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Sunday was a good day for yardbirds, here is mine along with roasted veggies fresh from the garden

Very nice @C6Bill! Last night was pizza night here. Hadn't done any in ages and got a wild hare (hair?) Upfront - storebought pizza dough and sauce (Trader Joe's). Did 3 personal sized ones - Margarita (homegrown basil), N'duja and mushrooms, and a no-sauce one with slices of fresh homegrown tomatoes, bacon and caramelized onions. Sampler plate with a very nice local beer!

I've started to appreciate why Dennis is reluctant to recommend the gas burner assembly. There is a workable solution for high temperature cooks such as pizza or roast chicken: Use charcoal that comes in bigger chunks. FOGO SUPER PREMIUM LUMP CHARCOAL (35LBS) The gas burner assembly lights charcoal from the bottom. What tends to happen is that all surfaces light at once, the fire gets way too hot, then the fuel is spent too soon. In principle one can control any situation like this through airflow alone. In practice, this is hard to do. Large pieces of lump charcoal improve the surface area to volume ratio. The fire doesn't get as hot, and it lasts longer. The fire shown easily stabilized near 500 F for long enough to thoroughly heat an indirect pizza stone, then cook several pizzas, with no rush to chase a fire about to collapse. I'd use a bit more charcoal next time, to stabilize instead near 600 F. In any case, I'm now happy with the gas burner assembly for purposes such as this, after thinking I might not use it much. Despite this charcoal being marketed for low and slow cooking, one might want to try it for hot cooks even without the gas burner assembly. One gets a nice fire, better airflow, longer lasting, all around easier to manage than smaller pieces of lump.

My other favorite part of this upgraded stone holder is better yield. The corn is inexpensive; I'm perfectly capable of accepting waste rather than fussing over scraping ever last bit of masa out of the original stone assembly. Nevertheless, masa is religious food. Just as the synthesis of ammonia and thus nitrogen fertilizer a century ago is the reason half of the 8 billion people on this planet are even alive, the invention of masa extended life expectancies in this hemisphere by a decade. People used to die when their teeth wore out. I'm spiritual but not particularly organized-religious. It just doesn't seem right to waste food in this particular instance. The new assembly comes apart completely, as shown, It is simply not frustrating to achieve a high yield, minimal waste.

For those of you who want to use Fireboard or Thermoworks Billows temp control units, Humphrey's BBQ makes these solutions and are very helpful.. http://humphreysbbq.com Billows adapter Buy the "No adapter needed" option Fan for Fireboard Buy the "No Fitting" option

How is the inside of your grill so clean? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

thanks C6Bill. I learned a lot about temperature regulation of the KK in previous cooks, and applied those lessons and advice received here.

The finished products.

Outstanding! That's a real sandwich.

No longer looking, just ordered this beauty.

Nixtamalisation report - A+. It is well worth diving down this rabbit hole. I have done this twice now and the second time was even better than the first. In reverse order: Every tortilla in the batch bubbled to order. Not @Syzygiesfull tortilla rise but enough to get me whooping for joy. We tried some tortilla in the hollandaise sauce from the previous course. A combination to die for. I wrote to Tony at Masienda after my first cook and he advised me to use plastic bags to line my tortilla press in place of the grease proof paper that I normally use. Big improvement. Peeled off so much easier. I also asked him about needing to use masa harina (dried masa flour) to get the wet masa to the right consistency. I felt like a pregnant mum who had wanted a natural birth but ended up screaming for the epidural. He reassured me that it was perfectly normal. I didn't want to have to ship more masa harina over from the US and so I asked if I could make my own. He said I could dehydrate my masa and then grind it myself. Here it is, with the bonus that the masa harina is made from the same corn as the wet masa. Fresh masa straight from the grinder, ready to go in the dehydrator. Dried Ground No pictures of the front end of the process but this is what I did: Cooked 500g of corn with 2000g of water and 15g of cal. It took about 1hr and 15 mins for the bolita amarillo corn to get soft(ish) to the bite on the outer kernel while keeping the heart of the kernel hard. Heated slowly and it didn't read over 90C until after 45 minutes. Didn't let it get to boiling. At the end, overall weight was down to 2000g. I decanted the hot mix - corn, nixmatal and all - into a fresh container, added 500g of ice and placed in a sink full of cold water and ice. Once cooled, I left the mix to rest for 24hrs at room temp and then stored it in the fridge without grinding. One recipe that came with the corn said never to put this stuff in the fridge and the other said it was OK to put in the fridge for a couple of days or so. Latter much more convenient, given the need to use the masa within a couple of hours of grinding. When I was ready to grind, I washed the corn in lots of running water (some recipes say not to be too vigorous with your cleaning, others say to be thorough). The Premier grinder is awesome. It comes with rudimentary instructions and I watched a Gujerati woman on YouTube before assembling and using the kit. Dead easy to use and you need to judge the amount of liquid you need to keep the ground corn going round smoothly. A few interventions with spatula needed during the process but it works pretty well on its own for 40 minutes. I suspect I could have stopped at 20 minutes but twice as long was good. I added in my powdered masa when I came to make up the balls and all was good with the world. The Husband said he could understand why Mexican chefs would cry when they tasted tortillas made with fresh masa made from good corn. The best compliment came from one of our guests when he said what a difference it was to eat a tortilla that was not just a tasteless conveyor of its taco contents but a player with a stake in the game. Thanks @Syzygies P.S. No I am not mad and this is not difficult. I cooked the corn two days before I needed to use it. All of the process on the day fitted into the prep for a four course meal that was cooked fresh on the day in a total of three hours active cooking time. I continue in search of the perfect tortilla but, in the meantime, this was pretty damn good.

Here it is installed on my Billows ... ... And plugged into my KK