What’s cooking?

The first time I’ve grown beetroots. This is our harvest: leaves and roots. Is one a turnip?!
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I’ve learnt a lot. That hailstones the size of massive olives can ruin most of your leaves and that beetroot seeds are actually a cluster of many seeds and should be thinned out when they shoot (whoops). Here’s to next year’s growing season. Maybe I’ll get enough for a jar of beet kvass then?

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When I looked through the lens and saw my pizza and this empty seat, my heart ached. I love, love, love sharing my food – in all its local, seasonal, sourdough gloriousness – with my two boys, but I want to share it further.
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For now, that’s where #ancestralcookup comes in. I share my most-loved dishes with you, holding your hand through the process. I know, you’re not at the table with me, but you are cooking, eating and sharing food with other wonderful people. And I hope that comes with lots of love and smiles.
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This month’s cook up is my Wholegrain Spelt Sourdough Pizza. The recipe is in my profile. It’s super good and a wonderful way of celebrating food together. Give it a go and let me know how you like it.

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I’m determined to get supermarkets out of my life. I was almost there in the UK, but moving to another country set me back somewhat! I’ve managed it for meat, some flour and a lot of our vegetables, but I’m not there yet.
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Over breakfast, I got super-focused on my next food moves. They are:
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1/ Go to the Florence Fierucola bread festival and scout for locally-grown and milled wholegrain spelt and rye flour.
2/ Visit our local co-operative store and try to find a super local organic vegetable grower.
3/ Get on it with fish! Go visit Fabio Gallerini at the Sant’Ambrogio market in Florence and see what local fish I can find.
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And my general foodie plans also include:
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4/ Finding a butcher to teach me how to cut up a pig and how to make the wonderful Italian sausages I see all around me, and
5/ Getting more offal next month from Flavio at @lavalledelsasso, maybe even cooking some brains for the first time?
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I’m very excited about all of this. That’s what keeps me going when I find dead ends and my language skills fail me. I will get there!

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Garbage Pail (or if you’re English Rubbish Bin) Pasta is a thing: Sicchie d’a Munnezza, Neapolitan dialect for the kitchen waste receptacle and a pasta dish! 
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This is more of my homemade sourdough wholegrain spelt pasta (check out my stories if you want to see it coming to life). I got a little carried away with the toppings, so let’s just call it Rubbish Bin Pasta! If you’ve never put walnuts on wholegrain pasta, it’s a good match.

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Sometimes, just sometimes, I get breakfast by myself. This morning was one of those times. Oh. How. Wonderful.
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This is what accompanied me: A local soft-boiled egg, a thick slice of sourdough rye slathered in butter, a tomato, still warm, from the garden sprinkled with salt and my teapot filled with roasted chicory.

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Milk kefir-leavened wholegrain spelt sourdough nestled in my wonderful Emile Henry ceramic loaf tin.
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For me, baking bread takes priority over comfort in the heat of August in Italy. Still, I try to time the baking for first or last thing and have two fans provide relief.
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Taking the lid off the tin and seeing this makes it all worth it.

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Here’s the non-egg garlic mayo (aka allioli) in progress! I’m reading from ‘Honey from a Weed’, a book I have completely fallen for.
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It goes on to says this precise method is also used in Languedoc as a sauce for snails.
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We didn’t eat it on snails, but atop home-made burgers and I roasted the garlic first to soften its flavour.
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There are more adventures afoot with this sauce as a base. Perhaps capers or some anchovies? And apparently it’s traditional to fry some bread and then pestle (is that a verb: to pestle?!) it in with a big bunch of parsley.
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My arm muscles are going to get a workout!

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Local strawberries in a #waterkefir second ferment give their beautiful colour to the liquid, making for such colourful, fun and tasty bubbles.

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Bitter. How are you with it? Italians are masters of bitter greens. Historically it comes from #cucinapovera roots of foraging for wild food, so much of which was bitter and finding a way to make it nice!
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Bitter greens were often eaten with pork. The flavours pair, but here the wisdom of tradition comes through: bitter helps stimulate the compounds that digest fat. Genius.
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Much of my Italian ‘language-learning’ these days is reading historical food books. I love what I am learning. And then, I try it!
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Here we have chicory. I soaked it in water for an hour, this helps remove excess bitterness. I then boiled it for about 10 mins, before draining and transferring it to a hot cast iron pan that contained chopped onion and garlic, lightly-fried in olive oil. I then generously squeezed lemon over the top.
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My 6-year-old loved it! Not bad, eh?!

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Do you need an excuse?
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Really?!
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OK. Well, here goes:
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It’s an ancient grain.
It’s pre-fermented, so your body won’t have to work as hard.
It’s the whole grain – no waste and you get all the good oils and fibre.
It tastes gorgeous.
It’s crispy.
You can top it with whatever you fancy.
Whomever you feed it to will be really grateful.
It’ll make your house smell amazing.
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It’s pizza!
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Do I need to say anything more?!
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I’ve written up my recipe, described my techniques and taken lots of pictures and videos to hand-hold you through. You can find the link in my profile.
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I’m cooking it up loads this month and I’d love it if you wanted to too.
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‘Nuff said 🙂

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