Woohoo bone broth!

After my first dose of chemo knocked my white blood cells through the floor (like, there weren't any left..) my oncology nurse asked me if I'd had any drugs to bring them back up - apparently they'd made an impressive recovery. And you know what? No drugs were involved in the resurrection of my white blood cells, just an insane amount of bone broth. 

That's just one of the many good things about being a pastured chicken farmer - almost endless supplies of super-healthy chicken bits for making broth. I even caught myself thinking things like "Wow! What better time to be a pastured chicken farmer than when you've got cancer!". And while that's obviously a slight exaggeration (keeping Autumn Farm going through all this has been slightly arduous - just ask Pearl and the small army of 'chicken support units' who've been lending a hand) it has been great to know that I can drink as much pastured chicken broth as I like.

So what's so good about broth? And what even is broth anyway? Well, in our minds, broth is a magical liquid that's got some major goody-goodness-nutrition in it, normally involving cooking a whole bunch of the best kind of health-giving ingredients for a really long time. The long-cooking extracts the nutrients and minerals from your ingredients  (especially the bones), condenses them into the liquid, and makes them available for your body to absorb and use. According to, Jennifer McGruther, author of The Nourished Kitchen, "Homemade broth is rich in calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and other trace minerals.   The minerals in broth are easily absorbed by the body.   Bone broth even contains glucosamine and chondroiton – which are thought to help mitigate the deletorious effects of arthritis and joint pain." 

Perfect for sick people, little people, chemo-ravaged people, and even perfectly healthy normal people who need some nourishing goodness in their lives!

In our house, a broth normally involves lots of different veggies and herbs from our garden and the gardens of our friends (onion, garlic, parsley, carrots, celery, sweet potato just as a start), and some chicken bits. The chicken bits may include feet and/or necks,  a carcass or 2, and/or some bones leftover from a roast. Then we simmer it all with a splash of apple cider vinegar for a really long time - 24 hours at a minimum - sometimes on the fire, sometimes on the gas, topping up the water if needed. We then strain it off. The liquid gold that results from this process (seriously! It's gold!) is then either drunk, straight up, like an old-fashioned health brew, or used as a base for soup, miso, risotto (we've recently been experimenting with grains like spelt and barley in our risottos, which we're loving) or whatever else needs a bit of liquid goodness.

Now obviously we're not the first people to be in love with bone broth as super-healing elixir: this kind of caper has been going on for yonks, in all kinds of cultures, all over the world. The thing that amazes us is that it's not more popular and prevalent. Seriously - it's home-made medicine yo! And it tastes super-great! And it's cheap! And it uses up bits of stuff that might otherwise just get chucked out or composted!! And if you don't believe me, my exceedingly clever and nutritionally wise friend Genna has written about it on her beautiful blog, How Do You Like Them Green Apples? and there's also more information - historical, nutritional, and instructional - on the Nourished Kitchen blog. Look at it - it's good for you.

While chickens, for obvious reasons, are forming the basis for the vast majority of the broth action around here, we're also enjoying pastured beef bone broth (from our friends at Symphony Farm) and some pretty freakin' awesome fish broth, courtesy of some of our successful fisher-friends. My personal fave for the fish broth is to just have a big bowl of it served with a ton of kimchi. Cannot. Go. Wrong.

Fish broth on the go, utilising the remnants of a massive salmon that Pearl's dad caught for us, which we baked with some dill and garlic and shallots.

And if you don't have a near-endless supply of chicken bits at your disposal, you can always do a 'freezer-bag broth', which is the way we used to do things. Basically, whenever you chop or peel a carrot/leek/sweet potato/onion/whatever, instead of composting the bits, you put them into a dedicated bag or container that lives in your freezer. Similarly, when you roast a chook, or have a BBQ or whatever, chuck your bones in there too. When the bag is full, dump the lot into a big pot with some peppercorns and bay leaves, cover with water, and simmer away!

I've just realised that this post might sound kind of bossy. I don't mean to be bossy - I'm just excited. And I'm also feeling all inspired because of the book I started last night, called Independence Days, which is all about reclaiming food production (amongst other things). So think of my ranting less as bossing and more as a call to arms - let's start with some broth, shall we??

A bit of what we've been up to...

We had a little lapse from blogging over the Christmas/holiday/visitor season, so this is a bit of a catch up on what we've been working on/eating/enjoying.

We've been experimenting with new ways to eat eggs for breakfast (or lunch, or dinner...), like in the recipe at the end of this post.

We've been enjoying the very first blackberries, making plum jam, and drying chillies.

We've been eating Autumn Farm chickens for Christmas lunch, making pulled pork in the pizza oven (8 hour slow roast - yeeeeaaaaahhhhh....) and eating it on rolls with home-grown coleslaw. 

We've been building a new rawbale brooder house for our Autumn Farm chickies, and falling in love with our 13 new baby ducklings.

We've been pickling eggs (!) and eagerly awaiting the opportunity to taste them.

We've been feeling inspired by new books like Food DIY, and Practical Self Sufficiency, and trying out new recipes (like pulled pork, coleslaw and pickled eggs).

We've been celebrating old and new years with friends by cooking an enormous wild rabbit, rosemary and almond paella over the fire - YUM! - and drinking copious amounts of home brewed beer and rhubarb champagne.

We've been swimming at the beach and in our dam, fishing, kite-flying, and watching in awe as a pod of dolphins passed us by on their own (far more successful) fishing expedition at Bithry Inlet.

We've been welcoming new babies by sewing onesies and baby quilts.

We've been feeling super lucky to be enjoying visits with friends and family, showing them the wonders of our neighbourhood.

We've been harvesting garlic, zucchinis, tomatoes, beans and zucchinis, and wishing we'd planted more parsley.

And we've been feeling super super grateful for all of these things - and more! - and wondering what the year ahead has in store for us...

And now for a little recipe-sharing, in the form of our new favourite way to eat eggs, inspired by our friend Yotam Ottolenghi and his friend Sami Tamimi and their book Jerusalem.

First up, I fried a chopped onion in some olive oil with a whole bunch of garlic.

Then I added a teaspoon of ground cumin and 2 teaspoons of sumac, a couple of bits of preserved lemon, some finely chopped chard leaves and some chopped tomatoes, and cooked it all up til it was kind of saucy.

Then I cracked in some eggs and put the lid on to let them poach in the sauce.

When the whites were set (yolks still runny!!) I served it up with some of Pearl's flatbreads, some more sumac, and a yoghurt, tahini and lime juice dressing.

It was crazy good, and we highly recommend you give it a go.

Hip hip hooray for baking day!

We've had our beautiful clay oven awhile now. And while we've cooked many a delicious pizza, we'd not yet done the all day bake-athon, that is, until last Sunday. Oh what a day! It dawned clear and sunny and mild. Spring! Annie was up super early to help at our local co-operative run Small Species Abattoir so sadly, she didn't really see the dawning of this grand Spring day. But when she returned home we set about making ourselves the perfect Spring brunch - soft boiled eggs, blanched asparagus and toasty herby breadcrumbs. We are experiencing egg abundance at the moment, and what a joy it is. There's something about having so many eggs that makes me feel very happy and very well fed. We sat on the grass in the sun and ate our fill and made plans and anticipated the festival of baking before us. 

Spring joy on a plate

Long before our wood oven was built, we'd harboured a notion that we'd fire up our oven and spend the day cooking. It makes a lot of sense and it's the way many people around the globe have been cooking for some time. It makes sense because getting the oven hot enough to cook pizza takes 3 hours so once you have "cooked" the fire that much, it seems silly not to make use of all that heat. A clay oven will hold its heat for some time and so goes our first baking day plan to make use of all that stored heat. 

Bake day 1 - The List

I lit the fire around 10 in the morn and kept it going for well over three hours. It was a really good fire that built the heat of the oven well. Coals were raked to the side and the floor of the oven given a little wipe then first up in the hot hot oven goes pizza. We made use of what we had so our pizzas comprised asparagus and parmesan and parsley, homemade ham and chilli and mozzarella, tomato, fresh herbs and cheese, tomato and spinach and olives and cheese... It was all so very good. Especially as we finished it off with a homemade blackberry jam pizza dolloped with Tilba jersey cream. Eaten warm from the (hot hot) oven it was beyond pizza, really beyond description. So good. 

Oscar, always so free with the help

Oooh so good...

The piece de resistance! Blackberry jam pizza.

Next up was bread. By now, the oven was at about 250 degrees (Celsius). Still a tad too hot but almost there. Now I need to confess something here. I am scared of sourdough. I have majorly ginormous blocks to making it. I made it once and it was terrible, like a rock. I've read books, I've done a course but still, I'm scared. But I need to sort myself out because we currently have an expensive bread habit. We really only eat sourdough because (a) I am a food elitist (b) it's how bread is meant to be (c) I want the kids to grow up knowing what real bread is (d) the fermented is good for our guts and thus, overall health. But there's a price to be paid for handmade sourdough and boy, do we pay it. So I need help and I need it fast. Gotta get that starter happening. In the meantime, I made some very delightful yeasted loaves of light sift flour and spelt with a little honey and olive oil. The next night when we ate some with our lentil stew I exclaimed out loud, "God, how good is this bread!" Olive promptly chastised me for "boasting". But I maintain it's ok to be proud of yourself sometimes. And proud I bloody was. 

Olive and her loaf

Olive got busy making her favourite cheese, mixed fresh herb and sesame loaf. It's kind of like a Bakers Delight pull-apart, but different because the bread isn't white fluff. 

Olive, carving her cheesy herbaceous delight

The oven was now at about 220 degrees and so it was time for biscuits. We made a sesame tahini pseudo-health biscuit and a sweet, buttery orange spice biscuit. Perfect lunchbox fodder for the week ahead. 

 

As the temperature continued to drop it was time for muesli toasting. I needed to do something to the raw muesli I'd made a couple of weeks before. It wasn't very nice. I don't know why, it's not like I'd never made muesli before but this batch was not inspiring any enthusiasm amongst anyone in the family. So mixed with raw local honey and olive oil it was and baked slowly 'til golden brown. Ah, that's more like it. 

Toasty golden goodness

And then it was time for sitting and cuddles and stories and drinking of homemade ginger beer. Quite fortuitously Annie found a long forgotten crate of it so it was new again. With a little bit of lemon and a crocheted stubby holder, it was the perfect end to a pretty perfect day. 

Then as the oven hit 150 degrees, in went the lentil stew and with the oven door ajar it stayed there overnight. By morning it was rich and thick and tasty. Perfect for that night's dinner with a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkling of parsley and local fetta and "spooned" from the bowl with a slab of day old bread smeared with Bega butter. I mean really, can life be any better than this?