The best of the worst...

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.

Vine tendrils

Pigeon soaked in vinegar (left) compared with the control pigeon.