easy to make. We sprinkled it with coriander, drizzled it with some dressing which had sour and pungent flavours (from lemon and garlic, respectively) and then ate it with a foccacia-style spelt sourdough studded with home-cured bacon.
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I felt like a domestic goddess as I watched my son and husband eat.
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Simple pleasures bring me much joy 🙂
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I took more pics (including my 6-year old doing most of the sous chef work) and will pop them in my story.

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Sometimes, breakfast requires a little something special: a touch of melted 99% chocolate mingling with ground linseed and nuts atop fermented millet and sorghum porridge.

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