C-C-C-Cold!!!

Just back from the weekends shenanigans, blimey was it cold.......frequent trips in to the office to hug mugs of tea were needed all round, mainly to get some feeling back into hands.

Loads of pictures to sort through and post as well as some videos that I think you might like.....all that and more in the next exciting episode, but now......bed time.

Dates For Your Diary

So when will we be cooking this year and what will we be doing?

Well this weekend sees the last of the 'odd' experimental work that we've been doing, the last opportunity to get out the scales and thermometers in front of the public for the rest of the year. The aim is to finish off stuff that we started on the December weekend (I said I'd tell you about it later, so I will.....later!) and to record as much data as we can whilst roasting meat in front of the fire as well as in a modern oven to compare the two methods. There'll also be a lot of 'behind the scenes' work involving freezing experiments to see how well certain dishes freeze and what stage is best to cook them to for this purpose....no we're not going into the ready meal business although it's a thought, it's all to do with a future project that requires more food than we can probably cook in one day.

After that it's all Henry, Henry, Henry....where the whole Palace will bask in the revamped look that it is currently receiving all ready for the celebrations to mark the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII's accession to the throne......including the newly re-paved Base Court; progress is coming on, this is what it looked like at Christmas.....

All of this will involve the kitchens cooking pretty much along the lines of a Christmas event day for quite a lot of the year and with the whole aim being immersion in a Tudor Palace for the members of the public.......so no modern kit then.

Dates that you'll be able to see us in action are:

March 7th-8th
April 10th-13th Easter Holiday
April 18th & 19th
May 2nd-4th Bank Holiday
May 23rd-25th Bank Holiday
June 20th-21st
July 25th-26th
August 22nd-24th Bank Holiday
September 26th-27th
October 24th-25th
November 28th-29th
December 26th-January 3rd Christmas Cookery (a bumper 8 days you lucky people!)

The observant will notice that this changes from our regular first weekend of the month slot for the non holiday events to a last weekend of the month slot.....this is to ensure a more even balance of events throughout the calendar and to give you all a better opportunity to come and see us in action.

June the 20th & 21st is one of the big events as it's the weekend that the Royal Palaces will be celebrating the anniversary of the coronation of Henry VIII. There will be a flotilla of boats travelling from the Tower of London to Hampton Court on the Saturday, bringing the 'Royal Party' to the Palace, where they will dine in the Privy Gardens.....which is where we come in (and the freezer too if all the plans and testing work out!)
There will be games on the river on the Sunday as well and many, many other things to see over that weekend....I'd pop that one in the diary if I was you.

There will be plenty of other things happening throughout the year too, just check the Historic Royal Palaces website for details as the year progresses.

Writers Block!!

Yes ti's I the Prince of Procrastination.....finally getting my finger out and posting something in this new year!

So why no report about the Christmas cookery? Quite simply, there was absolutely nothing to say....people came, we cooked, they watched and asked questions, we answered and ate supper....now repeat 6 times and Bob's your uncle, that was the Christmas cookery!
Oh, it was cold.....really cold, in fact I don't think that the temperature in the Kitchens made it past 1 degree Centigrade all week, so the guys did sterling work considering the circumstances....just not very noteworthy work is all.

After Christmas some personal health issues got in the way, but that seems to be improving now (don't ask, it's really not worth it...although photographs could prove amusing!) then a degree of ambiguity about the forthcoming year raised it's ugly head, but we are all sorted now...dates and budgets are fixed so 2009 is now all systems go.

Ho Ho Ho......It's Christmas!

Finally managed to shake the fever and all the symptoms except the hacking cough....thank god for man sized drugs is all I can say!

So Christmas is here in ooh about 4 minutes time and then away to the Palace for the festive activities. I know I promised I tell you what we were going to cook, but I'm a half-wit and I left the list at work when I went in to receive the food deliveries the other day!?!?
Still, I'm sure that you can guess the sorts of things it'll be....the same old same old really....2 meals each day, sit down to eat at 3.30 p.m....yada yada yada.

Now don't get me wrong, I still enjoy doing this, but I do find these 'meal' events less challenging than the experimental ones.....still, better get used to it because that's probably what we'll be doing more of next year than anything else....at least we can fiddle with and experiment with the interpretation of the meals I suppose, even if we can't get away with much more.

When I've finally written up last weekends work I'll let you all in on what we did then.......we'll also be aiming to finish off what we started in December for the February weekend as well, so there's plenty of time to cover all of that as well as plans for the coming year.

I'm not to hopeful for much posting over the Christmas week.....I'll probably be limited to using the mobile phone for that, so don't expect tons and tons of typing from me. I'm not too sure how we'll do for pictures either as it's so dark in the kitchens at this time of year it makes taking pictures really hard without using a flash.....and we try to shy away from that as it can wipe out the detail too easily, still fingers crossed eh!

That's it for now then, just time now to say

HAPPY CHRISTMAS ONE AND ALL
I hope Santa brings you what you asked for!!

TTFN

Aguementative!

Just an update....won't be anything meaningful posted for a while as I'm stricken with a viral infection resulting in stupidly high temperatures, aches and sweating fits!?!

The doctor has prescribed a course of anti-biotics to keep any secondary infection at bay....I swear to God they'e the size of chocolate Yule logs!!......as well as some man sized pain killers to abate the stupifying headaches.

As soon as I can shift this things will be back to normal.....or as normal as can be expected.

TTFN

Remember, Remember......

...the 1st and 2nd of November? No me neither to be honest!
I've just sent Roberts pictures from the November weekend over to Flickr for all to see (not much re-touching.....just straightening them out and hiding the faces of the innocent).

So apart from the fantastic fireworks...

...just what did we do that weekend? Well it happened to coincide with the end of the school half term holidays over which Hampton Court ran its once yearly promotion 'Kids go Free'. During this time children aren't charged admission (up to 4 per accompanying adult) and the visitor numbers go through the roof! Loads of stuff for kids and families to do and we were told NOT to be the exception...so what did we do?
Well the usual spit turning with Ross was a 'given'....although it turned out to be more of a chore than we thought...but what else could we do? After much thought we decided on having Barry and Barry grinding bread-crumbs and making butter, Dave would do his usual thing, Robert would be assisted by Jorge in enthralling people with tales of the office whilst the main area of the kitchen would do all the normal sort of thing PLUS one massive new test run.....we'd let people have a go at cooking themselves!!

First let-down of the weekend was somewhat of a potato potahto moment when once again the wrong flanks of meat turned up..

so, loads of picking at it later and we had enough meat to 'create' roasting joints for people to turn and absolutely tons of fat to render out for cooking at other weekends.

The butter wasn't quite as successful.....the guys made plenty of it, but it was really hard going, still that's one reason why people didn't make butter in the winter (apart from the lack of milk, the cold really works against the cream turning to butter). Not that it mattered too much as all the public seemed to like it. The breadcrumbs on the other hand were an out and out winner.....I don't think I actually saw Carter do any physical labour all weekend as there was a near constant queue of kids wanting a turn at making breadcrumbs....again, all to put into store for use at Christmas and other weekends. I would never have believed that such a simple task would have proved so popular!

As I said, Dave did his usual 'thing'...I'm not quite sure what it was, but kids loved it..

So that just leaves the 'hands on cookery' to tell you about. We were going to try to be fair about it and take turns so that we didn't go ga-ga, but in the end Robin stepped up and did it all as he was trying out some ideas for future education sessions at the same time.
We'd plumped for ryschews close & fryez as the recipe to try, not least because we had a bag load of the filling already made and in the freezer, but also because the various processes involved lend themselves to this sort of 'have a go' event.

¶Ryschewys close & Fryez.
¶Take Fygys, & grynd hem smal in a mortere with a lytil Oyle, & grynd with hym clowys & Maces; & þan take it vppe in-to a vesselle, & cast þer-to Pynez, Saundrys, & Roysonys of Coraunce, & mencyd Datys, Pouder Pepir, Canel, Salt, Safroun; þan take fyne past of flowre an water, Sugre, Safroun, & Salt, & make fayre cakys þer-of; þan rolle þin stuf in þin hond, & couche it in þe cakys, & kyt it, & folde hym as Ruschewys, & frye hem vppe in Oyle; and serue forth hote.

The biggest question was how to cope with the cookery part??.....should we cook them there and then or what? Fortunately the solution came from the boss, Chris when he suggested that we let people make them at the Palace then take them home to cook them...bag them up and include instructions then hopefully everyone would be happy.

So we made up the paste and filling then all people had to do was roll out a small amount, cut out a circle, wet the edge with water, pop in some fruity filling, then fold and seal before Robin popped the finished item in a bag with ingredients list and instructions.....it went down a storm, especially with the family who were first to try. They'd waited and waited and come back several times for this all to be set up and when they'd finally finished and the kids had their bags in their hands, Robin pointed out that they were the first people who weren't us or 'off the telly' to have cooked in the kitchen for many many years they were really quite chuffed...loads of pictures for the school projects ensued and they went away with beaming smiles....and that seemed to be the results for the rest of the weekend, from both young...

..and old alike...

Now all I have to do is cover last weekend and we should be square.....perhaps not tonight though.....do remeber to have a look at all the other picture I've put up at Flickr...trust me they're a lot more interesting than this past weekend bunch will be...but that's for another time!

TTFN

Clearing The Backlog!

Not that there's much of a backlog to clear though. I've just put some pictures up at Flickr that I took on the November weekend.....don't get too excited though, they're nothing to do with the cookery.
There was a rather large function on on the Saturday evening and thankfully for them and us, the heavens cleared up long enough to allow for the MASSIVE fireworks display to take place. It lasted a good half an hour, all well set to music with a cracking finale.....shame that the pictures don't really do it justice, but we can't have everything can we?

should give you an idea of what you can see over at Flickr...there are 11 images in total so far, but I have to confess I haven't gone through Roberts images yet so there will be more to come....and he even managed to take pictures of the cookery too, nothing too spectacular, but I expect you'll find them of interest......better go and find the disc with them on and get sorting eh?

Just To Show.....

...how things are progressing with the Base Court paving. It came as quite a shock to look out of the windows of the Buttery and see how they're getting on.

I've not been paying too much attention to the work and the last I saw, it was a muddy wet hole ridden space that was home to diggers and archaeologists. I think it's looking pretty good and should really look the business when it's done.....as well as completely altering the dynamic of how people walk through the courtyard.

I've just submitted the shopping lists for the Christmas cookery, now it's off to bed time and I'll post up the menus next time along with a few pictures from the weekends that disappeared into the ether from a blogging perspective!

Ask Me No Questions....

....and I'll tell you no lies!

Yes, I've got my finger out and am back in business!!!

First off a MASSIVE APOLOGY to all the 'regulars', especially those of you who have expressed concern for my well being.....I was VERY rude not to get back to you, but you'll just have to believe me when I say that I had my reasons for the rather long period of silence. Suffice to say that this blog has always aimed to be positive in its outlook and there hasn't been much of a positive nature for me of late.

However, that all changes now especially after the really successful weekend of cookery that's just passed.....lots of top stuff undertaken and probably quite a few pictures as well. It'll take a couple of days for me to process the information that we gathered, all of which I'll need to write up....then pass over to Marc H to cast his eye over and add to.....hell it's almost like doing real work!?

Before all of that though I'm pushed for time to plan the Christmas menu and shopping lists, so after recovering from the very chilly weekend in the kitchen I'll do that then let you all know the plans.

TTFN

Write Out A Hundred Times.....

I must not volunteer.......even in jest!!!

So there I was submitting some text on dining for next years interpretation when I foolishly and sarcastically said that in retrospect I would have been better off volunteering to write about day to day meals at Court rather than special occasions. Well faster than you can say 'you've got mail!' up pops a message in my inbox along the lines of 'oh great, thanks for volunteering to do that, can we have it as soon as possible.'

.......and that my friends is what I've been doing instead of posting this week......that and sorting out this weekends cookery plans.
As i mentioned before we shall be recorded for posterity this Saturday so the plans don't really involve anything too taxing, a nice straightforward menu to cook followed by a meal to demonstrate manners for the camera. At least doing it this weekend rather than waiting until Christmas should mean that we have some natural light to work and film by, it also means that we can take time to work with the camera guys to get the shots that are needed as opposed to them just getting one bite of the cherry so to speak as they would at Christmas.

Not sure if there'll be much to report or many pictures but we'll just have to wait and see. If not then there are still plenty left from last month to show you yet......just got to fit those extra days into the week so that I can have the spare time to do it!!

TTFN