I've been looking at the statistics that all of you generate when you look at the blog and it's been quite busy for the last couple of days......which is nice. If you're new here then Hello, I hope you like what you see and that you choose to stick around.
10 more pictures are now over at Flickr for your edification, there are links in the column to the right, which also contains a few other nick nacks that you are welcome to peruse, my personal 'fave' is the clustr map at the bottom which shows where you're all from (well roughly at least!). There are also some links to other interesting places on the web if you hadn't already looked, including some of our suppliers like the spice dealers Steenbergs and the Historic Royal Palaces home page as well. There's also....of course...a link to more information on my recipe book as well as a link to the Lulu store where you can buy it.
Well enough of the shameless plugging, what's new today? Not much really as I'm still recovering from the weekend. I spoke to Robin today and he's still suffering as well, the very short gap between the holiday weekend and the September event meant that it really didn't feel like we'd left when we arrived last Friday and the weekend really took it out of us. I'm planning to spill all regarding the appraylere either tomorrow or Thursday, it'll have to be than as Friday sees Marc M and myself off to the Oxford Food Symposium to listen to papers on the topic of 'Food and Morality'.....hopefully I'll be able to keep you up to speed on how the weekend goes via the wonders of mobile blogging! (subject to telephone signal though).
I've also put together another video for you all :
This one is Marc H and Jorge's last effort of the day at pulling sugar. I've left the sound on so that you can hear Jorge suffer from the heat on his girly hands whilst Marc just sucks it in and gets on with it.....although if you listen carefully I believe that he points out that he's crying inside!! {EDIT- due to a request from Jorge I've now removed the sound as it made him sound a bit stupid}
With the pictures on Flickr, most are self explanatory, but the pea flour loaf needs a little comment I think. Following on from previous experiments with the pea flour bread I asked Carter to try a 100% pea flour loaf. This entailed him grinding dry peas into flour, an exercise that proved to be quite enlightening as it happened. Using a large mortar and pestle it appears that the optimum number of peas that could be ground without any wastage was a ridiculously small 5 or 6!?!? Any more and you started to get wastage as they shot out of the mortar like bullets, so the total amount he managed to get processed in about a day and a half made a loaf about 4 inches long by 1 inch across
......not exactly going to feed the masses I don't think, but big enough to see what it would taste like.......PEAS unsurprisingly!
I'll leave you with the latest image of progress on the wax wine fountain:
Which gives a good idea of how it's going to look, even though it's a little too tall at the moment (just got a few more crenelations and the like to add I believe).....still, much easier to remove the height than try to add it on afterwards.
Cheers
4 comments:
I've just been looking at the photos and the wafers are very interesting. Is the recipe in your book? How were they cooked ?In the frying pan? Wouldn't mind having a go.
Jorge - I reckon the only reason why yours was hotter, was because it was bigger!
Helen
The wafers were cooked in a wafer iron......if you haven't got one then you'll have to consider yourself up the proverbial without a paddle I'm afraid....talk to me at the next weekend and I'll see if we can't lend you something!
Rich, can you have the 'make Jorge thinner' filter on next time please.
And what a girl, my hands do not have a high tolerance to heat I am afraid, but I can spit roast by a 1000 degree fire, no justice. There I was squealing like a baby, for shame.
Didn;t spot the other vid, althoughI had burnt the sugar I had success in poulling it the way I wanted, to show the satining effect of allowing air into to the sugar.
We have learned that there is a fine balanmce between good sugar syrup and burnt caramel. Marc has a real knack for that, I don't, he managed to get the syrup right almost every time, he syruped for Engelond.
I think so far I prefer to work marchpain and suger, less painful and more controllable. However I did muck around with heat softening the sugar rods we had made so that might be worth pursuing in the future.
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