Syzygies

As a kid I worked a summer at Schaller's burger restaurant on the Lake Ontario shore near Rochester, NY. They really did serve great classic burgers. There were nights I was the only one working who wasn't tripping on psilocybin. We'd draw straws for who got to turn on the machine that chopped 50 onions at once. Everyone else stood by to carry the unlucky one into a walk-in freezer, where staring up at the fan for twenty seconds restored some sight to one's eyes. Man did that sting! Impressive machine, though... Our hot sauce was legendary. To first approximation it was just grease. The secret recipe was actually to take every mistake burger that week, and cook it down. In a pot of grease, of course. You'd swear your napkin was the best burger you'd ever had, with this sauce on it.

Indoors, we've got this gas range. It has insides and a top. We use the top more often, but the insides are very important. Outdoors, those roles are assumed by our KK and a couple of Solo Stoves. Many nights, the meal is not centered around outdoor fire, but outdoor fire is critical to ingredient prep. For that, I can pour a bit of isopropyl alcohol over a wood/charcoal mix in a Solo Stove, light it, and be back in the house in thirty seconds. Real fire, as quick as lighting a gas grill. Some nights we want pizza or focaccia di recco, or roast or tandoor chicken, or salmon. That's work for the KK. Tonight's dinner was bean tacos. The tacos were from masa I ground yesterday for chicken tacos (grilled of course). Tonight's salsa was from garden tomatillos and garden chiles. A comal is traditional for blackening these ingredients, but I prefer a real fire. I'll light the smaller Solo Stove to roast a single pepper. The Weber kettle has gone untouched for years. Anything the Solo Stove can't do, the KK can. I need both.

From what little I can remember of sixties/seventies counterculture (if you can remember you weren't there), the vernacular stripped apparent gender from phrases like this. I'd hear women use "Hey man" with each other. It wasn't a political statement; the complete lack of concern about gender was the triumph here. This must have stayed with me. I understood all the genders, and read "man" here with nary a ripple that anything was out of place. "Good god man..." is a precious exclamation. As we understood half a century ago, what we took, we took for all.

We have many sizes of 4mil chamber vacuum pouches. The price is right compared to any alternative, and we have a chamber machine. One can use an oversized bag, then simply clip the bag over the side of the Cambro. Then the bag needn't be sealed, and is reusable.

After summers on the Aeolian Islands and Pantelleria, I've developed a lifelong love of capers. We're cooking for ourselves and our foodie neighbors (while they remodel their kitchen) and I used the last of our capers in the stellar swordfish recipe from My Calabria. Crisis. Worse, one of our two favorite sources (Les Moulins Mahjoub) had become impossible to find in 500g jars. I found exactly one US source, Four Star Seafood in San Francisco. They'll deliver out to us $100 minimum for $5 flat fee. So I added a box of frozen shrimp as part of my order. CAPERS IN SALT #4/7 – 2.2 LBS - Buon Italia Wild Mountain Capers - (100g.)/ (500g.) - Four Star Seafood Gulf Shrimp U10 - Head On - 4 lb box - Four Star Seafood I've been asking everywhere after shrimp heads for stock. They apparently just throw them overboard or something. A four pound box, at half the price I'd pay for similar shrimp at Berkeley Bowl, is half shrimp, half heads. The heads fit nicely in the Vermicular with a liter of chicken stock, half a liter of water to cover. Cook 200 F for 45 minutes; any fish stock can over-extract. Then compost the heads; your worms will love you. This will either go into a Catalan Fideua or a gumbo.

My Breeo Outpost 19 came today, and I was easily able to fit it to my $50 Harbor Freight cart, over my Solo Stove Ranger. My neighbor has a true adjustable height Argentinian grill. This is my toy version. I've already got lighting a fire down to thirty seconds: Wood chunks, lump charcoal, isopropyl alcohol, hearing protectors, match. Now I need not be so concerned about waiting for the fire to settle. Just raise the grill!

Doing something in a home oven isn't original to Thomas Keller, but his Bouchon Bakery cookbook brought the idea renewed attention. He recommended chains and stones. What he gets right is that scale matters. The steam from 350g of water will displace the air in an oven or a KK several times over, scalding the cold dough with a great transfer of heat energy. 10g from a plant spritzer is just genuflecting. Baking inside a Dutch oven is different. Stones, really? They would probably work. They wouldn't explode all that often, right? Not for me. Anyone who sells $400 restaurant meals is an illusionist. There's a romance to cooking with stone. But still... While I prefer home cookbooks by cooks with serious professional chops, I've come to always view their home equipment recommendations with extreme suspicion. Paul Bertolli may have gotten us started grinding flour for everything, but his equipment recommendations and handling instructions made no sense. He was clearly getting recently ground artisan grains delivered to the restaurant. Professional cooks are too busy to cook at home. I have this image of the Bouchon Bakery trying a pan full of stones once, for the book. They've got to have the correct professional gear, at the bakery, and that's where they bake. The aluminum disks came about by chance. I'd discovered them on eBay. Someone is getting paid to cut holes, and they're selling the holes, got to love the business model. I wanted additional thermal mass under my Baking Steel for use as a griddle or a pizza stone, and of course I over-spec'd the problem. My baking steel was already so thick that it hardly needed the help, and the aluminum disk was too thick to easily toss about. So I stored the aluminum disk in my cast iron griddle for steam generation, under the chains. It just barely fit, and with differential expansion it shattered the cast iron griddle. Cast iron rusts, in any case, so I replaced it with a commercial cake pan. I ordered a second aluminum disk so I could also ditch the chains. Then I redid the physics, coming to the happy conclusion that one aluminum disk was sufficient. Can't leave well enough alone. That's why Dennis is one of my idols. I've also been trying to improve my Spanish by reading Cien años de soledad in the original. The first chapter concerns the exploits of José Arcadio Buendía in the long-ago Colombian village that he founded, as he obsesses over invention after invention that he buys from traveling gypsies. My ancestor founded Concord, Massachusetts, so I read this novel as a dream version of my family history if my family had been crazier. Gabriel García Márquez appears to be having great fun with the guy, but his response isn't exactly ridicule. Neither is mine. The absurdity of it all is uncomfortably close to home. (My brother is a speech pathologist, amateur linguist who's been helping me design computer tools for language study. We want the magic bracelet where one can just understand as one reads and listens. There are version of this that are practical in software. We believe that standard tools don't work that well.)

Mine is back from warranty repair. I had an extreme bean boil-over incident. All of my recent photographs are of skewers on my Solo Stove, or my new wok made-to-order in Japan, or garden tomatillo salsa in my newest molcajete made-to-order in Mexico, or nixtamal turning into masa in my Indian wet grinder. But this picture is of pork carnitas about to simmer for many hours. An ideal use of our "Indoor K". It was the new puppy before I gorped it. Now it's just another dog in a large family. But I love it. @Wingman505 The instruction manual is buried on their site. It appears at all in response to my feedback: Vermicular Instruction Manual I would say that one should read the manual before purchase. This isn't fair, for various reasons. I didn't. The instructions are easier to follow if one can try them out while reading. And it comes with an elaborate coffee table book that does cut to the chase on heat setting recommendations for various applications. In addition to various rice programs, the cooking settings are MED (445 F, 230 C), LOW (300 F, 150 C), EXT LOW (230 F, 110 C) and WARM (adjustable, 90-200 F, 30-95 C). One can set a timer for up to 6 hours for MED, LOW, EXT LOW and up to 12 hours for WARM; there are two user presets. Otherwise, heating stops after 90 minutes. Not having continuous controls is an interesting choice. I've made my peace with this design constraint. One learns what each setting does, and then trusts it. Less opportunity for user error. My friends with Sous Vide equipment are always calling me to ask "what temperature?!" Here at least the choice is quantized. Each level is handy and well-chosen; one moderates the shape of the cook in the time dimension, rather than fine-tuning the temperature. I had thought I'd be using WARM as a kind of sous vide where I could take the lid off and stir. EXT LOW has taken over that role for me, even though it bubbles away. When I was in Morocco I took various cooking lessons, and saw tagines bubbling away. Somehow they never stuck to their clay pots. This cooker similarly envelopes the Dutch oven, so each temperature is more uniform than one would experience cooking over a flame, or even an induction hot plate. The effect is more like cooking in the oven, a great way to braise without burning, with the added convenience of stovetop access and not heating up the house in summer. In particular, EXT LOW is ideal for replicating how I saw tagines cooked in Morocco.

Wow, I'm hooked on skewers. These skewers are great. Anything a Weber kettle can do better than a Solo Stove fire pit, a KK can do far better than a Weber. This kind of grilling is the thrill and the taste of roadside grilling in Thailand or Morocco. I could never quite recreate this flavor profile on a Weber or a KK. I believe that there's a big advantage to the taller-than-wide orientation in a Solo Stove fire pit, that would be lost with their new grill. Whatever goes over what's left of these embers is surrounded and bathed by the rising spotlight of hot air and radiant heat, a convection oven effect.

Oh that was me. Just came, haven't tried it yet. Looks similar to KK extruded, but I'm expecting a different flavor profile, probably more pronounced. And I build a door-sized shelf into the back of my rear shed just to hold Dennis charcoal, including KK extruded. I have every generation including the first draft that pleased me more than Dennis, and various generations of Sacramento POSK extruded. I'm a hoarder. Cannabis dealers took great care of me in college, because they would come by during a drought. "Oh, you still have that!?" Well, not after they left. So I won't need to spend $$ on actual binchotan, as much as I miss Japan and admire the stuff.

Ok, I'm really getting into skewers. I probably want the best Konro I can find. A dear BBQ friend and I saw a great grill on a street corner cart in Queens Chinatown, a few years ago. The thing was cut and welded together from a few pieces of steel plate; if people take up pottery and woodworking (I have) I could learn metalworking, right? There's that chapter in Aaron Franklin's book where he describes how to turn a recycled 500 gallon propane tank (he uses 1000 gallon tanks at the restaurant, he's cutting us some slack) into a cooker. If one had "basic" metalworking skills. I laughed here, at the same time daydreaming. I have a nephew by marriage that could teach me... In any case, this skewer grill was an "L" laying on its back. The main section was a trough over which one grilled skewers. At one end was a chimney (all rectilinear) where one added charcoal into the top, raked charcoal embers out the bottom. This was a brilliant design. Of course, I don't cook all night like they did. I probably want the best Konro I can find. The KK of Konros. What is it?

I have the same reservations about cooking on the Breeo lip, but their "Outpost" adjustable rack, toy version of my neighbor's Argentinian grill, is a great idea. To me the Breeo design is more cluttered, with stuff in the way I don't want, making it harder to put on a cart. The Solo Stove is stripped down form = function, and I find it beautiful. I really like grilling on the Solo Stove Ranger, it has become my primary grill. 30 second lighting protocol is wood chunks bottom layer, then charcoal next layer, pour on isopropyl alcohol, don hearing protection or vow to use less next time, drop in a match. !! Pong !! Then shooting flames till everything is lit, and the wood chunks burn to start the charcoal. No further tending necessary till time to cook. Though it's barely big enough for two. The issue here is waiting till the fire dies down to cook. I've ordered a separate Outpost 19 which I plan to attach somehow to my $50 Harbor Fright barbecue cart, so I can begin grilling when the fire is too hot. I've also ordered some over-the-top barbecue skewers, Original Super Skewers hand made in Salem, Oregon where our daughter now lives. Heavy duty double skewers, for stability and to conduct heat into the chunks. We've been making satay and tandoor more frequently again, and I finally see the point of good skewers rather than a grill grate. Ooh! Ooh! I saw that too. I had been searching for years for a high tech version of the Weber, this could be it. Though I prefer the smaller scale of a Solo Stove, more efficient use of charcoal. I doubt that this grill funnels skyward a "the party's here!" searchlight of radiant heat and rising hot air as well as the fire pits do. The fire pits are taller than they are wide. This is wider than it is tall. Though Solo Stove understands this. Their fire pits are too hot for grilling, then a narrow ideal window, then great slower grilling few of us have patience for. They've tried to tune this here. That's exactly why I ordered the Breeo Outpost, an alternate solution to the same problem. Fire too hot, don't want to wait? Cook further from the fire. I almost impulse bought one, but it's too big. Solo Stoves work best when the fire is scaled to the stove, and I have expensive tastes in charcoal. For example, I bought my own palette of KK coffee lump. In other news, I ordered box of Pok Pok Thaan Thai Style Charcoal as described in Acclaimed Chefs and Amateur Grillers Swear by This ‘Mind-Blowing’ Charcoal It's very much in the style of KK extruded coconut, though I expect a different flavor profile. I'll report back once I try it; it just came.

Did you preheat the Musui then lower in the loaf using the parchment paper? In my cast iron days flinging the loaf into a hot Dutch oven always felt like the wild card in the whole process. I also use my "aluminum disk" steam generator in our indoor oven. Comparing crusts with a Dutch oven always seemed to me to be apples & oranges, as in one can make great bread either way. I never did controlled experiments to articulate exactly what the difference is. Can you?

Kay. Actually, "The Kay" as grammatical cue that we're not talking about a person. This is common in many languages. Her nickname, in the rare event that something goes wrong, is "Oh Shuck!".

NYTimes - Biryanis With Something Extra

Wow. Particularly as I've settled on a 3:4 ratio closer to my dough hydration, for a different flavor profile and easier mixing. That would be perfect for sealing smoke pot lids!!!!!

Yup. There's some flexibility here. Why did I go with three 1/8" holes on the first smoke pot? Too many holes, and more air gets in, the wood starts burning normally which we're trying to avoid. On the other hand, a single hole could get blocked by an unlucky arrangement of the wood chunks inside; the pressure would then lift the lid, and we'd again have the wood burning normally. Three holes is like NASA flying with redundant systems. It seemed a good balance, and it's worked out for many of us over the years. I seal my lid with flour paste. Much easier than it looks, and of debatable necessity. I did have other versions of lids come loose (stainless steel containers) ruining my cook. So I'm being cautious. And the flour paste has the romance of the Fez Medina; that's how they improve seals in Morocco. Above 275 F or 300 F the smoke pot can get out of hand. I have a picture somewhere of a six inch stream of flames coming out the bottom, from the gases igniting. This isn't our goal for normal cooks.

Thanks. Only "for some reason" my next posts won't include the Vermicular Kamado base.

Cosmetic! If you're cooking anything that could boil over, stay in the kitchen and don't let it happen. For example, don't let beans boil over and make a mess everywhere, just because you're worried about Phytohaemagglutinin. You're supposed to be in a Zoom meeting? Not a good excuse. Actually, a great excuse, but it won't affect the outcome. What you don't want to do is get liquid through the outer side vents into the electronics, while it's plugged in. This could trip your house circuit breaker, and kill the Kamado's power supply. There isn't a warranty seal on the Phillips head screws holding the base together. The base comes off easily. The electronics inside are very solidly built, with several submodules that Vermicular could easily swap out for an easy repair. There's no circuit breaker or fuse visible inside the unit. The coin lithium battery looks to be more easily changed than the battery in a Zojirushi rice cooker. At this price, one can imagine that if someone was this incredibly, inexcusably, "can't even fog a mirror" stupid, they'd find that Vermicular has exceptional customer service. This is all hypothetical, of course. I have an active imagination. I just wanted to take a look inside. However, I think I'll hold back on posting for a week or two, to let Mac have her day.

My wood experiments long ago were too much for me, but they lead me to briefly making my own charcoal, then devising the smoke pot. It is worth studying how one traditionally makes charcoal. Wood is enclosed in a barrel over a small fire. As the wood heats, it starts off-gassing flammable volatiles through holes in the bottom, facing the fire. They ignite, and the fire is no longer needed. When these flames go out and the barrel cools, one has charcoal inside the barrel. In contrast, it is very hard to avoid nasty flavors while burning wood in the open. One ideally has two fires, one to prepare logs by initial burning, the second to burn "mature" logs for the actual barbecue. A truly advanced technique is to also use green wood in the barbecue pit itself, but that requires the correct equipment and experience. I have often wondered about creating chambers heated by natural gas, whose purpose was to heat wood until it off-gases these flammable volatiles. Now pipe this "wood gas" into a conventional oven with conventional controls. For example, Danny Meyers spent a small fortune outfitting the NYC barbecue restaurant Blue Smoke; the approach I'm suggesting would be well within his budget. It could perhaps even save money, as handling the smoke is a tricky part of getting permits for such a restaurant in a major city. The smoke pot is a more subtle, refined smoke but a definite flavor enhancement. Smoke becomes a spice to balance in harmony with other flavors. Once I showed my wife this choice, it was always barbecue this way or sleep on the couch! I believe that what I propose would work well in a restaurant.

Tonight was Paula Wolfert's Tangier-style Harira, with Rancho Gordo chickpeas, and brown lentils. The fava beans are from our garden.

Nothing comes close to a chamber vacuum sealer. Though were I doing it again I'd get an oil pump model, despite the higher routine maintenance and the increased weight. We keep ours in a middle shed, renovated to more "room" than "garage" status. The one issue is that these things don't work well cold; the chamber doesn't reach as full a vacuum. When I bought my first argon tank for preserving wine, the guy at AirGas politely called me an idiot seven times for not going to double the size tank. The costs were all the same. I kept explaining that it wasn't the money, I wanted to stay married. Then the tank ended up outside, near the chamber machine. When the tank ran out after a few years, I upgraded to the larger size.

I have a good electric power washer, that I bought for maintaining an IPE deck. It revolutionizes BBQ grate cleanup. There's a bit of setup and teardown, but I'm outside puttering, I don't even notice. What I don't like is getting my hands greasy while scrubbing haphazardly at nooks and crannies, to poor effect. The power washer gets it done, better than I ever could by hand. We gave away our rotisserie long ago because it wasn't worth the cleanup. I'd consider one now.

I bought 592 in September, 2009. Of course, they enter and leave the warehouse at random.

When I Photoshop, I try to Photoshop with a wink. I guess I've stared at too many cold war photos with a shadow going the wrong way. Laurie thinks my Photoshop was too subtle. I very nearly bought one of the first Dennis KKs. I didn't understand the very interesting lineage, and misread them as copies. One can actually listen to Manfred Mann's Mighty Quinn. Dylan's original is wretched. Nevertheless, I think of the original as single malt scotch, the copy as Dewars. Boy did I get this wrong, but I made this right later.