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Rotisserie leg of lamb Mediterranean salad roasted olive oil & garlic pearled cous cous homemade tadziki with lemons from the tree

So I was always a follower of Steve Raichlen because his recipes and backgrounds for cooking are interesting. Well, searching through his cooks today I found one I liked, Salt Slab Spatch Kok Chicken. It was what I wanted, but I wanted to make it my own as you would in any recipe, change it up a bit. The basic recipe I followed, however I changed out the hot pepper seed for a liquid cover called Truff, a hot sauce with truffle..yum. I rubbed the chicken with the Truff and then applied the rub as Steve described. I set up the KK with my perforated deflector and placed the chicken on skin side down with a 12 inch Lodge skillet over the top using only a half basket on the 23 on the top grate. The temp at 325 sank immediately to 290 as expected and slowly rose to 325, there it sat for 45+? minutes. At this point the breast temp was around 155 degrees so the skillet was removed. Now I'm thinking that's pretty quick, having an oven within an oven alters a few things, it shortens the time to get there and retains the moisture better, well that's what came about as an end result. Next was to bring the KK up to 350 without any difficulty and it sat for maybe 30 -45 minutes again flipping upon appearence. This is all subjective, because I opened the lid numerous times to see the results. At the end it was the best chicken, moisture retention and skin crispness I've had. Now a lot could be allowed for the chicken sitting in the frig with a salt based rub before going on the KK, but it certainly is worth the effort if you want to try a new approach. Hey, higher temps, leaving it on for the duration, different meats, low and slow..whatever, it could change a few things. Don't know if anyone else has tried this, I could be out on a thin limb, but I think the cover retained the moisture in meat and didn't allow it to escape, so the additional browning didn't hurt afterwards and it came out wonderful. Yours to try, a new avenue. Oh, the vinegrette was also complimentary, you couldn't do better at a restaurant, trust me.

Tonite was Cheeseburger Wellington with Truff hot sauce (not too hot) liberally spread, a slice or two of thick cut bacon and a slice of onion with a nice piece of Swiss cheese all wrapped in pastry dough. The side was Pineapple slaw. I used the skillet as a test and the control burger by itself was uncovered. The burgers prior to wrapping as the bacon were both cooked, seeing how the burger came out towards the well done side, it should have been cooked a bit less, but they were tasty and moist just the same. Pictured you'll notice the skillet pastry browned quite a bit more than the control burger. Both were cooked @ 350 for 35 mins using the KK23 with a full half basket, I was also using a perforated deflector.

My girlfriend requested pizza for Valentine’s Day, a perfect excuse to fire up my new KK! I’ve made plenty of good pizza we a baking steel in my oven, and I’ve seen the recommendations to use a steel at around 450 in the KK. But like driving a new sports car I felt the itch to pedal down and see how she fares. Preheated between 600 and 650 for an hour or so. First dough broke so it became a calzone. Second went as intended. Both turned out light years better than any of my previous gas oven pies.