So yesterday was presentation day for Round 1. It was good to see all our stuff in one place at one time. There were some fantastic entries by a lot of teams, and most had gotten the message that they needed to explore more than one aspect of their element, and all tried something new to them. Most explored some version of cooking (as it has a quick turnaround) but each team had at least one other option, which was great to see.

Our presentation looked great, thanks to Francesca's efforts to secure appropriate feast ware, and also to Muirghein's sea shell inspiration. Francesca, Portia, and Maeve all assisted in presenting this to the judges and talking them through. People seemed to really enjoy the taste of the chicken dishes, particularly the Mawmenny redux, and loved the colour of the Grape Relish, and the Vine Tendril Black. Two things we didn't do very well - we didn't write up documentation for the raisins (!), and we forgot to take photos (thankfully Stella Guo did!)

As with any historical reenactment or experimental archaeology, not everything you do is going to be a fabulous success. Here are our favourite two failures from working with Grapes...

The complete non-starter award goes to Vine Tendril Pie. Given how keen we were to  use  as much of the grape plant as we could, we were keen to give things ago that involved the stalk, stem and leaves - that weren't dolmades! Platina to the rescue. This recipe involved cutting green vine tendrils (which was no easy feat - these things are tenacious in their ability to hold on.. to eachother, the fence wire, garden furniture...) and boiling them to make sure they were completely soft for a new spin on a quiche florentine. After an hour of boiling these new shoots were incredibly tough, bitter, and the colour of bile. Needless to say, we didn't bother baking the pie!

The amusing, but completely disastrous award goes to the Pigeon Soaked in Vinegar to make it boneless - a recipe from Platina which Scully also refers to. It didn't make the pigeon boneless - it made the pigeon inedlible. All you could taste was the vinegar and the meat was actually tougher as a result of being immersed in vinegar for so long. The control roast pigeon was a lot tastier. So the boneless pigeon is not going to be presented on the 10th.

One week later it is time to strain the fermenting grapes, and get rid of the  grape skins, before putting the proto-wine in a sealed container to complete fermenting.

Even though it seemed like a small amount, it took all hands on  deck to actually manage the process, so they're aren't many photos. You can see the barrel uncovered,  with the bubbling grape mush - evidence of fermenting!

From 15  kilos of grapes, we now have about 5 litres of liquid hapily bubbling away in  our baby fermenter... I promise that it smelled better than it looked!