In the intervening period, Henry supplied me with a salami recipe to test out and I got to ordering a mincer and some ox runners (the natural casings used to make salamis).

Next, I had to source some relevant pork bits including shoulder and back fat. After a search of Borough Market I found that Sillfield Farm didn’t offer any back fat, Ginger Pig only have it on Tuesdays (when they do their pork butchering), but luckily Northfield Farm had plenty and offered it up for free.

With all of the ingredients to hand, the rest was salami history. Now I just have to wait 4+ weeks for them to mature and hope the maggots don’t get to them (and also that I got my salt levels right). See how the salamis shaped up (literally):

1: Soaking the ox runners
The ox runners come salted and you need to rinse and then soak the runners in water before you can use them. If it isn't obvious, these will be our salami skins. I got mine from Weschenfelder.

2: Pork shoulder before mincing
Got my pork shoulder and back fat (not shown here) from Northfield Farm, Borough Market..

3: Mincing the pork
My first attempt at using a hand mincer, slightly confusing at first but it ended up being really quite satisfying.

4: Adding peppercorns and fennel
Next step is to add some toasted fennel seeds and whole black peppercorns along with the 2% salt required to preserve the meat.

5: Next - adding the back fat
Pork back fat gets added to the mix, in this case in 1/3 proportion to meat. (500g to 1.5kg meat)

6: Big wet mess after adding red wine
After adding half a bottle of Sicilian shiraz the mixture became a big wet mess, but all the better for filling the skins!

7: Threading the runners
You have to thread all of the runners on the meat filler (aka the mincer with a different attachment). The fun begins!

8: A salami!
And there we have it, a filled salami ready to be hung. It actually helps to have two people at this stage, one to turn the handle and one to supervise the salami filling.

9: Friendly salamis waiting to be taken to the shed
As the salamis were finished they just needed hanging somewhere temporary and the pan rack seemed the best place.

10: Salamis hanging in the shed
And here the salamis will hang for 4-12 weeks until they have dried out and hardened sufficiently. They've been wiped in vinegar and I rubbed an old salami on them to encourage the growth of mould on the exterior.

I’m a big fan of Dan’s, especially since he complemented the (South) Chelsea buns that I made for last years Brockwell Bake. Inspired by reading his book, I decided to cultivate my own sour dough starter (or leaven) over the Christmas break. Approximately a week of dedication required to get the process kick-started, with daily feeding and monitoring my leaven.

I was incredibly surprised to find that actually it wasn’t that painful. At times I felt it wasn’t working (especially when my loaf on day 5 appeared to fail), but the result on day 6 was just amazing. I’ve certainly never made a loaf with such a remarkable crust (so crispy) and crumb (so chewy).

I now just have to work out how best to keep my leaven alive going forwards. See the pictures below to see how the drama unfolded.

Montreal’s biosphere:

A sunset over the Hudson river, viewed from the Adirondack train between Montreal and New York (for reference, possibly the most picturesque train journey ever at this time of year):

A vote Obama mural in New York:

See the full lot here.

This morning I discovered the answer, while backing up the database that stores all of the photo metadata. The database was over 2gb in size. Upon further investigation, it contained over 1 million comment spams. 1 million!

No wonder 4angle has been running slow of late, with the database getting hit that hard by spammers!

Remedial action taken: commenting disabled, since I didn’t use it anyway.

My photos are available. Some highlights include:

Scottish figs:

Award winning beaches:

Smoo Caves:

Generally incredible views:

See the whole lot..

**update** Sarah describes the trip in extensive detail here

Although you don’t get the joy of eating them, you can enjoy them with your eyes:

It just so happens that this camp site, beautifully situated at the edge of a cliff at the southern end of the island, comes highly recommended by Cool Camping. For those unaware, this recent publication has reminded many people of the joys of camping. As a side effect, it has also made camping accessible to followers of Hip Hotels and other such coffee table books. Not that this is a bad thing, per se, but this was definitely the first time I have seen somebody buffing the alloys of their SUV on a camp site:

Those who were not asleep this weekend will know that the UK weather wasn’t really cut out for camping, least of all our chosen destination on the Isle of Wight, which attracted the largest rainfall in the country (over 2 inches in 12 hours, and that isn’t taking into account that it had already been raining solid for 12 hours prior to that..). This, combined with winds gusting up to Gale Force 8 (or 9 depending on who you ask), meant that some of our cool camping friends didn’t have such a cool time.

Over night, the majority of our neighbours left. Some left, abandoning their tents and possessions:

Maybe those behemoth tents aren’t such a good idea afterall. At least, not when camped on the edge of a cliff.

(pictures courtesy of Sarah)

This one happened on the corner of Gresham Road and Coldharbour Lane in South East London.