West Norwood Feast April 2011
Well fellow feasters we have had a busy and exhausting weekend.
The baking offically commenced on Thursday evening which saw the Bunting's girls making a trip to a large supermarket on Old Kent Road, for the finest supplies. Never fear, this was just for the basics. We are still keeping the Brixton economy alive by frequenting a local butcher (Atlantic Meat Market) and the deli (Continental Deli). This was a tough trip as we were both starving hungry and verging on delirious. We got a little bit lost on the way due to general unpreparedness on my part (Clare) but we made it and even sampled some pastry based products from said shop on the way home.
On Friday night we went our separate ways, and on Saturday, we baked.
I arrived at Helen's (health and safety checked and approved) kitchen at 2.30pm, with a cool bag full of 6kg of minced belly and shoulder pork in a wheelie suitcase. This baking is hard labour.
We then made a very large amount of flaky pastry, using all our elbow grease to grate 6 pats of frozen butter! Tea break needed after that one.
Then we made sweet sausage rolls. Apple, muscovado sugar, cinnamon and mixed spice encased in lovely flaky pastry sans mustard powder.
We knocked up some vegtarian filling and rolled and constructed them. All our hard labour was made easier by the additional trays and cooling racks that now fill the Bunting's kitchen.
Next came MEAT.
We weighed out 4 equal portions and mixed in the separate flavours. From the excellent comments we had from our tasting we went with The Greek, Cheddar and Mustard, Marmite and Sage and Traditional.
Seven hours and several cups of tea later we had 5 very large tupperware boxes of cooked and cooled sausage rolls.
Personally the highlight of the baking for me was perhaps the temperature checking with our brand new cooking thermometer! And a bit of Dermot O'Leary on the radio - very soothing.
Sunday - market day.
We were up bright and early on Sunday morning rolling our hair into victory rolls and donning red lipstick. We set off in the ever so glamorous VW Golf laiden down with equipment, sausage rolls and some cards and badges made by Lucy Ward (Helen's artist sister who made our business cards).
We also took along Kellie (Clare's housemate) and some Bunting!
Arriving in a sun filled West Norwood we set up the stall, had a cup of tea and awaited the crowds.
West Norwood was teaming with people by 11am and I overheard several people saying they had never seen anything like it. We got down to the business of selling and I have to tell you they went like hot cakes (or hot sausage rolls...). By about 11.30 we were wishing we and made about 3 times as much as we had done and by 1pm we were totally sold out.
Everyone had an equally busy day with Marcus from Ain't No Picnic Burgers selling out of his famous sliders by about 2pm and Antonia from our neighbours Beamish and McGlue running out of everything from delicious tarts to their own brand of sausage rolls.
Sunday was a brilliant success and we will definitely be taking part in the next West Norwood Feast. Roll on May!
Love Clare and Helen x
p.s. We've started a Flickr account charting all our exploits photographically. You can check out our pictures here.
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