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After about a years worth of research, advice from Dennis, I smoked my first prime brisket on a 23 Ultimate. The results were outstanding. Rub - 2 to 1 Pepper to salt. Before mixing, I subtracted 1 TBS of salt. Rub applied liberally. Then lightly sprinkled with Lawerys followed by garlic powder. Dry brined in the refrigerator uncovered for 24 hrs. Fuel - Jealous Devil, hickory and cherry wood chunks at the bottom. Harry Soo’s method. Drip pan with water and spritzed with apple cider/water combo 3 to 4 times. Rumor has it it’s not needed, latest scientific info says it essential. Once eye burning smoke cleared to white smoke (10 minutes) placed cold brisket onto cold grill. Turned Blue in 1hr. Not all white smoke is bad - latest finding. 15lb brisket trimmed down to 10lb, smoked 9 hours at 230 Meater probe temp increasing to 250. FireBoard controlled the fan. Meater used to monitor the meat. Pulled at 190. Wrapped in tallow/butcher paper. Rest 15 hours in a wet oven/cooler. Done.

Sorry for the non cooking posts but it’s been slow around here…..finished our trip with a dinner on a private island/sandbar. Pretty cool experience

special dinner tonight. got my hands on chilled rubia gallega striploin. rubia is an old galecian cow breed. it has this milky spoiled fermented bovine smell and taste to it. hard to explain. i prefer this over any other beef, including japanese waygu… sous vide in apo to 118f and held temp for about an hour while i worked on the sauce and sides.. finished in the alfa burning wood roasted veg accompaniment green peppercorn sauce IMG_9779.MOV

a big mess of an attempt at chocolates using polycarbonate molds and ganache filling. ganache was 2:1 chocolate to cream. dark couverture @ 70%. tried my best to temper it right but the results were still streaky. very difficult to remove them from the molds. maybe silicon would be easier next time. ganache needs to be in semi liquid state or else the bottoms will not be covered properly.

Made beautiful tortillas yesterday with my current Premier mill. It was a bit fiddly to get it running smoothly and I could not help thinking of the upgrade that @Syzygies talked about. I guess I will appreciate it even more if/when I buy it. In the meantime here are some very tasty tortillas, made with fresh masa.

Oldies are the best. Made this again yesterday. Everyone LOVED it. I had some leftover basil pesto from making pizzas the day before and the combination of pork leg al pastor and Italian pesto was a real winner.

@Tyrus you and my husband were separated at birth. He bought this humungous pot at an online auction a few years ago. When the tinning guy received it, direct from the auction house, he rang my husband up to ask him if he had any idea how large it was! Anyway, it is completely impractical for cooking unless you are feeding a battalion. It lives in our porch and we fill it with oranges when we buy in bulk. The six bottle wine box in the second picture gives you an idea of the ridiculous scale of the thing.