Kitchen Table Chats #56 – Is My Ferment Working? Plus New Kitchen Tools for us Both!

What we cover:

• Question from Abigail: When fermenting, sometimes there are bubbles that build up in the jar (I use the fermenting lids that let out the pressure) and sometimes there are no bubbles and it looks like nothing is happening. How can you tell its working? How do you know its done? Why does it seem to look different each time I try fermenting something?
• Fried eggs on top of porridge and sprouts on top of tomato mince?
• Andrea’s new pasta maker
• Alison’s new knife.
• The Ancestral Menus book available to all supporters and how it is inspiring us!

Resources:

Alison’s knife

Alison’s whetstone

The Ancestral Menus book

The Science of Fermentation Book

Philips Pasta Maker

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Transcript:

Andrea:
Hello, Alison. How are you today?

Alison:
Yeah, I’m really good.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
Andrea, how are you?

Andrea:
Well, we have sun coming here and there. Not every day, but occasionally. So that feels good.

Alison:
We don’t. We have a grey sky and lots of rain. Although it’s going to get nicer.

Andrea:
Well, that’s good. I mean, we’ll take every bit of sun we can get.

Alison:
Yeah, exactly. Have you managed to have any breakfast?

Andrea:
No, but I know what I’m going to eat. And it’s the same thing I had for dinner. so that that’ll be a two two in one it was so good that I just want to have it again I got this little loaf of millet bread from a little gluten-free oh this bakery yeah tiny gluten-free bakery that’s only open two days a week and it’s run by three sisters and they use a lot of millet so they made a millet loaf and then they rolled it in oats so it’s kind of just feels really, I don’t know, special. So, I have that and I put a little bit of raw butter on the stove and warmed it and that’s actually related to a very interesting story associated with not going to the grocery store. And so, I toast the bread on that and then while it’s warming on the, I made a big, like, tuna salad with sardines and all kinds of stuff in it. And then I sort of piled that on top and let it get really warm. And then there you go. It’s delicious.

Alison:
What else was in your salad?

Andrea:
Oh, man. Fermented cucumbers and onions, diced. Some of the juice and mustard seeds and things from those pickles. Mayonnaise that I made with lard. uh what else did i put in there cubed i had a little bit of feta cheese so i cubed that in, so it gets kind of melty um mustard like prepared mustard ground whatever so yeah did.

Alison:
Everyone have it or was it just.

Andrea:
Oh we all had it last night yeah but there’s not enough left probably for everybody to have a full meal so what i’ll probably do is just make myself one for breakfast so i’m having it hands off and everybody else will probably have fried eggs um and oatmeal as is kind of the standard over here.

Alison:
And do you put the fried eggs on top of the oatmeal do you serve them separately.

Andrea:
Because i saw that.

Alison:
In the meals booklet thing that other people were doing.

Andrea:
That okay i learned a lot from the meals booklet i think we should keep doing that me.

Alison:
Too last night i learned it all last night.

Andrea:
When i read it amazing i i mean terrible book to read when you’re hungry terrible but it’s so interesting terrible.

Alison:
Terrible book to read when it’s evening and you’re you’re resting you’re like i want to get in the kitchen and do all the.

Andrea:
Stuff things to do oh yes you just want to go through and highlight all the ideas but anyways no i don’t put it on the oatmeal but i certainly could i don’t think my kids would go for that and it’s probably just related to the you know how kids like things the way they had it before.

Alison:
Yeah and so they can’t have it yeah differently yeah gabriel this morning this afternoon we had oh actually you haven’t actually asked me what we had yet so maybe i’m butting in no i’m.

Andrea:
I have nothing else to say so you go.

Alison:
It’s related to the well tell me what you ate the situation and yeah so we had um we had some beef that was minced and yesterday i cooked half of it in burgers with some onion and parsley from the garden in it.

Alison:
And I actually made another three burgers but left them in the fridge raw to cook today.

Alison:
But then what I realised was the only available vegetable really that I was happy to use for dinner, green vegetable, was chard. And Gabe doesn’t really like chard when it’s separate. He won’t eat it. He loves kale. He loves broccoli. But if you just steam some chard and put it on his plate he’s like and he leaves it so I thought oh gosh if I try and cook this chard which is what I want us to eat today with burgers he’s not going to eat it so I’m gonna have to do something different um so I decided to um chop up a an extra bit of onion and fry that I fried that in um tallow and then I broke up the burgers that I made the day before which was still raw in you know and just put the ground meat and the onion and the parsley that were in them in in the pan in blobs um and then i chopped the um chard really really finely and we will get on to how i was able to do that later in this episode hopefully i have a new knife um i chopped it so so finely so it’s tiny threads of this chard and i put that on the top and i cooked all that up and then i put half a um jar of canned tomatoes and some thyme and some garlic salt and some pepper on it and mixed it all around and we had that with bread, rye bread gable had spelt bread i fried both of those in tallow in the pan and i had gluten-free bread in the toaster.

Alison:
And I had a local cold-pressed rapeseed oil on my bread.

Alison:
And then what I did, this is the bit that made me think of it, is I’m making quite a lot of sprouts at the moment. I had some red clover sprouts. And I thought, well, there’s not really enough here. So what I’ll do is I’ll just use some of the sprouts and I’ll sprinkle them over the top, you know. And actually, the combination was really good. The sort of earthy flavour of the sprouts went really well with the meaty flavour. but I sprinkled um you know the sprouts on the top of my mints and on the top of Rob’s tomatoey mints and Gable was standing by my side and I started to sprinkle it on his mints he’s like don’t put that on there don’t put it on there so I had to put it on a separate clean part of his plate yeah because he didn’t want it mixed in because like you say he’s he’s used to a certain thing you know so if if the fried eggs haven’t been on the oatmeal then the kids don’t want the fried eggs on the oatmeal. They want them on the side. Gabriel doesn’t want his sprouts on top of his mince. He wants it on the side.

Andrea:
And you know what? The more… I don’t think that’s a picky kid thing. I think that’s an ancestral trait. I’m just going to put it out there.

Alison:
Do you?

Andrea:
Yes.

Alison:
Go on then. Tell me why. So tell me your theory.

Andrea:
I think it can be disordered. I think we can misread it. You know, the craving of protein. You want cheese, so you eat Doritos. There’s that. And I think we can be disordered in, I’m used to a McDonald’s burger. I will only have a McDonald’s burger. And, you know, so there’s that. But I feel the more time I spend reading about ancestral places, and then the more I’m actually cooking more and more in what feels like an ancestral way over the past, you know, whatever, 14 years, I feel like, this is going to sound really weird, I feel like I’m intentionally narrowing my choices, but my options are still expanding in many ways. you know, I’m doing more with less things. That’s kind of my idea right now. And there is, they’ve done studies on people and having choices in the kitchen. And people tend to say that they want many choices. And we know, I’ve talked about this before. And then in behavior, in behavior, when they did these studies, they found, you know, that I don’t know exactly how they rated people’s contentment with choices and happiness and things. But do you know how many choices, you know, of like, say options for a cleaning product or something that people found made them the happiest? Do you know how many choices that was?

Alison:
Like two, probably.

Andrea:
If they had one, people were happy.

Alison:
I’ll just use it.

Andrea:
I’ll just use it.

Alison:
It’s fine.

Andrea:
Yeah. So I, and I don’t think, you know, humans are universally broken. I tend to think that we’re probably more instinctive than we let on. We just, there’s a lot of marketing and noise clamoring at us. And I think that, you know, we’ve talked about make the same bread all the time. then you can start mixing in your malted barley or grinding it with your, you know, caraway or whatever. You can do those other things, but you’re really happy with it because you’re kind of riffing off of one thing instead of starting a whole new thing, which is a new option. So, I tend to think, I don’t know, I tend to think like this desire that small children have, especially to stay sort of insular in their choices is probably a survival trait. And then And as they get older, their preferences will probably expand. And that’s perfectly normal and natural. But they might just not be wildly across the board. And I think that’s okay, too. But I don’t know. This is just me stewing in my head too much.

Alison:
I think some of Gabriel’s choices are unusual. He’ll try different flavors and combine things together.

Andrea:
I’ve seen his cookies.

Alison:
Yeah, he made a cookie the other day. and I had a tiny crumb of it. And I was like, that tastes of lemon. No, with orange. I was like, that tastes of orange. How have you made that taste of orange? We haven’t got any oranges. And he said, when you put, I think he said, when you put lemon with molasses, it tastes of orange. Stop it.

Andrea:
Are you serious?

Alison:
I was like, what? Because he’s just putting like random things in there and seeing what happens.

Andrea:
I can’t wait till he writes a cookbook.

Alison:
So he’s not…

Andrea:
I will be the first in line.

Alison:
Like, he’s not… He’s fussy in certain things, but experimental in other things.

Andrea:
Which maybe is a good thing. We’re not fussy, Alice, and I don’t know where he gets it from. I don’t know where. Exactly, yeah.

Alison:
I don’t always want my toast in a particular way.

Andrea:
Don’t go back and listen to our episode about eggs.

Alison:
No, not fussy at all.

Andrea:
We don’t start crying when the yolk over goes.

Alison:
Oh, Rob broke my yolk the other day. I was like, no.

Andrea:
What are you doing? You’re violent. i know what am i supposed to do okay anyway.

Alison:
I know do you want to eat it no i don’t want it.

Andrea:
Oh i’ve.

Alison:
Got to eat it.

Andrea:
Thanks for that so we have one question yeah let’s read it.

Alison:
Can you see the question in.

Andrea:
Front of you or do you want to read it this is from abigail do.

Alison:
You want to read it then.

Andrea:
Um abigail says when fermenting sometimes there are bubbles that build up in the jar i use the fermenting lids that let out the pressure and sometimes there are no bubbles and it looks like nothing is happening. How can you tell it’s working? How do you know it’s done? And why does it seem to look different each time I try fermenting something? You want to take a stab with your new knife?

Alison:
Yeah, yeah. Oh, gosh, don’t tempt me to do that. I’ll end up with another plus from my finger.

Andrea:
Stab at the question, got your hand.

Alison:
Yeah. First thing I would say is this episode is going out in June. And Abigail, in September, the first episode that comes out in September, which is only two months away, is all about fermenting vegetables. And it is with Holly from makesauerkrout.com. And she, I learned so much from the episode i just i asked the questions that everyone asked and i asked my own questions and tangents were were had and it was such a useful piece of um learning and sharing and so do look out for that in september because there are so many questions that we address in that episode i will say allison on the note of holly.

Andrea:
I don’t care.

Alison:
How much.

Andrea:
You’ve fermented when you’re around somebody who that is their hyper focus.

Alison:
That is the thing they.

Andrea:
Spend their life doing and to the extent that she’s built a business around just that.

Alison:
Subject i.

Andrea:
Mean get in front of that person and just listen to them because they’re going to drop something even if you can say oh i know 90 of what they said okay listen you’re gonna learn.

Alison:
Something exactly you’re going to learn some more yeah yeah exactly so um what i would say to that these questions because there’s there’s more than one question in here um sometimes there are no bubbles and it looks like nothing is happening and sometimes there are bubbles each ferment is different some some of them do bubble some of them don’t bubble so for example suins doesn’t really bubble at all but boza you just hear it it’s like some monster in the corner bubbling um generally the.

Alison:
Yeasty ferments will bubble more than non-yeasted ferments. So if it’s a sugar ferment, it will bubble more than a non-sugar ferment. So if you’re fermenting a vegetable that’s more sugary, it might bubble more than one that’s not so sugary. But I’ve fermented seemingly the same vegetables and seen bubbles in some of them and not bubbles in others. So there’s obviously more at work behind the scenes, but no bubbles doesn’t mean that the ferment isn’t working.

Alison:
Um so then on to the next question how can you tell it’s working well I guess for me with sauerkraut my sauerkraut always works which isn’t much help is it I know it works if you do it to if you put this if you put the cabbage in there and you do the right amount of salt and the right amount of everything and your jars clean it generally works but the way that you can know whether it’s working is by opening that ferment and smelling it and tasting it and becoming familiar with it it’s the same as what i’ve what i say about sourdough starters you know the way to tell whether your sourdough starter is is active and how well it is how good it is is to open it smell it even taste it you know spit it out afterwards if it’s a starter, and you get you get used to what what is normal you know you’ll get used to over time oh well this is what sauerkraut smells like when it’s starting to ferment this is what sauerkraut smells like when it’s been on my counter for two weeks this is what it smells like when it when it’s at the stage where I like the flavor of it that’s very helpful.

Andrea:
Alison in terms of like trying to support people when they’re fermenting also because people will come to you and say, I think I did something wrong, this was really gross, and then I have to, peeling back, maybe it’s actually exactly how it’s supposed to be. They did nothing wrong. It’s just it’s a sour, complex flavor that someone’s not used to. I’m not saying you, Abby. I’m just saying generally, when people come to you with questions about, you know, I think something went off in this drink or something, it’s, I really try to suss out. And I say, does it smell like it’s rotting? Does it smell decomposing? And they’ll say, you know, it smells kind of sweet, almost like yogurt or yeast i’m like okay it’s probably okay it just might be that wild ferments is not the flavor we’re used to so that’s just a thought so what’s really what’s.

Alison:
Interesting in what you just said there is does it smell like it’s rotting what you can find often with ferments like sauerkraut is if you’ve um not got an airlock on it you just close the jar and it’s been tightly closed but sometimes when you open it it can smell strong.

Andrea:
Yeah and.

Alison:
It’s not necessarily at the very beginning a pleasant smell but it doesn’t mean.

Andrea:
It isn’t it isn’t a rotting smell but but you’re only gonna know like you said it doesn’t smell like right you only know from lots of times smelling it tasting it yeah i mean how many salty pieces of cabbage have you eaten you know what i mean because you’re just like let me just try it how does it taste at this day how does it taste you know this is cold oh it’s it’s hot out how fast is it moving so yeah.

Alison:
Yeah. And, you know, I don’t remember what episode it was. We talked about it, but we talked about sauerkraut a while back. And I think it was on Holly’s episode, actually. And I said, Gable tasted it because he was desperate to get sauerkraut because there wasn’t any left. He’d eaten it all. And I said, is it sauerkraut yet? He went, no, it’s just cabbage.

Andrea:
Oh, I love that.

Alison:
No, it’s not sauerkraut. It’s just cabbage.

Andrea:
Just cabbage.

Alison:
So he could tell, you know, because he’s tasted it so much. No, that’s cabbage.

Andrea:
Her personality, yeah.

Alison:
That it wasn’t sauerkraut. Exactly. It doesn’t have a personality yet. um i think that you know things will look different each time you you try and ferment something you you’re doing something that’s a piece of art you know you can’t your cabbage is going to be different each time it’s going to be a different stage of its life it might be older or younger it might be a different type of cabbage it might have been grown in a different way it’s it’s a unique piece of plant life and your jar that you’re putting it in is different the environment that you have it in is different the temperature might be different and so things will look different each time you try and ferment them sometimes like the latest batch of sauerkraut that.

Alison:
The stuff’s coming over the top which it always does you know the juice comes over the top in the first active ferment stage the first four or five days and it’s a bit bubbly you know the bit there’s kind of a bit foamy the bit that’s coming over the top and very often it’s not like that it’s just literally just clear liquid that comes and overflows and I clean up you know for a few days while that’s happening and so that’s slightly different and maybe it’s because I put caraway seeds in and they’ve got a different you know makeup to them whereas I didn’t put caraway seeds in the last one or maybe it’s the cabbage or maybe it’s some other reason it will look different each time and the more that you get intimate with your ferment and understand what happens at each stages by smelling and tasting then the more you’ll know whether it’s it’s working or not um just be aware of mold because mold is not a good sign if you see black or red or green mold on your ferment then then something has gone wrong if you see a white film on top of it which you can look up the online it’s probably calm yeast if you look up calm yeast you can see some pictures of it and if you see that white film that’s not dangerous it can affect the flavor of the ferment and so at that point it’s best to either.

Alison:
Use it up straight away you can skim it off the top but very often it just comes back again i feel like robin sheriff who has written a recent recent book about the science i think it’s called the science of fermentation or something like that it’s come out in the last months he has an elixir in that book which helps get rid of calm yeast um so you could look that up online i haven’t tried it, Yeah, well, exactly. I haven’t had calm yeast for ages. I went through a stage where I was having it on a lot of things, but I haven’t had it for ages.

Andrea:
Okay, I’m looking up that book right now so I can see.

Alison:
What’s it called?

Andrea:
We should put it in our bookshop. Okay, Robin Sheriff.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
The Science of Fermentation, you were correct.

Alison:
That’s it.

Andrea:
Published by DK Dorsley, Kindersley, or whoever that was.

Alison:
Oh, wow. They’re a big publisher in the UK.

Andrea:
Yeah, we have a lot of the books over here too, and they put out really good guides of things so they must just find you know subject matter experts yeah okay author and ceo of the fermenters guild what yeah yeah he is indeed, dives into the complex okay i want this book can we get a review copy.

Alison:
Maybe. I’ll let you at it if you want.

Andrea:
Okay, let me, yeah. It’s definitely a book that, oh my gosh, these pictures. Okay, yeah. This is the kind of book that I feel like would maybe, probably would have been too much for me when I started. But at this point, it’s like the level of kind of investigation that I want to. because you like like abigail’s talking about you kind of get farther down the road and you have more in-depth questions like okay generically i’m getting kraut now i want to know more about what’s happening and i always wish that i could look at my ferments under a glass or something like i just i want to know what’s in them yeah yeah so science.

Alison:
Of it the things that are wiggling around.

Andrea:
Yeah exactly well.

Alison:
We should put that in the bookshop and feel free.

Andrea:
To contact darling.

Alison:
And get them to send us the copy.

Andrea:
If you can whether.

Alison:
Whether you can but that would be that would be awesome.

Andrea:
I love that would be definitely what a great question okay.

Alison:
So andrew do you want to tell us about your.

Andrea:
Past maker a bit because it’s very exciting it is it’s um it’s a new tool uh lizzie posted about it in um our discord some months ago i mean maybe it was even over a year It was a while ago. I don’t remember. And I just thought, wow, one day that might be a really fun thing to do. For now, I’m not at that point. I needed things to still be fairly easy. Well, more recently, I’ve been feeling the urge to take back on some things that I had outsourced for a while. And pasta is one of those. So we have either had pasta that I rolled out on the counter. We’ve never had any kind of pasta machine or roller or anything. So it’s just me and the rolling pin. And then we’ve had Azure sells sourdough pasta. And they sell some gluten-free pastas. And I’m not necessarily saying I’ll never buy pasta again, but I would like the option, if you know what I mean.

Alison:
Yeah, yeah.

Andrea:
And we have lots, you know, and we’re talking about fresh milling grains. And I just, I think I want more fresh milled in my life, not less. so we were discussing placing an order from azure to get some box to dried pasta from them because the kids are really asking you know we still on this no grocery store hiatus thing and haven’t bought pasta and we ran out some time ago the kids be wanting it and and we decided to spend that money instead on buying the machine and with the assumption that it would return dividends, So, anyways.

Alison:
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Andrea:
So anyways, I’ve so far only worked with gluten-free. I’m unsure if I ever want to contaminate it with gluten. You know what I mean?

Alison:
Ah, okay.

Andrea:
Because once I put the gluten in…

Alison:
So maybe you’ll just stay with gluten-free.

Andrea:
Yeah, well, I always question… I don’t know.

Alison:
So what do the kids think of the gluten-free pasta that’s coming out of it? What does Gary think of it?

Andrea:
Oh, well, so far I’ve only done… Okay, I’ve done four kinds now. I’ve done… chickpea I’ve done chickpea with egg yeah and both of those had xanthan gum which I’d be happy to avoid if I could help it yeah um and then I did a white rice, flour okay and then I made a brown rice flour one and and.

Alison:
Did those have eggs in them or not.

Andrea:
No, no eggs.

Alison:
They were no egg or egg?

Andrea:
No eggs.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
So still fiddling a lot. And because I’ve just been, I just started out by kind of using up little bits of things, I’m not able to do a consistent repeat on something. But what I want to do is sort of dial in something that I can fresh mill, you know, it could be buckwheat and rice or something. So I can grind it fresh, put it through and just get like my weights and measures on lockdown. so that I can churn out, just repaint some consistent. It’s easier to wash than I expected. I mean, there are fiddly parts. You know, it’s a machine you have to take apart. But it’s not quite as difficult as I was anticipating before. But it would still be nice.

Alison:
So what do you do? You put, because you were saying on the, we talked about this on the live. Saturday. And you were saying you literally, you put some stuff in the, whatever, the filter, the funnel. And then it tells you how much of other stuff to put in.

Andrea:
It tells you your liquids once you put in your dry. However.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
I see. I’m reading everything I can from people with opinions online. And most people are using it with wheat. So, of course, you know, as always.

Alison:
I see.

Andrea:
It’s somewhat on my own branching out. I found one person who’s using fresh milder, she did for one recipe of rice. But I think largely I’ll be kind of carving out my own recipes here.

Alison:
Your own way.

Andrea:
Yeah, but I have read that it doesn’t accurately adjust for gluten-free flours. It might give you the wrong weight. So you probably would want more water with the wheat than you do with the gluten-free. and if it’s too wet okay which i i experienced you know the noodles extrude but they’re all kind of sticking together um yeah because they’re too gluey and so then i actually put them back through with more dry flour and then they came out at the proper consistency yeah i just kind of well i saw somebody do it in a youtube video and the youtube video was not in english so i don’t entirely know everything that was being said but or written in the subtitles but um I just scooped up the noodles and put them back through again spring or put them in sprinkled in more flour yeah and then they came out and they were okay and I cooked them and they made I mean everybody asked for it again I made rice noodles with that kind of tahini sauce I was talking about when we did your freshman episode yeah um so, Yeah. So, so far, I can’t say that I’ve got like a perfect recipe down, but we’ve cranked out a fair bit of noodles and we’ve been eating them and enjoying them.

Alison:
So, so it’s what screens has it got on it? It does noodles. Do you mean like a spaghetti or like a fettuccine?

Andrea:
Yeah, I think they sent. So I bought the model that comes with 10 little screens. I think they sent me two of the same one and I’m missing one that I’m supposed to have. So Gary suggested maybe I reach out to them because I do want that other one. um they have um and then online you can buy bazillions of other screens that people make but they’re pretty expensive like 25 dollars a screen so it’s not like you’re just gonna maybe you know go buy eight different options and they fit.

Alison:
In the the fit you said it was a phillips make.

Andrea:
Didn’t you in so that there are people who like they fit specifically make them just for this machine wow yeah gosh so um i think we have papardelle like the really wide ones um yeah they’re supposed to be a lasagna but we have two i think of the papardelle which are really okay anyone so yeah yeah um they have shells so yeah so that the shape of your noodle is also dependent on where you’re cutting it, If that makes sense. So if I pushed it through the shells extruder, but I didn’t cut it off, then they would just be long kind of ridged.

Alison:
That’s weird. So you’re doing the manual.

Andrea:
So you stand and just whack, whack, whack, which Kenton absolutely loves doing. As you can imagine. There’s fettuccine. There’s angel hair pasta. There’s ramen. There’s spaghetti. There’s wide fettuccine. um okay the there’s penne there’s uh i’m not remembering them all now but.

Alison:
So i’m i’m thinking now you could make a really really long piece.

Andrea:
Of pasta actually i watched a video on sunday of this girl and she was like i’m gonna make the world’s longest piece of ramen yeah exactly that’s what i’m about to tell gabriel you can have one noodle and but it’s gonna be and.

Alison:
We could like people we could get all people around.

Andrea:
To carry out the.

Alison:
Front door around.

Andrea:
The street and everything and we like the like world record radish you know the fairy tale with the radish um yes yes so i the kids i mean the kids i don’t know if we’re both 10 allison or what but my kids are like oh let’s make really long noodles so yeah um that would be easier with wheat i think because it’s a little sturdy yeah.

Alison:
Definitely would stick together.

Andrea:
However i will say the rice was not breaking until I cut it so I don’t know maybe okay but I feel like it’s gonna be a lot of fun and I feel like again the fact that I’m not buying pasta is going to make me better at the machine because it’s kind of like okay it’s not as drastic although my kids might think it is but it’s do or die you know like you either make the noodles work or you don’t have the noodles so I’m really gonna be and and I I need to be able to have like, my recipes that i don’t need to spend a lot of time thinking about every single time yeah which is why i want to have the mock mill sitting on the counter like you talked about and just be able to weigh in my you know three grains spices or whatever because you can put herbs and spices right into your pasta this way and you could use bone broth for the liquid or you could use eggs and water or you could do um i think somebody oh.

Alison:
You could have bone broth.

Andrea:
Pasta yeah who in the group said um to use water that you cooked or steamed veg in so you’ve got you know yeah.

Alison:
To make it.

Andrea:
Colored yeah so you could do that um that.

Alison:
Was a good idea.

Andrea:
Um my sister said oh man if you make like a protein pasta which would be you know maybe chickpeas with egg yolk and bone broth or something she said i would totally buy that so could.

Alison:
You sourdough pasta on it.

Andrea:
Yeah how would So I read a number of people said, and I think you and I would both agree with this, that even though the machine is made to mix and then immediately begin the extruding process, most people find that if the dough sits, even if they’re not fermenting it, but even if it just sits for 30 minutes and rests, then it behaves better. Well, I would agree with that, generally speaking, from my experience working with grains. So what you could do is you could mix your dough and then put it in and tell it extrude only.

Andrea:
So or you could turn it on, put in your premixed dough and. let it mix it again because it thinks now it thinks it’s adding in water even though you’re not adding water and then it will start extruding so probably what i’ll end up doing is i would like to dial in my recipe i would like to make a big batch of dough i’d like to ferment it overnight and then in the morning i can just put in the portions or honestly i could have a kid do this like the kids love this machine i mean who who wouldn’t yeah spitting out like weird shapes and you get to hack them off like it’s lots of fun yeah and i told gary the other thing i want to do as i said i don’t want to be making pasta at the point of the meal you know like i it’s it’s too much it’s too many things going on to be trying to make the pasta invent a recipe everybody’s standing there like is the food almost ready so and i’ve also read a number of people said pasta, And this, I think, holds true with Italian tradition, that if the pasta dries for a bit, even if it’s only half an hour or an hour, it cooks better.

Alison:
Absolutely. Yeah.

Andrea:
So, I actually was, I think we talked about this on the live, too, but I was just looking online for pictures of how do the Italian nonas dry their pasta just to see what’s happening because it’s, you know, making pasta isn’t something I’ve spent a lot of time doing. And I feel like, yeah, you know, it’s pretty traditional to at least let it dry for a bit, even if you’re cooking it the same day, so.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
And then I’d like to be able to, you know, make nests of the dough and freeze them and then have those ready for quick meals. And I’d like to have some dried, you know, just ready to go.

Alison:
And I wonder whether you’d freeze it or not, because I seem to remember if Lizzie freezes it or not, but you could make a massive batch and then just have it in the freezer and you could get it out and cook it whenever you want.

Andrea:
Now, there is a restaurant, I think it’s still there in Virginia Beach. If anyone is in Virginia Beach and Alkaline is still open, please go. Alkaline is, or at the time I was there, it was invented and run by Kevin Ordonez. And if you are familiar with making ramen, you probably already intuited by the name Alkaline that that’s what the restaurant serves. But he introduced me to making your buckwheat soba. and he was making it in the KitchenAid pasta machine. And because he has a restaurant, he was like, oh, I burn up like two machines a week or something, you know. But he was really adamant on having fresh ramen. And I can tell you, Allison, I have never been able to eat ramen anywhere since we left Virginia. I have tried it a number of times and I’m like, I’m sorry, I can’t. He roasts his own chickens. He, I was fermenting his hot sauce for a while. I was making hot sauce and bringing it. and I would like make kombucha and bring it to his store. But, you know, he makes that himself. He makes all of his little sauces that go in himself. He makes fermented veg that goes on it. And it’s just unbelievably good. He makes his broths himself.

Andrea:
But he would make, you know, he’s, he would make tons and tons of this ramen, and he would kind of swirl it into the nest of like the size of a bowl. And he’d freeze it on sheet pans like that. So, you know, when he’s making the ramen he’s got each serving kind of ready to go so i thought why couldn’t i do that you know i got nothing else to do exactly so anyways it’s it’s a fun toy and i was telling gary it’s gonna have a steep learning curve especially because i want to do the fresh build and the gluten-free exclusively but yeah that’s okay i’m i’m happy with the learning curve.

Alison:
Wonderful yeah gosh wonderful okay well i have a new tool yeah we’ll hear.

Andrea:
About it because this.

Alison:
This is one that can just change.

Andrea:
The kitchen game.

Alison:
Yeah wow indeed i think it’s long overdue so i’m i’m not a person who does that whole um sort of chef knife cutty thing where they just you know rock the blade back and forth and then the whole onions just chopped into tiny bits we watched Aaron has a friend cutting yeah exactly Rob has a friend who used to be a restaurant chef and now runs a business from his home here and he just you watch him and you just think yeah what how did you chop that who let me in the kitchen and um I’ve previously not had very not had particularly good knives and um we had one good knife but then weren’t able to necessarily get it sharpened i had it sharpened in italy and it was much sharper but then when we came back here we had it sharpened in a place here and it just was rubbish it wasn’t very sharp at all and i’m not particularly um that familiar with very sharp knives you know and rob’s like oh you’re going to cut yourself and of course he knows me you know i’m a bit reckless in the kitchen sometimes swashbuckling and.

Alison:
Used to a less sharp knife I can do things that you can’t do with a sharp knife anyway I’ve um got to know a lady here in Stroud who has cooked um professionally for 20 years, have a treats and things and I went to her house and we made something from the too many eggs book and she showed me her knives and I was like oh so show me how you chop an onion with this knife then she showed me and she said you know what you can borrow this knife um I’ve got loads of them I don’t need this one so I took it home with me and then I kind of experimented with it over a couple of weeks and I thought wow this is amazing this is completely different I can chop things in a really different way and I just have to get myself a knife and I think part of me was hanging on for this sponsor that was going to come and sponsor the podcast it was a knife company was going to send me all these knives. Yes, please. If you know anyone who runs a knife company who wants to access a really nice audience, please do send them away because… I just thought, oh, it would be wonderful to have a knife company sponsor the podcast and maybe they’ll send me a knife because I just saw the price of knives online. I thought, well, that’s expensive.

Alison:
Anyway, so I had to give this knife back to my friend here and then I went back to my not very good knife. I was thinking, oh, this isn’t so good. When on Tuesday we went out for my birthday to the city of Gloucester, which is just a short train ride away from here. And we had some food, which was really good. and then um we went and looked around the shops around the docks because there’s docks there and there was a cooking shop and i was like oh we’ve got to go in there we’ve got to go in there, and um oh it was lovely and the lady who worked there was lovely and i started looking at the knives and i said i really want to get myself a knife and i just they had all of these different ones that went up to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pounds and i didn’t know you know i I know what sort of size I want and what I want it to feel like in my hand. But I didn’t know what the difference was between the different blades and the terminology that, you know, speaks of the different blades. So anyway, the lady came over and said, do you want any help? So I was looking at a much more expensive knife at that point. And she…

Alison:
Said to me i’ve got this one that was a lot cheaper and it’s lovely and i thought well that’s quite unusual for someone in a shop to say don’t get this one that costs that much get this one here that’s cheaper and so we got it out and kind of pelt it and looked at it and she talked to me about the different um what the terminology means around the type of blades and the hardness of them and we bought this knife which wasn’t really that expensive it was 30 sterling pounds which is not much that’s amazing and it’s i’m gonna i found a link to it online um but whilst we’ve been talking so i’m going to put it in the show notes um and it’s a six inch um chef’s knife it says it’s x50 i don’t really know what that means um but it’s got a really it’s got a really nice weight to it it’s feels really nice to hold it’s german stainless steel with carbon in it i’m a firm believer that.

Andrea:
The knives need to be german or japanese they know what they’re.

Alison:
Doing so they had japanese ones as well which were much more expensive yeah my friend had said to me oh i’ve got some japanese knives and they’re great they’re more expensive but i got this one and it’s german and it was much cheaper and it’s really good so i’m so i come as prime are german ones.

Andrea:
That are too i’m sure there are i know the japanese ones i’ve looked at and i have one which we bought when they lived in.

Alison:
Virginia.

Andrea:
Is folded steel. So part of the selling point of folded steel, which I think there’s a brand name of a German one that is not coming to mind, but it’s a common one here in the U.S. at any rate, and I’m pretty sure they’re folded steel also. But that holds the edge longer. theoretically okay.

Alison:
That makes sense which is kind of what i wanted because the knife that we got in italy it it kind of it didn’t seem to hold its edge when we got it sharpened here and i don’t know whether that was.

Andrea:
It could have also been the sharpening that was the knife and something i’ve learned from gary because he he sharpens all of our knives and he you know this is something he did in the military spent you know you had to have your knives examined and all that stuff yeah and um he said if you sharpen it too finely then it quickly you know you just imagine you’ve got a more and more narrow fragile tip or end of the knife and this is where i think the phrase to put too fine a point on it comes from because to find a point and it’s going to dull out quickly it’s not going to have the effect you want.

Alison:
Okay so you’ve got to sharpen it not to the point where it’s really sharp.

Andrea:
Right you have to be able you know to shave hair like off your arms say that’s like a test of a knife blade but if it’s don’t.

Alison:
Get me to.

Andrea:
Do that let’s not but um maybe keep a pig skin handy or something yeah yeah someone else’s at any rate um yeah if it’s too fine then you’re going to get a fragile tip and damage your knife ultimately interesting and a lot of electric sharpeners will do it like the wrong angle at.

Alison:
The same the same time as buying the knife i bought a whetstone.

Andrea:
Perfect to sharpen it because.

Alison:
I thought i don’t want to rely on this person who um sharpen my knives in stroud and it wasn’t very sharp i’m not.

Andrea:
Doing that again plus when you’re using it a lot when you’re using it a lot these are also again things i’ve learned from gary we should probably just ask him. But when you’re using a knife a lot, like when he’s on a butchering day, he sharpens the knives every few chickens. It’s not like he sharpens them for the day. Like, he’s sharpening them constantly, just keeping the edge. And then it’s not taking him a long time. He’s just honing that edge, you know.

Alison:
It’s not like a big thing.

Andrea:
Yeah, it’s not a project. It’s just kind of, you know, the water’s running, filling a bucket or something, and he’s just kind of running late on the honing thing.

Alison:
Interesting. So I decided there were two different whetstones, and I decided to go for the one that was double. So it’s got a 600-grit side and a 2,000-grit side. so it’s got one that’s less fine and one that’s more fine um and i haven’t had a go with that yet or looked at it still in the box okay so i’m gonna try to perhaps experiment and look at some, articles on you know how to safely she did show me how to use it but i want to you know get some other opinions and kind of watch some other people doing it so yeah i’ve i’ve been using this knife and it’s just it’s absolutely amazing and so the dish that i made for lunch with the chard in that i knew that gable wouldn’t eat if i cooked it separately i chopped that chard up really really really finely and i was only able to do that because of this knife if i had been using the knife that i had last week i would not have been able to do that with that chard and gable literally ate the whole lot and i was like oh i’m gonna chop chard up finally and put it in with the with the thing and then he doesn’t he just says this is lovely mum and doesn’t he’s eaten the chard success well.

Andrea:
There’s something to be said for that knife that’s for sure.

Alison:
Yeah exactly and i’ve had a couple of incidences of it kind of nicking my skin but not while i’ve been cutting yeah i’ve learned how to do this right thing with it just when i’ve been waving my hands around afterwards which i shouldn’t have been it’s picturing you’re like waving.

Andrea:
A knife around.

Alison:
Waving my arms around yeah don’t come and talk to me because i’ll gesticulate with a knife in my hands which won’t be good no no well that’s awesome wow yeah it is and I feel I feel kind of, um reinvigorated in the kitchen i’m very happy to have have spent a little bit of money to give myself a tool that i think i will enjoy for the rest of my life which is amazing.

Andrea:
You know there’s that saying like what what is it you know the you’re only as good as your tools or you know whatever that phrase is yeah you’re reminding me that um yesterday leah said that they were listening to some violin music in ireland said well mommy if we tune our violin will it sound like that and he’s like no they gotta have some skill behind that but um maybe.

Alison:
If we tune it and then practice.

Andrea:
Every day.

Alison:
For 10 years.

Andrea:
Exactly but um you know when you spend this is kind of the pasta thing the knife when you spend every day multiple hours working on things in the kitchen and um then you get the right tool for the job it can make a really big difference i think that But just pouring tools into the void does nothing. There’s plenty of people I know who have way more kitchen gadgets than I do. Unused tools. Yeah, they’re not using them to half the advantage that I’m using the ones that I do have. But it’s because the tool has to be in the hands of somebody who’s using it. So if you’re thinking, like, do I add more tools to my kitchen? Well, how much time are you spending in there and what are you doing? Like, you’ll know when the time is right to add a new tool. And there’s things I want, but I’m also always finding, you know, I just got a food processor in December for the first time. I’ve never had a food processor. I got on with that one. Now that I have it, I’m really enjoying it. And I’m using it for lots of things. But I knew that I would use it. You know what I mean? Like, I didn’t just get it because I saw an ad that said, oh, you’ll eat healthy.

Alison:
It’s targeted, you know?

Andrea:
Yeah, I feel like there’s so many ads out there. I was thinking about this yesterday because the conversation came up in Discord about buying kitchen gadgets and, you know, should we or shouldn’t we? And are they just adding clutter? And I think they can be clutter.

Alison:
Yeah, definitely.

Andrea:
You can just buy really nice kitchen tools to the point that they’re clutter. And I, but if you’re using the tools the way, you know, a workman should be using the tools, and then you say, okay, I’m chopping every single day. It’s time to invest in a blade, you know, that will keep up with me. Like then, now the tool’s your servant instead of your master.

Alison:
Yeah, absolutely. that servant instead of master thing i’ve always think about that with technology you know we should be using technology as a servant to help us do what we want in our life not let it be the master of us and have us just there scrolling or or addicted to it you know that’s really that’s a really strong thought in my head quite often agree okay um i wanted to remind, everyone listening that the latest download for you wonderful supporters is the ancestral menus book that Andrea put together to go with the episode that came out called What We Ate Last Week, I think. And I had a read of that last night. And it is amazing. I just… each each person’s submission thank you everyone who sent my menus in brought me something yeah I read Lizzie’s and I was like oh I want to make that that’s a really good idea I know right you know she put so much detail too I read all of them I was like yeah that’s a that we should include that in our routine that’s a great idea I was like people do that you know this.

Alison:
I think that it’s a wonderful wonderful resource and a document a testament to the the people who are actually doing it every day and who are this community who are these people who we share so much with to see actually what they’re doing and how they’re making ancestral food real in their kitchens in their way with their time and their children or their setup it just felt so inspiring and it just flicking through it like i said i wanted to get up i said to you earlier i wanted to get up and and go and cook all the things that i was like that’s a brilliant idea i’ll just go oh no hang on it’s it’s up a seven i can’t do that i should not, yeah so do go and download it if you haven’t um it’s available to if you’re listening to this it’s available to you because your um companionship or above and go do go and download it from our site and um yeah print it off because you’ll use it yeah like seriously i actually made two covers for the.

Andrea:
Book if you’re planning to print it the cover of it is quite.

Alison:
Full gorgeous.

Andrea:
Um color photo but.

Alison:
The second page is.

Andrea:
Just the text of the cover so.

Alison:
If you wanted to just have the.

Andrea:
Text and not print off you know the big picture um, That’s an option there. And then there are, gosh, I think there’s, if you count the Easter menu and Rachel’s weekend menu when she had 12 kids and three adults in her house for the weekend, I think there’s 17 menus. And I was quite pleased that the last person to send their menu in was cherry, because she has the cherry on top. So I had the whole book together, and then one more menu came in, and I was like, that’s what I’m talking about.

Alison:
So it’s sherry yeah.

Andrea:
It’s 50 pages i was expecting.

Alison:
Yeah not.

Andrea:
That much much shorter so thanks.

Alison:
And if you haven’t sent us your menu and you would like to and you’re kind of not sure what’s acceptable and what’s not you can look through the booklet and you’ll see examples you see that some people have given details of what they’re cooking some people haven’t some people have formatted differently so it doesn’t matter each of those ones is useful to us and is you know I’ve got something from it so however you want to send the details to us that doesn’t really matter if you want to send it please do and we will you know amplify and augment that, contribution and it will just become more and more and more full of inspiration and ideas yeah.

Andrea:
I really like how a lot of well a number of people asked me if they wanted if I wanted them to do And I said, yes, if they asked, I said, if you’re able to. But they put kind of the ingredient list of what they’re making. Not for everything, but, you know, if it was something that, you know, was a couple ingredients. They put those, they spelled those out, which is really helpful to see. Yeah. Because then you start to see, like, Amanda’s is the first menu. She sent me hers first, she hand wrote it and mailed it to me, which I thought was awesome. And… She, you can see, okay, they raise their own beef, because that turns up a lot.

Alison:
Yeah, that was clear.

Andrea:
Yeah, you can see she’s fermenting sourdough every week, because that comes up multiple times. And you can see every summer, she’s freezing or canning fruit, because she’ll, a few times, she says, last summer’s, you know, apples or whatever. So, you can start to see by having the ingredients, okay, these are the things that they keep in their freezer. This is how they’re stocking their pantry. And that was really helpful.

Alison:
Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, I’ve got questions on it that I want to ask the people who submitted the menus. And I feel like most of them are on Discord. If you don’t know which, because some of them have got multiple same names, if you don’t know which is which, just put a call out and one of us will help direct you to find you to the right person. If you’ve got any questions about those particular menus, then I’m sure we could open up discussions on Discord to talk about them and get some details. Because there’s some of them that I want to make for sure.

Andrea:
I agree. And I tried to put in the titles, I think I did for everybody, the size of the family that they were cooking for, because I feel like that helps inform, you know, maybe what the pattern is. And then I put, I think almost always, I put the ages of the kids, because I feel like that’s helpful, too. You know, Rachel has a family of seven. And I think her oldest is eight. So like, that’s important to know. that’s big yeah she’s cooking for a lot of small children youngsters i’ve got a family of six but i have a older range of kids so there’s things i can throw at them that you know rachel maybe couldn’t throw it like a four-year-old or something exactly.

Alison:
Yeah yeah wonderful.

Andrea:
Yeah so thank you okay is.

Alison:
There anything else you want to talk about before we um before we say goodbye and.

Andrea:
Gosh no i think i think we covered everything on our list which is a miracle for us yeah okay.

Alison:
That’s cool well then let’s let’s end.

Andrea:
It there and.

Alison:
This this month’s ktc is interesting and also a bite size compared to.

Andrea:
Some of the other ones there will be no ktc next month so oh yeah that’s good so if you’re watching for it to come out in july there won’t be one coming out in july you and i’ll be taking our little rest cure so um yeah but we’ll be back in august with the KTC and we still have stuff popping up in the main feed. So…

Alison:
Yeah, and feel free to send in questions before then, you know, and we’ll just hold them until we do the recording. That will be fine. Okay.

Andrea:
Lovely. Thank you, Alison.

Alison:
Nice to talk to you, Andrea.

Andrea:
Always nice to talk to you. Have a good day.

Alison:
Thank you.