Celebration of Celts 2008

[Gobae]

Our group recently completed a demonstration at the Celebration of Celts festival.

(Complete photos found here: [url:2ri0nfu5]http://www.celticclans.org/demos/coc2008.html[/url])

Our latest addition to our demonstration, the pole lathe, worked very well.



As did our stone griddle. (You may remember I posted pics of the metal hangers last October. Well we finally got to use them.)



Over all we were joined by 51 re-enactors (6 groups) and the timeline covered Celts from 200BCE - 1745CE. It was a fantastic time.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Interesting pictures, both pieces of equipment look great!
i like the lathe! 8)

[brennivs - tony drake]

Great photos Gobea D
Regards Brennivs

[Doc]

What type of stone did you use.

How high above the fire did you suspend the stone and how long did it take to get hot.

[Gobae]

The stone is a variety of sandstone. Although we were originally looking for an igneous variety of rock, we stumbled upon this stone and decided to give it a try. While I'm sure an igneous rock would eventually outlast the sandstone, the sandstone does cleave into a nice flat cooking surface.

We hung the stone approx 12"-18" over the fire. We first tried to get a cooking temp from just the bed of coals underneath, but that didn't work particularly well. So, we tossed on some wood and with the flames nearly licking the underside we had a beautiful cooking temp in about 10 minutes. Subsequent uses showed it does best with flames and not just hot coals.

That weekend we managed to cook: bacon, oatcakes, steak, and even eggs on the griddle.

[Doc]

Thanks for the reply.

I would really like to try cooking on the stone. Where could you get a sandstone and what dimmensions would you use (length, width, height)

Did you have to scrub the surface or smooth it out?

Did you find while you were eating that there were stone grains or fragments in your food?

Thanks again. I will definitley try it

Paolo

[Gobae]

The sandstone we located was the cap-stone used on a low stone wall (a landscaping feature) where I work. As it turns out, our snowplow drivers are incredibly poor and have been slowly turning the wall into rubble year after year. So, instead of letting the stone go to waste I picked up a few slabs and these became our griddle and oven.

If your local snowplow drivers are better than ours, I'd suggest checking the yellow pages of your local phone book for stone cutters or headstone makers. Most of these places have scrap that would be suitable and I've heard many are happy to have people take it away for free just so they don't have to pay (by the pound) to have their garbage collectors take it.

The griddle stone measures 12"x16"x1"

One of the advantages of using the type of sandstone we found was the fact that it cleaves into nice flat surface. So there was little need to dress the cooking surface. In fact the only "prep" we did was cook some nice greasy bacon on it to season the surface. We certainly didn't detect any grit or stone chip getting into our food.

[Doc]

Gobae,

Thanks for the info. Now, I will definitely try it in my back yard.

I would like to have some nice chicken and steak on there.

I live in Brooklyn NY and there are cars parked all over the place not giving the plow the opportunity to get close to the house or side walks (at least in the area of Brooklyn I live in).

But I do know some stone cutting places. There are several in the area.

Thanks again