I really should have learned after 24 years that there’s almost a snowball’s chance in hell of my camera taking useable images in the kitchens at Hampton Court over the Christmas event….just not enough light. Still, while I try to sort the wheat from the chaff in terms of acceptable images for you all to see and to illustrate a couple of posts I have planned, have a short update on the use of the multi armed spit, for as I hoped, we managed to get it into action on the last day of the recent Christmas cooking week.
In a slight change of plan from the previous outing…and because we had sufficient spare beef due to some logistical juggling…we were able to
load the arms up so that there was beef on the outer spits for this second go, rather than just in the centre bar as before.
When we originally talked through the plans for this event, I’d allocated the roasting to Ross to arrange and he’d expressed a desire to try larding some of the beef as he’d never tried that before. I’d ordered some belly pork for this purpose but we’d simply not got around to using any of it earlier in the
week because it had slipped all of our minds that this was what we had planned. It was only when we noticed the pork at the back of the fridge that we remembered it, so Ross decided that he might as well give it a go with this last opportunity of roasting until the February cooking weekend.
So, cutting the pork into strips and with the aid of a rudimentary larding needle, he set about passing it
through the beef as best he could. Once the beef was larded it was time to put it, and the 16 chickens we had this time, onto the spit, however unlike the first time during the week that we used the multi spit, this time it was heaving down with rain meaning that the spit would have to be prepared in the kitchen and not outside in the courtyard. Using the courtyard meant that we could use the modern plastic trestles that we usually use to hold the drip tray and spits when cleaning, to support the 30Kg multi armed spit whilst loading it with meat.
This was not an option and whilst we thought of ways to overcome the problem, Dave’s quick thinking came up with a solution as he dismantled one of the tables from another room to use the oak trestles for the job! Ross arranged the trestles where it would be most convenient to work and with the help of Tom to steady the metal work and Robert to hold extraneous spit bars out of the way, he set to the job of loading the meat onto the spit.
Whilst they finished the job of loading the meat onto the metalwork, I was busy doing some quick calculations and worked out that the whole affair,
both meat and metal now weighed in at around 64Kg (around 141 lb)! As before, this was placed in front of a rather sizeable fire built by Paul and Ian from the State Apartment Warding team, and once again the meat was roasted using an ever cooling fire as there simply was no easy way to stoke the fire with fuel once the spit was in place. This time, Ross was a little concerned that the chickens at either end of the spit weren’t cooking too well and left the whole lot in front of the fire for a little longer in order to ensure everything was cooked through. After two and a half hours, it was time to remove the meat and Ross essentially
copied what Robin had done before, removing joints with the aid of a bowl to catch them and then transferring each piece to a waiting tray…all the while assisted by Dave and his heroic pose and Tom holding the spit still.
Rumour had clearly gotten round amongst the staff on duty that day that we had planned to finish the week with a bang and a lot of meat on the spit as we had numerous colleagues appear towards the close of the day….on the “off-chance there might be some spare meat” they all said with a hopeful air 🙄 …still it was good that it all went to a good home. That which wasn’t removed by our friends and colleagues has gone into the freezer to be used in pies and stews at a later date, the only waste being what had fallen out of the meat into the drip tray.
I have to say that Sir Hugh Plat’s description….how to turn five spits at once with only one hand…is dead on the money. With the meat on the spit the balance of the whole apparatus was superb, making it childs play to turn the spit around. The only problem with it is the manhandling of the weight, especially when compared to a single spit bar; but I think that if one had to roast five spits worth of meat and you had the choice between five individual spits, possibly needing three people to turn them, versus one of these…I’d plump for one of these I think.