Norfolk Broads

It was a friend's sister's 30th birthday last weekend and a bunch of us hired a couple of boats on the Norfolk Broads for a little celebratory holiday. I figured that since they'd been nice enough to invite me along, I'd do something nice and make a cake in the shape of the boats we were hiring...

This was the initial design after learning that we'd be spending the weekend on a barge...

...except on further digging I found we were staying on something more like this so I had to go back to the drawing board with very little time left to make it.

Here's the basic sponge cake, all jammed-up and ready for the marzipan.

Marzipan layer added.

Iced and decorated.

In the end, the boat was small, cramped and very very warm at night. However the beer, boating and company more than made up for it, including the massive game of water-pistol pirates in small lake off the side of the main river, which the locals really weren't impressed with :-).

I also slightly overestimated the amount of cake for the number of people, so the leftovers were given to the swans that had been following us all holiday, but they weren't impressed either when it sank without a trace. Too much icing, maybe?

Lamb Chop 2

After going to Lamb Chop back in March, it seemed like a good idea to put our new-found butchery skills to use. Armed with a couple of pages of scrawled notes, some sharp Global knives and vague recollections of where to cut and in what order, we bought a whole lamb carcass from Borough Market and hauled it back to my flat. It took most of the day to prepare, but the end result looked pretty special laid out on the kitchen table. See for yourselves below...
Step 1 - cut the neck (scrag) off to cut into chops later.

Next, cut the whole carcass into three primal cuts. Cousin matt is demonstrating "The Forsythe" in the background.

My flat isn't temperature controlled like the processing plant was, so spare parts have to kept in the fridge when not working on them.

A good way through the process you'll have a load of lamb joints like this. Note the tenderloins near the middle of the picture - these are the most tender parts of the animal and are amazing flash-fried and served with some roast veg.

A bit more hacking and chopping later, and the result is a vast array of chops and joints. We used Cousin Matt's mincing machine to mince the offcuts.

Waste-not want-not. We used the bones to make a few pints of fresh stock. The end result was about 16kg of meat for £160. That's about the same as regular supermarket meat, but ours is certified organic Salt Marsh lamb from Rhug Farm in Wales, instead of anonymous prepacked produce.

FL Edge & Son - butchery course
Rhug Estate - butchers stall at Borough Market