What Chazzie Did Next

[desperance]

Actually, I think I may have stopped. There is a large hot glazed ham cooling gently atop the cooker. Next to it is a large pan containing a pig's trotter which I have split, onions and carrots ditto, rosemary and thyme and a litre or two of simmering water. In a few hours, that'll be a jellied stock. In the oven are two small birdpig pies; I am not at all confident about these, because I cannot find a recipe for a raised pie made with cooked meats, all the recipes I have talk about giving it half an hour at a high heat to set the pastry and then an hour at a low heat to cook the meat - but of course the meat is cooked already, so can I omit that last hour? Or does the pastry actually need it? I do not know. And will probably compromise. But I worry about internal dryness, although of course the jelly will ameliorate that when it's poured in later; it just shouldn't be poured onto really dry meat. Also, I think the filling is more pig than bird, and I don't know if it ought to be. It's all experiment.

Also an experiment: there's an awful lot of food out in the kitchen, and I'm up here. The boys are probably running riot, causing havoc. I'm going to go down now and give them something residual - the rind off the ham, perhaps? - and just hope that we can achieve repletion, because it's going to be hours before everything gets put away. The ham will have to overnight in the oven, there is nowhere else, but the oven will have to cool down before it can go in. Etc. I wanna big kitchen. And a stillroom. And a walk-in refrigerator. And a game room. And and and.