It was a quiet Sunday morning, no one wants me, and therefore I have a chance to play. Now it happens I have been watching the Hairy Bikers new series, not quite sure how I can describe them if you haven’t seen them, two middle aged bikers, who love food, with a great sense of humour, and don’t take themselves too seriously. They travel on their bikes, in this case around the Baltic states meeting people and cooking usually outside. Now it may be because I am a strange individual, or I would prefer to think an observer of minutiae, but I have been very interested by the frying pan they have been using  and have been waiting for an opportunity to try and make one , and today was the day.

In the past when I have had blacksmith students I have always had them make a toasting fork as the first project, it takes all morning and the you use it at lunch time to toast your lunch on the forge. Words cannot describe how good a sausage cooked on the forge with a fork you have just made. The sense of achievement is priceless, and the sausage albeit invariably burnt is delightful. But no more. In future its frying pans all the way.

Its a lovely project, a fancy handle, some rivets, forge welding, and plate steel bent up at the edges, and then its ready. I defy anyone to keep a straight face who tries it. Bacon cooked over a open fire on a home made frying pan was so good I couldn’t stop grinning for an hour. Follow it up with bread fried in the bacon fat and you have a recipe for a heart attack  but so very very good. If I am honest it could do with some design tweaks, and having made one the next will be a great improvement, that’s the nature of craft,but who cares we had a superb lunch.

What’s next. As I was driving home I heard a program expounding the virtues of spit roasting meat at Hampton Court, now there would be a challenge, and it combines two of my great loves making things and eating.