What’s cooking?

My 9-year-old son’s breakfast:
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In the glass is Boza, the ancestral fermented drink made from millet that is traditional in Turkey and the Balkans (you can hear more about it in the latest @ancestralkitchenpodcast episode ‘What Fermented Drinks Can I Make?’). It’s fizzy, sweet, tangy and full of probiotics; my son loves it.
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On the plate is apple and pecorino cheese (both from the local cooperative @vicaspontassieve) and a home-made bean-to-bar 95% cacao chocolate from my last batch.
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It’s really important to me that I can put together my son’s breakfast quickly. He eats at 6.30am. This plate is flavourful, nutritious and, importantly, it only took me 5 minutes to put together. That means that not only could I get all his stuff ready for school and tend my ferments, but I also got an early morning cup of tea and a quiet sofa moment before the day was unleashed!
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If you want to have a go at my son’s two favourites, video courses for Boza and Bean-to-Bar Chocolate are available in the ‘courses’ section of my website 🙂

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Do you love liver like I love liver?
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Or is liver a food you can’t stand?
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I’ve rarely come across such a divisive food. I love it and I know lot of people who do. But I also hear from many @ancestralkitchenpodcast listeners who *really* want to love it, but just can’t.
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If you want to love liver, but aren’t there yet, here are my suggestions:
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1/ Start with chicken liver, it’s the mildest
2/ Make pate (@almostbananas has an amazing beef liver pate recipe that doesn’t taste like beef liver!)
3/ Combine it with muscle meat (I make a burger that is 3:1 ground beef to pork liver – you can also add it (and other offal) to meatloaf and lasagna)
4/ Learn different ways of cooking it (Janine at @offallygoodcooking has a veritable encyclopedia of offal recipes on her website)
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And if all fails, or whilst you’re weaning yourself on (because you want to be weaning yourself on – liver is the most nutrient-dense meat there is) you can opt for liver capsules. @one_earth_health, current sponsors of the podcast, have a 5% discount for listeners – check the show notes of our recent episodes.
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And, before I go, if you’re a liver-lover, how about a raw liver tonic?! @offallygoodcooking makes one and talked about it in the recent two-parter interview she did with @fornutrientssake and @nourishthelittles of @modernancestralmamas. The episodes, a deep dive into all things offal, were so informative – go listen! @farmandhearth and I are hoping we can get Janine to you on Ancestral Kitchen Podcast soon 🙂
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p.s. On the plate: Pig liver from @valledelsasso, home-made spelt sourdough (book coming soon!) spread with home-rendered lard, local salad and, in the espresso cup, 24g of sauerkraut (yes, I measure my sauerkraut…that’s for another post!)

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Rye sourdough breads work so much better if they are made with with a large portion of pre-fermented dough. That means, instead of making a starter with 10% of the flour weight (which is what I do with my spelt breads), I will most often preferment around 30% of the flour.
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Here’s a rye preferment that’s been rising overnight. It’s about to go into a mix with more rye, some salt, some water and a touch of honey.
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Making rye bread like this means the yeasts and bacteria which rise my bread will have a chance to do their job without being degraded by a ‘nasty’ enzyme in rye which can ruin the whole show – the acidic environment created by the large preferent protects them!
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I’ve posted a video in my stories today showing the ready-to-use preferment. It’s a clip from my course at @thefermentationschool Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics.
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If you’ve been think of trying your hand at rye sourdough this course is for you. It’ll walk you through creating a wholegrain rye starter, two breads, a cake and pancakes, even if you’re completely new to sourdough baking.

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I first read about Rutherglen Sour Cakes in F. Marian McNeill’s book ‘The Scot’s Kitchen’. Her description was short, but intriguing: There was an ‘elaborate ritual’ around their preparation which was ‘clearly from a pagan source’. When I then saw that they were wild fermented, I knew I had to find out more.
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Rutherglen Sour Cakes were prepared in Rutherglen, close to Glasgow, Scotland, to celebrate St Luke’s day (October 18th). 8-10 days before this, oats and water were mixed up into a dough and left to sour. The eve before the fair, a group of women would gather to prepare the sour cakes. They’d sit in a previously-chalked semi-circle in front of the fire. Sugar and aniseed or caraway would be added to the now fermented dough. Each woman (ceremonially, they were called ‘Maidens’) would hold a wooden board and beater on their lap. A piece of dough would then be passed between them in an east/west direction, each lady batting the oat dough down on their board. By the time the cake got to the end of the semi-circle and was handed to the designated baker, called ”The Queen’, it would be ‘as thin as paper’.
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This ceremony was last witnessed in 1854, as far as I know. And, at least online, no-one has tried to re-make Rutherglen Sour Cakes as an authentic wild ferment.
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This picture is my fourth attempt. I’m getting used to wild souring the dough – it’s easy to tell when it’s ready using your nose. The shaping is best done using a board and a rolling pin. I don’t think I’ve got mine paper-thin yet, but I’m not doing badly!
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Rolling them out, alone in my kitchen, brings so many emotions. This process was once so tied to place, to women, to ritual. I feel the weight of what I, what we, have lost: community, sacredness, ceremony, connection, seasonality. At the same time I feel immense gratitude for the path life has shown me, my family that supports me and the beautiful souls that I have connected with (a lot of them here) that *get* it.
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And I remember food is never solely about feeding ourselves.
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(Check my story for more pics and some historical sources.)

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If you’ve ever asked ‘What fermented drinks can I make?’, today’s @ancestralkitchenpodcast is for you. We cover over 20 fermented drinks – all of which, between us, @farmandhearth and I have made at home. We’ll tell you what they are, where they come from, how they are made and why we love them!
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You’ll come away super-informed and inspired; ready to start fermenting (and loving) your next drink 🙂
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You can subscribe to Ancestral Kitchen Podcast on your app, or stream/download from the link in my profile.

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Making nutrient-dense food for a children’s party can seem like a tall order. Yes, my son will eat virtually all of the ancestral food I make at home, but this is different:
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1 – It’s really special day and I want to mark that by giving him out of the ordinary food, and
2 – There are going to be 15 other kids there who are used to eating ‘normal’ food. I really want them, for my son’s sake, to like the food.
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Here’s the chocolate cake I developed for Gabriel’s 9th birthday. It’s made of spelt flour, has no refined sugar, is risen by the power of sourdough and is egg and dairy free.
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In the tests, my son, Gabriel and husband, Rob, loved it…but I was still nervous on the big day!
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Thankfully, it went down brilliantly. Every little one there finished their piece and I saw some of them come up and raid the plate for stray crumbs!
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Job done. Phew!
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@farmandhearth and I are putting together a spelt sourdough cookbook for @ancestralkitchenpodcast (it’ll be our second cookbook!) and this recipe will go in there 🙂 You don’t have to have a children’s party imminent in order to make it!!

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