Brown soda bread offers nourishment, a rich flavor and is quite simple to prepare in any kitchen – emboldening the the repertoire of even the novice cook.  While the Irish are known for their traditional soda bread which combines little else but flour, buttermilk, salt and baking soda, many home cooks have adjusted the recipe with the inclusion of raisins, currants and other ingredients.  This brown soda bread with currants and caraway is no exception.
A tradition that may predate the popularization of soda bread in 1840s Ireland, the combination of …

If you’ve read Nourished Kitchen for any length of time, you know just how much I value wholesome, nourishing fats – and you might also know that even beyond pastured lard, ghee (a type of clarified butter) is – beyond a doubt – my favorite fat for cooking.  Many of the healthy, nourishing  recipes featured on my site make moderate to heavy use of ghee.  It’s remarkable for cooking: very stable even at relatively high temperatures and it imbues a subtle, almost nutty fullness to foods that enriches them without …

Home-cured corned beef.  It seems daunting, doesn’t it?  Curing meat at home is much easier than you’d expect, and there’s a growing community of home cooks who are beginning to revive traditional methods of food preservation and charcuterie.  Preparing corned beef at home is a simple entrance into this lost art; moreover, the flavor is richer, less salty and more deeply spiced than the pre-packaged corned beef you find in the supermarket in the weeks before St. Patrick’s Day.
Pairing corned beef wih cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day is decidedly more …

Blackberry sorbet, with its deep, rich purple and its striking, mouth-puckering tartness, makes for a beautiful finish to a nourishing supper.  And while some families may prefer to balance their tartness with a touch of honey, we prefer to serve this blackberry sorbet without added sweetener so the full flavor of the berries, including their lovely sourness can shine.
Indeed, even when sweetened by raw honey (a good source of the food enzyme amylase), a simple blackberry sorbet presents a charming alternative to commercially prepared ice creams and sherbets which often …

A good stock is the backbone of a good kitchen; it provides flavor to your dishes as well as sustenance and nourishment for your body.   Broth features in the traditional foods of peoples across the globe.  Stock is the foundation of classical French cooking and provides critical sustenance in peasant cooking among traditional peoples everywhere.  Broth is dense in nutrients.  Rich in trace minerals such as magnesium and calcium as well as glycine – an amino acid that aids digestion and may help to assist in the healing of wounds …

Gently flavored by blackstrap molasses – a mineral-rich, natural sweetener – this custard has quickly become a favorite dessert in our home, and one my four-year-old relishes.    Molasses custard is well-suited to winter’s supper tables – it’s soft, sweet and satisfying. Dense in wholesome fats from pastured egg yolks and fresh cream, molasses custard is not a particularly light dessert, though it is dense in vitamin A, riboflavin, selenium, phosphorus and calcium.
Molasses Custard
In searching through my vintage cookbooks, I happened across a recipe for molasses custard, and I fell in …

This post was generously contributed by Heidi Robb, a natural foods enthusiast with a penchant for wholesome real food.  Heidi blogs about her life in recipes – one of the most visually stunning real food blogs I’ve ever happened across.  With a personal history in the restaurant business, Heidi has transitioned into culinary media where she blends her passion for natural foods with a talent for writing and photography.  I’m so thankful she shared her recipe for taramasalata – a beautiful dish featuring nutrient-dense fish roe and one of my …

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again: simple food makes for the best food.  The key to preparing simple food well is to purchase the very best ingredients you can find: in that way, their natural flavors are liberated. Some of the simplest preparations allow the beauty of those subtle flavors to stand on their own, albeit  dressed with a little butte.  This is such a dish.  It’s so simple I hesitate in posting as though there should be greater fanfare to its three humble ingredients, as though …

Veal gets a bad rap. We all can’t help but to equate any veal with industrial veal.  We imagine cute black-and-white calves, chained in a box, their faces forlorn as they lonesomely moo for their mothers.  Yeah. It’s a grim thought.  For that reason, I’d never really consumed veal until this summer when a box of meat that included little else but veal arrived from our meat CSA.  A note in the box and a subsequent email explained that this veal was different.  This veal was raised by momma.
Indeed, the …

Swimming a pool of fresh cream and seasoned with fragrant herbs, baked salmon makes for a satisfying and deeply nourishing supper.  Simple food is often the best food.  Indeed, good food needn’t be complicated.  When you rely on wholesome ingredients of the best quality you can reasonably afford, the simplest of preparations will illuminate their natural beauty.  In simple preparations, as in this 4-step recipe for baked salmon in cream and herbs, allow the full, but often quite subtle, flavors of individual ingredients to shine.
A sacred food in many …