Burra Maluca

Megan Palmer wrote:It looks deliciously rich.  How did you cook it? Boiled, steamed/baked?

Ah, this is where I'm afraid I'm going to lose a bit of my permie-street-cred because I followed the instructions that my son was given as closely as possible, which involved tying it up in the plastic bag it came in and boiling it for three hours. The thing was expensive at €15 a kilo, which is way out of our usual price range, and I didn't want to find out the hard way that it would be ruined or fall apart and turn into soup if I didn't follow instructions so I bit the bullet and did as I was told for once in my life. It was too big to fit in my small slow-cooker so I used my ginormous one and gave it four hours, just to be on the safe side. My son came over half an hour before lunch time and the boys cooked up the potatoes and green beans together while I just left them to it, except to take photos.

A load of water had managed to work its way into the tied bag, which we saved and I used to cook up a batch of black eyed peas the next day. I have a feeling that if I'd just boiled it in water without the bag, a load more of the flavour would have escaped into the water. And without any kind of wrapping, I thing the whole thing might have burst. The slow cooker was the only viable option for a boil that long as the rocket mass heater is only run in the afternoons and it doesn't usually run for three hours. Three hours on the gas stove seems excessive to me.

If I were to try it again, I would probably plan it more in advance so that we would use the rocket mass heater, tie the thing up in a piece of cloth to hold it together, and use a pan that was better suited to the size and shape so that there wasn't quite so much water to wash the flavour away into.

The boys had been working on a renovation job in that village. The back streets are so narrow that the truck doesn't reach the house so deliveries end up being carried or barrowed to the job site. On festival day, loads of the houses open up little stalls outside their front door and this butelo was purchased direct from the couple who made it from a table set up outside the house. The man gave my son very strict instructions on how to cook it and my general policy is to follow instructions the first time I cook something new. I have a feeling that my son will end up knocking on their door one day in the relatively near future to tell them how awesome it was and do they have another one. He likes his food, and both the boys like to cook. I just get to wash the dishes up later.

My son cut the left-overs in half, took one half home with him and left the rest for us. I had my bit cold the next day - it sliced well as it had set into one big lump. Austin fried his bit up and he said that was delicious too. Not sure what my son did with his but I bet it's all gone by now.

I did find this link about the spanish version and how to cook it - botillo with potatoes and turnip greens

And also this spanish youtube video where she wraps it in cloth. I didn't find this until after I'd cooked mine though...

When I make chutney, I use the biggest onions I can find because I can only peel and cut a maximum of two before I have to retreat into another room for twenty minutes with my eyes red and sore and weeping and I want as much chopped onion as possible to be produced in that time!

Most days I go for small ones, just enough so that one is enough for whatever I'm cooking.

The cabbage I use is mostly dark, green leafy galega cabbage, which is perennial and grows on a long stalk so you can pick just the leaves you want for that meal, leaving younger leaves growing near the top of the stalk.

Well that turned out to be just about the tastiest lunch I've ever had in my life



Served with green beans and potatoes on an old Portuguese plate.  With a dollop or two of butter and a bit of parsley.



No bone, which is great, but a good selection of smoked meat, belly draught, pig's ear, fatty cuts of meat, all in a pig's stomach!

More progress is happening with the willow feeder...

This is the underside of the 'seat', with three bits of wood installed to make sure the top of the barrel stays in the right place.



Austin is sanding a notch so that the lid will be easier to lift, though to start with it won't be hinged so we can just slide it out of the way.



It's quite a heavy lid so we want it wide enough for four fingers, not just one. For this job, a simple hole isn't appropriate as we want it fly-proof.



The seat is hinged to the top of the frame. There is an opening to the right which will be covered by a door to allow easy barrel changing.



And the lid will fit here, complete with lifting-notch.



This will hinge up like this eventually, but we want to thoroughly test it first to make sure it's positioned where we need it to be, not just where we think it ought to be.



I haven't photographed it, but the rather heavy-duty base is made and very soon we will be putting the whole frame together, cladding it, and making the access door.

The boys went to the Festa das Varas do Fumeiro (festival of poles of smokes) yesterday, and came home with this, which is now cooking...



I think it's a butelo which is made "by stuffing a pig’s stomach with rib bones, vertebrae cartilage, and rump meat"

That plushy raven of mine is attempting to claim it on the grounds that the welsh word for raven is cig fran, which means meat crow, which means it must be for him. It's not that he doesn't understand logic, it's just that he tends to twist it a little and then apply it to his own ends...

The festival seems to involve people walking around with sticks holding smoked meats which are auctioned off by the stick.



Will post an update photo later. I think we're having potatoes and green beans with it, and my son is coming over to share the feast. Seeing as he bought the thing. He's a good lad!

My feeling is that whilst nothing is random, everything is so unimaginably complex that our relatively feeble minds perceive it to be so...

Jane Mulberry wrote:

Jay Angler wrote:It bothers me a bit that I often see RMH's being started with a propane torch.
Has anyone tried these sorts of fire starters instead? (I don't have an RMH yet, but still hoping... might have to be a Walker cook stove instead.)

Burra's post looks like she's using the corn husks and pine cone in their RMH.

Corn husks  and pine cones blasted with a propane torch.

Sometimes the dragons help...



I never claimed to be perfect.

I just try to be good...

Chicken stew would be my solution.

Maybe invest in a bit of chicken feed to train them to go wherever you need them to go so you can catch them.

We're finally getting the willow feeder sorted!

We had to buy some wood in to make a good job of it.

Roxa, my little purple dragon, is helping...

The four adventurers were exhausted by the time they'd arrived home and slept soundly all that night. In the morning though, Índigo and Vermelha were back to their usual ways, zooming around the place and chattering endlessly to each other. Eventually I'd had enough and shooed them outside to go and play so I could have some peace. Rosa and Roxa were happily rummaging in the new treasure chest playing with springs and new dragons, and Iggy had decided that he needed to come up and tell me all about their adventures.



"Well Iggy, did you all have a lovely time? Did you learn anything new?" I asked him.

"Lots of things happened. Mostly because Índigo and Vermalha were so naughty. They were having such a good time zooming all over the place at the speed of light that they wouldn't stop! They would zoom off, zoom back again, and carry on straight past us laughing and refusing to stop when we called them. Actually, it was really odd because I noticed that they seemed to get longer and longer when they were zooming. You couldn't really see where their noses started and their tails ended. As though they were stretched out along the whole length at once. Like beams of light.."

"Well they are photons when they go that fast so I suppose it's hardly surprising, though I'd never really thought about it." I admitted.

"I guess so, but that's not the strangest thing. Shiva got fed up of them not coming back when he called them and they were laughing at him as they zoomed past him. And you'll never guess what he did!"

"Um, no I probably won't. What did he do?"

"Well it turns out he has an electro-magnetic lasso! And the next time Vermelha tried to zoom past him, he caught her with it!! And she zoomed round and round and round him until she caught her own tail!"

"Oh wow, now that IS interesting!"

"Then when she'd calmed down a bit, he switched the elctro-lasso off and she shot off at the speed of light again!"

"Well I hope they learned their lesson and behaved themselves after that! Did they?"

"Um, no. Not really. Because then Índigo wanted to try it so Shiva caught her with the electro-magnetic lasso and let her spin around him for a while. Then when he let her go they'd be racing past him and getting him to it again, and again, until they were all laughing and having a wonderful time. Actually, while they were chasing their tails round and round, they seemed to calm down a bit but they kept going at the same speed until Shiva released them and they zoomed off into the distance again."

"Well to be honest it sounds like they were all having fun!"

"Yes they were. But what I really wanted to talk to about was this..."

Iggy pushed a paper towards me, one that I'd seen him reading before. I think he'd been rummaging on my bookshelves and dug up some old stuff I'd been working on years and years ago.



The diagram on the page he'd been reading did look rather familiar and I squinted at the title page - Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology by J.G. Williamson and M.B. van der Mark. I did recognise it, but I don't think it's the sort of thing I could get my head around any more.

"Where on earth did you find that Iggy?"

"It was hiding on your bookcase..."

"Hmmm, sounds about right. There's lots of stuff lurking on that bookcase that I never finished dealing with..."

"But the thing is mum, what it's suggesting is that if a photon catches it's own tail..."

But before he could finish what he was trying to tell me, a little nose appeared on the page...




"Oh hello, Luz! Have you come to see us?" I asked her, pleased to see her interacting a bit more.

"It's not Luz, it's Electra!" Rosa explained as she chased after the escapee. "She stopped chasing her tail and shot off to find you"

"Oh no, I'm sure it's Luz."

Poor Rosa was very confused as she was pretty sure I'd said that her name was Electra when we'd first found her.

Luz slithered up onto the page and started curling around following the lines on the diagram. She circulated twice, a bit like a cat does when it wants to curl up and go to sleep, until she managed to close in on herself and catch her own tail. Again. And there stayed, apparently quite happy to return to her old configuration.



I looked at her again.

"Oh maybe not. She seems to be Electra again now!" I announced.

At which point poor Rosa nearly gave up in despair...

Iggy stared in disbelief at the new dragon, who he hadn't met before.

"Well that's exactly what I was trying to tell you mum - this paper is suggesting that an electron is just a photon of light that has caught its own tail. Just like that! That's why she's Electra when she's going round in circles and Luz when she's going in straight lines!"

"The only thing is," he continued, "the paper is very difficult to understand..."

"Physics papers tend to be like that." I admitted. "I don't think I could read that one even when I first had it. There was a book here somewhere which explained it in simpler terms. Alan might have it. Maybe you should ask him."

"Or we could ask Idris!" suggested Rosa.  "He's been up on the wall above the whiteboard for ages and never talks to any of us. He just sits there biting the end of his tail. Do you think he would talk to us if we asked him nicely?"

"Oh I'm sure he would. Why don't you girls go and ask him?"

And so the young dragons went off to try to persuade Idris, who I've had for nearly forty years and used to live in the old bread oven in the alcove by the fireplace in the old farmhouse I lived in when I was eighteen, on a bed of hay and guard my collection of pretty rocks, to come down and talk with them and tell them what he knew about dragons who catch their own tails.



I wonder what he'll be able to tell them...