Pea Pushing Post!

Finally! I managed to process the videos from the October cookery weekend, although I'm having hassle in uploading them at the moment due to slooow Internet speeds, so I've limited it to just one for today...fingers crossed a new day will bring a calmer Internet and easier uploads.

This is the first of the videos to go straight to the new video album at the Gallery, so you'll have to excuse any differences from video posts in the past....you can't watch the videos here at the blog, you have to visit the Gallery, although that may change if I can suss out the code to play the videos here.

It's a nice simple video that just shows Robin processing the cooked peas for perre by passing them through a colander to turn them into a pulp and also to remove the hulls, the latter being the main reason for the process as mentioned in the recipe. Whether that's an essential part of the recipe today with modern pea varieties is uncertain, but it's an interesting thing for the public to watch and brings about the discussion of what modern food processors can and can't do.....without fail there will always be a number of people that suggest how much easier it would be with a modern food processor....as it happens it wouldn't as without a special attachment all that would do would be to beat the peas to a pulp, but still leave the hulls in the mix (not to mention the washing up of all the parts!!). If you watch the video, towards the end Robin washes the last of the pulp through the colander and squeezes the last bits from the separated hulls, which then go neatly into the bin.

The resultant mix is the water that the peas were cooked in along with the flesh of the peas, which can then be used to finish the dish off...or would make the base for a killer Georgian period soup, either way is a winner though.

For those of you wondering why use the pestle to start with before moving on to using his hand.....simple, the peas were still hot as they had only just come off the boil and although Robin is fairly heat resistant, even he doesn't like sticking his hands in boiling hot peas! Most of the early part of the video is him 'playing' with the peas whilst chatting to the public and letting them cool down to a stage where he can get stuck in and really do the bulk of the work with his hands.

So, with all that in mind, here's the video, click on the image to view it (don't panic if you can't hear any sound, there isn't any...it was removed to protect the innocent)...

Just to add, for a discussion of perre just pop over to the forum (CLICK ME) and have a look at the thread on vegetable recipes...do feel free to join in the discussion!