Syzygies

Again Focaccia di Recco. The secret is to nail the dough consistency so it rolls paper thin without sticking to the board. And to find the right cheese, a local problem.

13 hours ago, Braai-Q said:

100% endorse this. If you're into Indian food @Syzygies you might enjoy Krish Ashok's Science of Indian Cooking. 

Bought the Kindle version. It looks great.

3 hours ago, tekobo said:

As you can imagine, I got bored after the first six books or so.  I also realised that I was missing a couple of Fergus Henderson books that included suckling pig.

Actually I can't imagine. I'm not sure what fraction of those books I own (I haven't visited my New York apartment in two years) but it's substantial.

I have everything Fergus Henderson has written. He's one of my Zombie masters. One trip to London I ate there as often as I could, the Maitre d' relaxed enough to describe to the best of his knowledge the St John diaspora.

My first visit, I arrived early for lunch as was my typical mode, and recognized Fergus himself out having a smoke. I was all "Hey! Aren't you that guy in those internet videos?"

I never did order the bone marrow with parsley. I do prefer elevating traditional British cooking to new heights, over any new age imported ideas. When I return to London this will again be my first stop.

(When I return to Japan my first stop will be King Ken Ramen in Hiroshima for their Tantanmen, even if it means taking the train the wrong way.)

From an old email:

Quote

Of a wide diaspora of St. John alumni, The Anchor & Hope, a contemporary but ancient-looking no-reservations pub, is perhaps the most exciting, and possibly has better food than St. John itself. (It comes down to how you order and who's cooking; same talent pool.) Their alternative rock mindset places St. John in the same company with the 3-star restaurants you mentioned, when St. John's only sin is to be longer in the tooth, to use tablecloths, and to take reservations. (If you're an upstart in this category, then St. John is the restaurant to beat.)

The Anchor & Hope
36 The Cut, London SE1 8LP, United Kingdom
+44 20 7928 9898

Anchor and Hope Pub

I went there for lunch, bonded at the bar with cooks. Returned in advance of opening for no-reservations dinner in pouring rain only to realize this was THE spot, half of London seemed willing to wait hours for a table. A single is always nimble. I spotted a seat vacating at the bar, realizing I could eat there. Just as I grabbed it I heard a voice "this is the guy I was telling you about!" and I was whisked to my own private wood table for first seating in the dining room. I might have said some flattering things at lunch, while demonstrating some discrimination. Of course I felt obligated to order everything I could possibly eat...

3 hours ago, Tyrus said:

Funny, most are in the position of asking the wife if it's affordable or too big from the 23.

Let's not forget that some of the most influential posters here are women.

I talked my wife into buying my first ceramic cooker. She figured it would be an upgrade if I stopped using her ex's offset firebox.

She bought me my KK 23" Ultimate. And when I put her on the phone with Dennis she was completely charmed. @braindocare you sure your wife didn't just want to talk with Dennis?

A source of stories you'd have to get us drunk to tell is the Kamado Fraud Forum. It concerns Richard Johnson's ceramic cooker company. He first put tiles on ceramic cookers; his tiles didn't stay on. Various of us here first owned ceramic cookers from this company; you'll see the acronym POSK for these cookers (no one remembers what this stands for). My tiles all fell off, and the KFF featured a photo of my repair. After seeing the lax supervision and workmanship at Richard's factory in Sacramento, I wondered how anyone's tiles ever stayed on. I gave my POSK to a neighbor when I bought my 2009 23" KK Ultimate. My neighbor now has an impressive collection of barbecues; the POSK is no longer part of the collection.

My 2009 23" KK Ultimate has all its tiles. It still looks good as new.

Richard abandoned a Kamado factory in Indonesia. Dennis has a thriving wood flooring business. His workers mentioned they had friends who'd lost jobs to an abandoned business making ceramic cookers. Dennis, being a good guy, decided to resurrect the business to help these workers. Dennis, being a tad obsessive, got very interested in improving the product. While there remains a superficial resemblance (tiles on a ceramic cooker), the Richard original is junk, while the Dennis modern incarnation is the best ceramic cooker on the market. Think styrofoam cooler versus a Yeti Tundra cooler, Portland cement versus modern ceramics.

I was actually aware of the earliest Dennis KK models when I bought my POSK, but I fell victim to preferring "originals". Both Bob Dylan and Manfred Mann sing versions of "Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo)". I prefer the original, even though it's close to unlistenable. My bad. I should have realized that Dennis was the real deal; I missed being one of his first KK customers. I made up for this in 2009.

2 hours ago, tekobo said:

The good news for me is that I am The wife and so didn't have to seek a wife's permission in order to get a dry ager.

There's a great SF Bay Area butcher (Golden Gate Meat Company) that will dry age for us on request. I've tried dry aging brisket before traditional low & slow. Too far and one can eat the brisket with a spoon, but a few days is wonderful.

What I'd use a dry ager for would be sausage. I have perhaps the largest Kaffir lime tree of any of Kasma Loha-unchit's students, and periodically I share leaves and limes. Perhaps the best sausage I've ever tasted was a Thai-inflected sausage offered me in gratitude by one of her students. I can't buy sausage like that.

1 hour ago, tekobo said:

It is pretty dramatic but doesn't always have a lasting effect and the fire often goes out.

It's less dramatic in colder weather, lights like a gel.

I always include a couple of lumps of wood at the base. I'd use all wood, but it burns down too completely, too quickly. I'd use all charcoal, but as you note it doesn't light as reliably by itself.

I buy iso four gallons at a time, transfer to typical drugstore bottles, and use perhaps half a bottle at a time. Enough to make a loud noise and lose arm hair in summer. Don't try this at home? 😎

Solo Stove advises against charcoal, as it burns hotter than wood. Think bronze age. They're fearing that I'll fill my Solo Stove with charcoal, which I never do. A few inches at the bottom is enough to cook whatever I'm grilling.

1 hour ago, GrillnBrew said:

First thing that went through my head was "ooh, I could get the cold smoker attachment with that!".

I invented the smoke pot, and I've got all the parts on my yard table for converting my 2009 23" Ultimate to use the KK smoke generator and a BBQ Guru at the same time. All I need is to find the right directions.

My wife and I have been together nearly twenty years, but she did worry about my tendency to keep changing my mind on the most sacred things. I'm like a pinball machine that keeps playing even though the kid walked away decades ago. This tendency is very useful in research mathematics, and needs to be managed in life.

4 hours ago, Basher said:

You remain the only person I know with a hacksaw as part of their kitchen utensils.

Ha! I'd like to think tekobo and I are kindred spirits, though my conversation with Laurie about getting my own dry ager didn't go so well. But I do have a food hacksaw!

I'm unlikely to experiment with the FinaMill, because I don't want to lock into someone else's system for storing spices. This is something I've thought long and hard about. My first recollection of school was teaching my classmates to play Simon Says backwards, and the student teacher leaving in tears. So I don't take direction well.

Hario Ceramic Coffee Mill -"Skerton Pro"Hario Ceramic Coffee Mill -"Skerton Pro"

Recently, our ancient, inexpensive "Pavoni" grinder started to fail. All it really needed was a good cleaning.

This however prompted me to buy the new edition of the Hario Ceramic Coffee Mill. Various people had figured out you really want to run this with a cordless drill/driver, so the new design features a handle that slips onto a hexagon stem that's drill/driver ready.

I was never before able to grind spices as finely as one can buy them pre-ground. Now, the spice I grind this way are so fine and fluffy that they're actually hard to pinch. They squirrel out of the way. Not sure how I feel about this. One could back off on the grind.

Peppermate Traditional Pepper Mill

For general use we have a number of colors of the Peppermate. It was billed to me as a "cook's" pepper mill: It doesn't make a waiter's impression like the ornamental pepper mills many people get as wedding gifts, but it can grind a teaspoon at a time like no one's business. I first saw these taking Italian cooking classes with Giuliano Bugiali in his New York apartment, long ago. (He has passed.)

The one pepper that is a challenge to grind is Sichuan pepper. Two passes at different settings with the Hario does a wonderful job, I'll cache a few weeks worth at a time.

Good Sichuan pepper can be hard to find. Back when the real thing was contraband in the US, I saw a worker at a Flushing, Queens Sichuan restaurant open a cabinet at the front of the store, housing a 50 lb bag. Their Sichuan pepper clearly rocked, as the meal was already reminding us. I approached the worker with an outstretched twenty dollar bill, only to have the woman manager tackle me. This was their livelihood at stake.

So if I claim this is the best Sichuan pepper I have ever found, I hope my recommendation will be taken seriously:

Sichuan Tribute Pepper (Mala Market)

One can't go wrong with anything they sell. Their best Pixian chili bean paste, best soy sauce, and best vinegar are each transformative. I buy all of their chilis.

14 hours ago, Dono said:

Syzygies, how would describe the flavor profile?  

One of the more descriptive Amazon reviews for Pok Pok Thaan Thai Style Charcoal says "Slight fruitwood flavor, much lighter smoke than mesquite, hickory or oak."

It depends how you use it. Those of us hooked on KK extruded coconut lump love it for how it burns with a nearly neutral flavor, so the smoke we taste is the smoke we deliberately add for flavor, using smoking woods. Nevertheless, one friend with keen tastebuds (he has won wine tasting competitions where they permute the same 12 bottles a few hour later) could pick out the coconut. I can even pick out the coconut, but I could see colors on our black and white TV as a kid, so who knows about me!

The Achilles heel to any ceramic cooker used for low & slow is that we're continually burning unlit charcoal as we cook. You can't simply light everything at once and coast 24 hours. In a wood-fired pit, people tend the pit, ideally having one fire to create embers and another to actually cook using only fully developed embers. If we use ordinary charcoal for a low & slow, we taste the charcoal as it lights. I can use ordinary (good Fogo lump) charcoal in my Solo Stove because I'll use too much fuel, then wait till it burns down to almost spent embers. All fires taste roughly the same at this point (though Mesquite is still a bit nasty!).

KK extruded coconut lump doesn't impart off flavors as it burns like a fuse, for ceramic cooker low & slows. That's why we love it.

Pok Pok has more flavor, but it's not objectionable even if it burns like a fuse. The flavor reminds me of roadside barbecue in Thailand, but I could see colors on our black and white TV as a kid, so who knows about me!

This is all relative. Some people like wretched amounts of smoke. I imagine they've had their heart broken too many times on the trail of commercial barbecue, so they want to taste lots of smoke to be sure. Once my wife tasted barbecue using the smoke pot I devised, I was never allowed to use wretched amounts of smoke again.

My rear shed is a museum collection of every generation of extruded coconut charcoal sold, Richard through initial Dennis experiments through current Dennis. If I ever ran out and couldn't get KK extruded lump, I'd happily use Pok Pok for low & slows. It's also great for general use if you can ignore the price.

Fogo Premium Hardwood Lump

I just had four bags of various FOGO charcoal delivered, to help protect my hoard of KK coffee charcoal. They're my next favorite source.

Pok Pok Thaan Thai Style Charcoal

This is extruded like KK coconut, but with a different flavor profile. Expensive but worth a try. I love it, but perhaps I just miss Thailand.

21 hours ago, Troble said:

How do you cook these recipes on your kK?

Here is a very old thread where I make Tandoori Chicken from "Tandoor: the Great Indian Barbecue" on my previous ceramic cooker:

Tandoori Chicken

7 hours ago, Troble said:

How do you cook these recipes on your kK? Do you use a Tajine or another device?

On my KK I simply cook on the main grill, perhaps with a drip pan to control flareups. For example, chicken tandoor gets basted with ghee. You could baste my old hiking books in ghee after a spice marinade, and you'd swear that this updated Charlie Chaplin classic dish was best thing you ever ate.

7 hours ago, Jadeite said:

did a quick google and this is one of THE books.

Yes, once you see it you won't need anyone else telling you this, it will be your opinion too. It's a real, published in India masterpiece that makes no compromises but is nevertheless easy to execute if one has the spices. It's all about spice and marinade handling.

Steven Raichlen PBS Project Smoke ~ Tandor Lamb

On a KK, of course.

One can find "Tandoor: the Great Indian Barbecue" used sometimes. It's one of my favorite Indian and BBQ cookbooks.

The double bottom drip pan, and a foil lid, would be perfect for this Yucatan dish (cochinita pibil):

In a Bay Area underground oven, chefs are making smoky, earthy pork just like it's done in the Yucatán

52 minutes ago, Forrest said:

Syzygies what is the fire pit like thing you are cooking the broccoli on?

That's actually some black cod that cost more than my first car, with green charmoula. Ointment of the Gods, except the olive oil causes flareups. I'm tempted to leave olive oil out of the marinade stage.

The fire pit is a Solo Stove Ranger, Frankenstein-paired with a Breeo Outpost 19 adjustable grate, all riding on a Harbor Freight Utility Cart. My neighbor has half a dozen alternatives for BBQ equipment. I could get by for life with just a KK ceramic cooker and a Solo Stove grill.

I can set up and light wood chunks and charcoal with iso alcohol in 90 seconds, be back in the house cooking sides till it's time to grill. I love the Solo Stove. When I want the deep flavor of slow-cooked barbecue, or a pizza night, I use the KK.

(The Sonos bass response really was outstanding inside the KK. This wasn't disrespect. When Yanni played inside the Pyramids, was that disrespect?)

Solo Stove (KK thread)

2 hours ago, Jadeite said:

I don't know if I have the room for the full 42".. and the fact I was able to talk my wife into upgrading to a KK over the BGE was magic in of itself

My 23" KK was our second ceramic cooker, and my wife bought it. We've fed 80 people at her church pork butt out of it. The 32" does a lot.

On 3/4/2021 at 7:48 AM, tony b said:

Unfortunately, the challenge to those of us with older KKs is that you can't run Dennis' smoker and the Guru fan at the same time - it's a shared port. Of course, Dennis solved this problem with the later models with separate ports. He's willing to ship the parts to folks with older KKs to drill that separate smoker port, but I'm waaaay too nervous about doing something like that to my KK. Others have done it successfully - I just won't be one of them. 

So... The thermometer cable port is 1/2" inner diameter. Any reason we're not using that with the KK Hot/Cold Smoke Generator?

I never run a thermometer through that hole anymore. I get better results sticking a probe into the mechanical thermometer hole in the lid. As a bonus, I can control high heats for bread without exposing the thermometer cables to excess heat.

There is this idea that it's better to run the smoke through the fire. I certainly considered this, designing the original smoke pot. There, I'd made experiments where at high enough temperatures the gas from the smoke pot would actually catch fire. So this seemed reasonable. But we're talking science here, and I don't know how important this issue is for cold smoking.

Sunterra SANTA MARIA 36" CART 3601-36DSICRT CD1

Lone Star Grillz Santa Maria

My neighbor has this style of grill built in, in his back yard. The other end is a pizza oven. Then his other equipment. My old POSK was #2 but he got rid of it long ago. His collection now rivals Jay Leno's garage. So he loves the Santa Maria grill but he doesn't use it much.

I'm a big fan of adjustable height grills. They simplify timing your fire. While my 23" sees duty for centerpiece cooks, my hybrid Solo Stove rig sees frequent use for preparing ingredients or grilling a single steak or two sausages... I can set up and light a wood/charcoal/isopropyl mix in a total effort of 90 seconds, go in to manage everything else I'm cooking, and time my return for grilling. With an adjustable grate, what's at stake is how long the grilling takes, not whether it works.

Solo Stove Ranger ($215)

Breeo Outpost 19 ($129)

Harbor Freight Service Cart ($38)

17 hours ago, Forrest said:

I ordered this. We will see how it works. Was only $17 on Amazon return deals.

Wow. By an extreme coincidence, I held this exact washing machine drain pan in my hands yesterday, at a local Lowes. It's flimsy. You'll return it.

Our compost bins are no longer made, and falling apart after two generations of Harbor Freight straps. We rejected every purpose-built compost bin, and finally decided on seven industrial stackable containers:

Global Industrial™ Straight Wall Container Solid - Stackable NRSO2422-14 - 24 x 22-1/2 x 14-1/2

I'll be cutting out most of the bottoms, and hoping for the best. They arrived yesterday, and needed lids. I checked out and rejected this drain pan, before reverting to $8 squares of cheap plywood, for now.

Here is the original forum post on using a water heater drain pan to clean grates:

Water Heater Pan (2010)

That pan of course broke, being plastic. Here I switch to metal, beat up now but going strong.

Water Heater Pan (2015)

Yesterday's lid search did get me to review the category, and in another coincidence cement mixing tubs caught my eye. Though plastic they'd last a long time as Komodo grate cleaning pans, if one found a good size.

It isn't rocket science, however, to plug the hole in a water heater drain pan. You're already in a hardware store, already in an inventive mood. Figure something out!

Though of late I always use my pressure washer. The pan protects my yard. I'm asking myself why I don't take the plug back out. Pooled water only gets in the way.

Here's my trusty water heater pan (Honey smells barbecue!):

Here's the old compost heap:

Here's a bottom bin for one of the new stacks. I'll cut out more of the bottom for other levels:

It's hard to listen to "What If?" by the author of XKCD without calculating exactly how many holes I need to aerate the new stacks. And Laurie wouldn't have it any other way; this is her turf.

What If?

On 3/11/2021 at 3:39 AM, tekobo said:

Most of us have dishwashers for this...

Yes, but they don't also have my Rambo toys!

1 hour ago, PVPAUL said:

@Syzygies I believe from your original post that you already procured the Premier 1.5 liter wet grinder. Are you able to confirm that you are happy with this product? 

Yes. I originally was planning to "take one for the team" and also buy the best (not Mexican, but tuned for masa) hand mill. I do have two kitchens. The wet grinder worked well enough that I decided I was done. It does require tending. The wetter the mixture the less tending, but then you need to add more masa harina to compensate. And doneness isn't by the clock, presumably one could learn to spot when it's done, even 20 minutes in with effective tending, and bail. 40 minutes allows rather casual surveillance.

I've bought and used this, even though I have a serious library of KK coconut charcoal. This has more flavor, reminds me of the best roadside grilling on my trip to Thailand. Try a box, no matter what, then you can form your own opinion where it belongs in the firmament. It's worth a try:

Pok Pok Thaan Thai Style Charcoal