Anzac Day

I don't know why but our visitors today seemed to be all from the antipodes......it was wall to wall Aussies and Kiwi's which was great as they're refreshingly blunt with their questions so I for one had a great day.
Unfortunately all the wonderful plans that we had yesterday for taking pictures and temperatures went out of the window and we didn't do any of that........curse the demon drink is what I say!?!

So what did we do then if we didn't do that? Well the table at 4.00 was laid with roast beef, poumes, coleys, buttyryd wortys, applade ryalle and dowcetts. It was over used as we ate but the description of 'superb' came up time and again and for the first meal in a long time it was truly deserved. The buttyryd worts were fantastic, it was very much the case of 'take it away from me' for most of the guys and as for the applade ryalle poor Adrian was left with just the scraping on the bottom of the dish...I suppose it could be seen as divine retribution for yesterdays custard!

Tomorrow is all sorted, thanks to Jorge talking about the vikings and Thor which reminded me to defrost the lobsters for the blamanger of fysshe, everything else is ready to go and I'll let you know what was what at a later date so until then I'll be signing off.

Hey Now My.....

Sometime work colleague is back! Yep that's right, Jorge is back in the fold to cover for Ross over the rest of the summer and autumn as he's off to do other things over the next few months. Quite surprisingly it was as if he'd never left and we all slotted back into the well oiled machine that we were when he was last with us.......late nights jawing about 'old times' and too much drink of an evening are what I expect the next few months will hold!!

It was quite a busy day today, lots of good weather bringing the visitors out in droves....I've no idea of numbers but it felt like a 1500 visitor kind of day. Lots of great questions too that kept usually busy and a nice change for Robin as he quite literally jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire, taking over as the spit turner for to days dish of chike endored.

Joining the chicken on the table were venyson in brot, autre vele en bokenade, perre, lyede milke, browne fryes and the ever popular wardons in syryp. With no Ross to fight for the custard Adrian was like a pig in clover with the lyede milke, virtually scraping the glaze off the bowl in our mess again.....at least it shows that the dish was successful I suppose.
No real surprises today and no real photography either....just a few of the newest member of the fire warding staff team learning to light a fire with a flint and steel for the first time....I'll post them up for you to see as soon as I get the chance along with any others that we manage to snatch over the rest of the weekend.

Tomorrow sees beef back on the spits so Robert and I think that we'll take some temperature readings in order to better plan how and what we need to do for that job over an experimental weekend....fingers crossed they should give us some useful data, watch this space to find out if it all worked or not. Other than the beef what are we up to tomorrow? As always, I'm not too sure so it'll be off for a chat with the guys in a while....over a pint naturally....to finalize what we'll be doing when tomorrow dawns.

TTFN

No News Is Good News?

So I've moved and now my life is all packed up in boxes.......it's quite worrying how much you hoard over the years and now I just have to find a place for it all.
Despite the succesful move though, I'm still not back online yet........could be another 2 weeks I'm told, so for now you'll have to make do with the sort of posting you get when I'm at work.....all words, no pictures and little finesse!

The cookery this weekend is all planned and ready to go....assuming that the charcoal that we ordered arrives in time. I'd love to tell you what we'll be cooking, but I'm afraid I've left all the details at the office......so you'll just have to wait until the weekend when I'll post what we've cooked each evening.....suffice to say there'll be roasting, boiling and baking a plenty.......well enough to keep us busy anyway.

I've still got the videos from the last weekend to post and hopefully we'll have more images and video this weekend as well. Now that the house move is out of the way I can put more effort into getting stuff posted up for you to see.

The rest of the year is shaping up now......lots more data recording is on the cards for the weekends that aren't public holidays so fingers crossed I'll be able to bore you with some of the figures as the year progresses.
That's all for now and this brief update....much more to come over the weekend.

You Are Always On My Mind

As I mentioned a few posts back I'm moving house....with all the chaos that involves so this is a brief missive before the final big push..........and as far as you lovely people are concerned, the last post before my phone line is cut off to transfer to the new house......it could be up to 21 days before I get an Internet connection back, or at least one that will allow me to do more than post text.

Which is a shame really as over the course of last weekend Robert went mad with Robins camera and managed to take a load of video of all sorts of stuff. When I get the time I'll edit out the dross and post the footage up.....I'm afraid that you'll just have to bear with me though.

When I return (or possibly via mobile phone before) I should have news of the next couple of weekends cookery plans as well as pictures and video from the last.

Speak to you all soon.

The Things You See!

I'm typing this and trying desperately to look at the screen and not look up.........Robin is having some new hose (leg wear) fitted by Adrian and it's not a pleasant sight....phrases like 'lift and separate' and 'get right up there' are being bandied about, so I'm using this posting to blank it all out........eugh, time for the mind bleach I think!?!

Once again, the balmy weather brought out the visitors and we had over 2500 ticket sales today......and I think we saw and spoke to most of them! As with yesterday, lots of interesting questions and conversations were had by all but in spite of that the day did seem to drag a little between 12.00 and 3.00. I think possibly because we were really on top of things with the cookery today and we had plenty of time to talk to people without worrying about things burning, sticking or generally going wrong.....which is somewhat of a luxury compared to normal.

The supper today was:
Roast beef
hennys in gauncelye
cabochis
crustade lumbarde
a potage of roysonys
ffyletys en galentyne

With the beef today we spent a little more time in the preparation and removed as much of the connective tissue as possible which made for much better eating at the table.
The ffylets were a little experimental as although the recipe calls for roasted pork to be used I chose to use raw meat instead. Everyone said that there was a difference but they just couldn't put their finger on what that difference was! It could just have been the difference in the quantities of the ingredients from the last time that we cooked it, so this will certainly be on the menu for one of our more experimental weekends where we can try to cook two versions with accurately weighed quantities of ingredients to see if we can taste any reason why the recipe calls for the roasted meat instead of raw.

As with this time yesterday I'm not too sure that we'll be doing tomorrow.....roasted beef, a bake mete, perre, cryspes and apple mose are ringing bells but I think I'd better pop down to the office to make sure.

TTFN

Swarming Like Pirates......

That's what they were doing today, swarming like pirates! A little bit of sunshine and some warm weather seems to have brought the visitors out of the woodwork today as we were packed to the rafters all day with loads (probably thousands I think) of interested and interesting visitors all asking loads of lovely questions.

Six dishes were cooked today:
Roast beef
beef y-stywyd
perre
pety pernauntes
chardewardoun
creme boiled

All went down well with the guys, even the different cut of meat that we used.......trimmed up and rolled then put onto the spit for roasting nice and slow.....lots of taste and flavour if a little harder work in picking through to get to the meaty bits. I took some pictures of it as did Robert so I'll post the pictures as soon as technology or time allow.

The beef y-stywyd was cooked slightly differently to normal.........we didn't grind up any of the spices.....it still had a great taste, just could have done with a bit longer in the cooking so that the cubebs could fully soften and loose their bitter edge (and as Robin is pointing out to me in my left ear as I type.....too many cubebs in this time!)

Tomorrow is another day and there are lots of things still to sort out, so I'll leave you now and pop down to the office to work out what it is we'll be cooking!

Potaytoe Potahtoe, Tomaytoe Tomahtoe!!

As I'm sure you all know, assumption is the mother of all *%&$# up's and that's been proved all too true today!
Normally when I order beef for roasting and cooking with we ask fo a certain cut, it's one that looks good on the spit and cooks well too. After discussion years ago with the butcher we all sorted out that we would order 'Thick Flanks' or 'Flanks' of beef. That's served us well for the last 5 or 6 years until this weekend when it all went a bit 'Pete Tong' as I believe they say.

A change of staff due to unfortunate circumstances and what we got was actually flank or skirt I think not knuckle which is the name of the cut that we've been using and incorrectly calling flank!

Oh well you live and learn eh! Still, on the up side, a bit of experimental work with a different cut of meat should make for an interesting set of dishes and hopefully pictures to boot as well.

Que Pasa?

So what's going on then eh!

Well, serious family health problems and a dodgy computer have kept me occupied since my last post, but safe to say that all the shopping is ordered for this weekend and we'll be all systems go for a great weekend of cookery......in theory.

I'll let you know what we cooked as we go along and hopefully there'll be some good pictures as well, but as always, no promises until after the event.........lots of things to be trying this weekend like not grinding the cubebs up in beef y-stywyd and a few other ideas inspired by a project I worked on recently, but more of that overthe weekend.

What does the future hold? Well I'm afraid that posting will be a little intermittent for the next couple of weeks (WHAT!?! Say it's not so!). Lots of upheaval in my personal life as I'll be moving house after this weekend so quite a lot to concentrate on that isn't work (and probably no phone line for a bit either!). You can rest assured though that as soon as the move is sorted I'll be back to normal here, keeping you up to date with all that's going on with the cookery, research and so on.

See you on the weekend. TTFN

A Bit On The Side...

Sorry for the lack of activity of late, but some major family stuff and power problems with the laptop amongst other things have conspired to keep me busy an not posting.......hence this flying visit too.

The planning for next weeks cookery is ongoing and as soon as I get the chance I'll let you know what we shall be doing.....just got to wait for an answer from the boss regarding some supplies before I can finalize that end of things......but given Doc and Elise's comments I'm pretty sure that the malmenye furne will rear its head over the three days.

Other research continues apace, although not the recipe stuff unfortunately as I've rather been distracted with looking through account lists from the period looking at foodstuffs and where they are coming from......and quite often, who is providing them......all really fascinating stuff but loads of work cross referencing.......best to get back to the recipes first I think!

As an aside this Sunday is 'Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day 2008' and Robert has been out practising.....using the Palace as the subject

I on the other hand will be leaving it all to chance and just snapping away on the day...not sure if it'll be at work, I doubt it though!
Pop over to the pinhole site and have a look at the gallery, in this modern age it's refreshing to see this style of image making still flourishing.......looking should also keep you occupied until I post again!

Back In The Land Of The Living!

I've finally shifted the cold that blighted the start of this week.....just the tickly cough left to deal with.
The week 'off' has given me a chance to look through all of Roberts pictures of the weekend....but it seems that much like me he didn't take many, so I've posted the best along with a few more of mine over at Flickr. They illustrate processes more than end results like this one....

Which shows the bread that was cut ready for browne fryes drying out over the course of the day. We've found that by drying the bread the batter sticks to it much better and the final product tastes less like bread than if we just cut and dip the bread.

¶Browne fryes.
¶Take browne brede, and kut hit thyn; And then take yolkes of eyren, and som wit of the white; and take meyned floure, and drawe the eiren and the floure thorgh a streynour; and take sugur a gode quantite, and a litul saffron and salt, And cast thereto: and take a faire panne with fress grece; And whan þe grece is hote, take downe and putte it in þe batur, and turne hit wel therein, and þen put hit in þe pan with the grece, And lete hem fry togidre a litull while; And then take hem vpp, and caste sugur thereon, and so serue hit hote.

They're great when hot out of the oil (obviously let them drain first!) and great to cook with kids as an introduction to 'history food' (again, with the frying best that the adults do that bit!)

What else did we do? Well, we had a stab at

¶Malmenye Furne.
¶Take gode Milke of Almaundys, & flowre of Rys, & gode Wyne crete, or þe brawn of a Capoune, oþer of Fesaunte, & Sugre, & pouder Gyngere, & Galyngale, & of Canelle, & boyle y-fere; & make it chargeaunt, & coloure it with Alkenade, oþer with Saunderys; & if it be Red, a-lye it with olkys of Eyroun; & make smal cofyns of dow, & coloure hem with-owte, & bake on an ovyn, & coloure with-ynne & wyth-oute; þen haue Hony y-boylid hote, & take a dyssche, & wete þin dyssche in þe hony, & with þe wete dyssche ley þe malmenye & þe cofyns; & whan þey ben bake, & þou dressest yn, caste a-boue blaunche pouder, Quybibe, mace, Gelofre; & þanne serue it forth.

But despite reading it over and over.........and over again, it really did stump us. Some of it is ok, but a lot of it just makes no sense to us....maybe it will to you?!

We read it as a recipe with a meat or non meat option right at the start (we went meaty and used chicken) and all goes well until it tells to colour it with alkanet......which is fat soluable......where's the fat? There's not enough in the chicken......or is that a factor with modern production chickens, would their forebears be more fatty? Would we have better success with pheasants? Anyway, to extract the colour we chose to use clarified butter, which gives a great red colour.

But when you add it to the cooking chicken

all we ended up with was a slightly pinkish chicken in the pan....

I didn't want to use too much of the coloured butter as the alkanet adds quite a bitter and not very pleasant flavour to things so I didn't want to spoil the dish with too much of this flavour. The egg bit we understood (I think!) and the making of the coffyns seemed to make sense, but when you get to the honey bit

þen haue Hony y-boylid hote, & take a dyssche, & wete þin dyssche in þe hony, & with þe wete dyssche ley þe malmenye & þe cofyns; & whan þey ben bake, & þou dressest yn, caste a-boue blaunche pouder, Quybibe, mace, Gelofre; & þanne serue it forth.

we get/got totally lost..........maybe it was the onset of the cold, maybe it was something in the water but honestly........we just can't figure out what it means.......does it mean to use a honey covered dish like a scoop or ladel to fill the cases? Should you use the dish to press the filling into the cases?.........answers on a postcard please!

We opted to skip the honey and 'fess up at the meal that we didn't have a clue what the recipe meant to us.....that's the main reason there are no pictures of the end result.....that and the fact that the skies opened and the light vanished making pictures really difficult to take.
As for how it tasted........who knows, I couldn't taste much at all for the last couple of days.....all I can say is.......they ate it!