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I called them "cat food" curry pastes, because the cans remind me of cat food! I use mostly the red one, but do like the massaman, as well. We have a very nice Thai restaurant here. I have to be careful there, as they don't play around when it comes to spiciness. I made that mistake the first time that I went there, thinking "Oh, I'm sure that they tone it down for folks here in the Midwest!" WRONG! I ordered a 7 out of 10 on their spice level. Thought I was going to die after the first few bites! By the end, I was in full-blown endorphin rush - practically hallucinating! I was afraid to drive, as I couldn't focus my eyes and was panting like a dog in summer! Now, I never go above a 4 or 5, and it still kicks my butt!

Smoked whole chicken on the meat hanger is a GOOD thing. About 2.5 hours at 250F/120C in the end. Start drooling now...

@Syzygies

i was minding my own business and watching weight lifting videos on youtube (yes, thats what some guys do in their spare time) and noticed that the current record holder +109kg class Lasha Talakhadze can lift a 23" KK in the clean and jerk and a 22" TT in the snatch.

I tried out the MSR camping pot with my chicken smoking cook yesterday. I had let the fire get away from me and it was burning very hot when I put the pot on the coals. That is not normally a problem with a cast iron pot but the MSR pot heated up fast and gave off acrid white smoke. I left it to settle down and by the time I went back to check, all the wood chips were burned and there was no more smoke to be seen! Not a good start but I tried again, having got the fire back down to a low and slow temperature. I decided to use pellets instead of wood chips and this time everything went well. Once the smoke started to be generated I put my nose next to the top hat of the KK. No stingy eyes and nice smelling smoke. I didn't use any sort of screen to keep the holes clear and, as you will see from the photograph below, all the pellets burned well and there did not appear to be any smoke escaping from the top of the pot, meaning that the smoke was hopefully being driven into the coals below to achieve the desired clean smoke. This is a relatively small pot and so should fit even in the smallest of KKs. I bought mine in the UK on Amazon. LInk here to @PVPAUL's giving details to purchase in the US: Kudos to whoever first suggested this. I thought it was @Cheesehead_Griller but I can't find an "origin" post to link to.

Another advantage of using a levain might be keeping the starter consistent if you're accumulating and using the discard for other things, like crumpets!

Stunning!

My assumption is that the purpose of the levain is to increase the amount of active yeast so that there will be enough activity to rise the final dough faster than the gases can leak out. So it would depend how much active starter you had on hand. Of course, many of my assumptions have turned out to be incorrect.

Wow- they look divine.

What's a YouTube live track that would convince this old Deadhead that Phish is more than a Pepsi/Coke thing for people too young for the Dead?

Gorgeous!

Beautiful birds.

My wife’s overseas this week, so to make the last few days a bit easier meals wise I thought I should bbq on the weekend. The kids requested pulled pork… done.

Today is the day. I have had this meat hanger for at least six months and am finally going to use it. There used to be a great South African butcher in Leeds Market. He "retired" but was forced to continue making and selling sausages and smoked chickens from his home because his customers demanded it. I no longer work in Leeds and so I wrote to him to ask him if I was on the right track with my plans to brine and then smoke some whole chickens. This is five years after he was meant to have retired (he is now 74) and he was up bright and early this morning to continue our email conversation. It seems like I am on the right track. I aged the chickens in the dry ager for a week to build flavour. Then I wet brined them for 18 hours. One of them in a lemony coriander and fennel brine and the other in a beery, hot sauce brine. They have just gone into the heat soaked KK at about 140C. Smoking over a mix of apple and a little pecan. Photos to follow....

made some sauteed carabineros sauced in its own head fat and a5 yakitori's. the taste of these prawns is out of this world. it comes pre-seasoned from the sea, meaning you don't need any salt...