Syzygies

Re: I'm interviewed about KK on Kingsford's Grilling.com A great must-read, with a serious grin factor. Loved the "morally ambiguous" previous boss, WAF and choo-choo train references. Like Robin Williams, your words skip the editing room.

Re: Bison Brisket and Pastrami Bison could be the perfect application of sous vide? "Medium rare" beef short ribs, flash-cooked as steak after the connective tissue breaks down, is a sous vide standard.

Re: Hawaiian Luau/Kalua pork I've done a bit with banana leaves, for Thai cooking. Where do you even find Ti leaves? Frozen banana leaves are a staple in many ethnic groceries. I'd reason by analogy and first principles. Meat only absorbs smoke up to some threshold temperature (130 F ?), at least for forming smoke rings and such. Many people foil parts of the cook after that. Ti leaves are your foil. Just a guess, let us know how your experiments turn out.

Vita-Prep For me, every alternative to the Vita-Prep has either broken or fallen by the wayside. It makes short work of pepper and pan-roasted chiles for large quantities of rub. Many devices can handle black peppercorns, but pan roasted chiles are more of a challenge, and they make the rub. A 64 oz bowl and 3 amp motor is actually fine, the right size even for small jobs. The home market gets this wrong, then complains when a blender contents splatters the cupboards. Two teenage girls making a smoothie is a reasonable home application, and once our teenager realized the Vita-Prep was an option, the alternative devices never got touched again. I've taken various Thai cooking classes where one spends an hour pounding curry paste ingredients together in a mortar and pestle. ("Authentic", but in Thailand one would instead stop by the outdoor market and buy an incredible paste.) Then one fries the paste in coconut milk cream, and continues... I get a reasonable facsimile in the Vita-Prep by blending the paste ingredients with same said coconut milk cream, saving me that hour. The only alternative I've seen that can come close to handling such a load is the Indian Sumeet Mixie, with spotty U.S. availability. Indian households swear by the Sumeet. It made me feel like I was back in India, and more often I found myself swearing at the Sumeet. I managed to burn mine out. We just used our Vita-Prep last night to obliterate baby "pesto" basil leaves with the wet ingredients to make fresh green pasta. That, other devices could handle easily, but my point is one doesn't bother or remember one has other devices, with a Vita-Prep. Sort of like our KK taking over all backyard cooking functions.

Re: 8 Pork Butts/shoulders on the KK Just did a shoulder. You'd think it cooks slower than two butts but it doesn't. I'd reason from this that the butts can smoosh against each other. In which two layers, main and upper deck, any way you can.

Re: What is your KK's name? Each GPS gets named Audrey, from "Little Shop of Horrors". Each laser printer gets named Lalla, as in Lalla Ward from the early cast of Doctor Who. But somehow we haven't named Kay.

Re: Everyday Misc Cooking Photos w/ details After a second fish tagine that was overcooked and too smoky, this was a tagine that we really liked: Lamb shoulder with carrots, zucchini, chickpeas. Cooked on the lower grate in a covered 10" cazuela, using a fire I'd then use later for a 19 lb pork shoulder. A Kitty Morse Cooking at the Kasbah (half) recipe, swapping chickpeas for the potatoes. Using the lower KK grate is a nice approximation of a tagine over a Moroccan charcoal brazier. The heat comes mostly from below, but the enclosed KK can contain the fire so it doesn't need continual feeding. We did rip through liquid faster than the recipe said, eventually just plopping the rest of a 3 cup packet of frozen stock onto the tagine to melt.

Re: Halibut Anyone? I tried a Moroccan tagine with Halibut recently. Very tricky, and I wasn't pleased. The out-on-a-limb risk of trying new recipes or methods is that by trusting the recipe or method, one is setting aside well-founded concerns over how the food will come out. With experience, one is a better cook improvisationally, because then one takes full responsibility for how the food comes out. The trick with learning new ideas is to manage at the same time never to yield this authority. Halibut can be absolutely wonderful, but let's be honest: What are we up against? Halibut has a bland, almost hollow taste that cries out for fat, salt and texture, and has to be cooked to spot-on doneness to succeed. My Moroccan tagine overcooked, and at the same time the smoke very unpleasantly amplified the "hollowness" I refer to. Imagine instead lots of garlic, butter, nail the salt, burn marks but perfect texture in the middle, and I'm asking you what tequila you want me to bring over. For contrast, take a salmon and brine it four hours in 1/2 cup salt, 1/3 cup sugar per gallon water, then lay on a bed of supermarket basil over a low fire with subtle apple smoke, and the fish becomes melt-in-your-mouth wonderful as it reaches your preferred texture. The fattier the salmon, the better. But this isn't halibut, and nothing like this will work for halibut. [Edit] Apparently I liked our first try, but the second try drew in too much smoke, cooking uncovered.

Re: KK in nytimes Back with my previous cooker (pictured above, which fell apart, leading me to upgrade to a Komodo Kamado), I only thought a Weber was good for improving wireless thermometer reception. But I've moderated my views... Yeah, I've seen (more on other ceramic forums) people dissing Webers, and it strikes me as as rather disingenuous. Or rather, insulting the intelligence of anyone who's a good cook with fire, and knows a Weber in the right hands is an amazing instrument. Tell them it's not, their BS meter goes off five alarms, and we miss out on another enthusiast joining our ranks. Tell them it's like you've established an interest in photography, now spend up for a good camera, and the argument makes more sense. Our little Weber sits near our KK, and we just used it the other day. A chuck steak, sousvide one hour at 132 F, and I just needed a minute of incineration on each side to give it a taste of the fire before serving. I sure don't miss having to wake up every two hours, and coming back to bed smelling of smoke. For high temps such as pizza, there's no comparison. While Laurie was enthusiastic, my ploy to lift the "wife acceptance factor" of this purchase was to make noises about building a pizza oven in our backyard. Ever notice how much those cost, and how much space they take up?!

Re: Delivery tomorrow Yip Yeah!

Re: 4th of July 2011 n66917 Of course, following this logic, I did try using a generic Surly Table terra cotta tagine over our small Weber. Struggling in conceptual quicksand, here. In Morocco they keep feeding the brazier fire, mini version of "two wood fires" for classic American BBQ. The Weber fire faded out, of course. Better just to choose a clay pot adapted to an oven, and use the rock-steady KK as one's outdoor oven.

Re: 4th of July 2011 n66914 n66915 n66916 So pot beans (precooked 18 hours at 195 F) going in on top to "see clay and fire". Meanwhile, we're plotting what to do with our first tomato... The clay pot is a 26 cm or 10.2 inch diameter cazuela with lid from Spanish Table. (Soak 12 hours before first use.) We bought it for Moroccan tagine stews, but it fits a pound of pot beans perfectly. It finally sunk in that traditional cone-top tagines are designed to go over a fire, not in an oven, so the cone stays cool and condenses steam back onto the stew. Sticking a cone-top tagine in an oven is rather affected. Same as putting a giraffe's food on the ground: Unclear on the concept. In Morocco they do put tagines in the oven (work with what you have) but they leave the top off.

Re: 4th of July 2011 n66913 Our brisket for a party on the third... Host's wife made special request not too fatty (I chose brisket over ribs or butt) and not too smoky (I figured she meant Apple not Hickory but couldn't remember the names ) Host assured me he and guests indeed nevertheless wanted BBQ.

From the New York Times: For These Chefs, Even Fire Can Be Improved Interesting. I liked the idea of "fire spice": Same idea as throwing Allspice onto embers for Jamaican cooking, if one doesn't have the tree. The tree grows like a weed in the right climate, but my attempt died the first winter of frostbite.

Re: Tri-Tip The SousVide Supreme Demi is $299. Vacuum pack any piece of meat and simmer for an hour at 134 F (medium rare) or any internal temperature you choose, to the degree. Then get the KK raging to finish before serving. This is how restaurants have been doing it for years. Same idea as (the inspiration for?) the reverse sear, with pinpoint control and no issues swinging the fire low to raging.

Re: Ok, some of you new kiwi members need to explain this! Somehow I'm making a connection with the cherry stem in Twin Peaks.

Re: Everyday Misc Cooking Photos w/ details It's from Paula Wolfert's Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking. One pounds a charmoula of 2 tsp toasted cumin seeds, garlic, salt, paprika, parsley, cilantro, pulp of a preserved lemon, and olive oil. Rub half on a pound of fish (we used halibut) and set aside to marinade. Add a bit of water to the rest, layer in baking vessel with tomatoes, sliced bell peppers (we substituted), carrots, celery (we always substitute fennel), the fish and more of everything. Top with preserved lemon peel and bay leaves. Bake at 300 F till done. She gives proportions and I do slavishly follow recipes the first time (sometimes). Responsibility is on you however both to cook the fish properly, and get the proportions as tasty as possible. It was great, but I'd wing it next time from memory of the above description, not her exact proportions, paying more attention to how I think it'll taste. Also, I like my fish just done, so it would be tempting to precook the veggies a bit, then go much slower in the KK, uncovering the cooking vessel to cautiously take on a bit of the smoke. Water is a smoke magnet, so be very cautious here. The tagine knows it was cooked over charcoal (and so do you!) even with the lid on. [Edit] Tried this again, uncovered, and the fish drew in too much smoke, in a very unflattering way. Proceed with care!

Re: Everyday Misc Cooking Photos w/ details n66906 Fish tagine in a soapstone pot in the KK. Why run an oven indoors, in this heat?

Re: Bronze Behemoth Game On! 2 Yep, the Windows theme song: "But I've found a driver and that's a start!"

Sous vide ribeye steaks So tonight, we cooked some local grass-fed ribeye steaks, sous vide in vacuum bags at 134 F for an hour then seared on the lower KK grate. A classic sous vide technique, known in the local BBQ dialect as the reverse sear. My first try at this with real sous vide equipment. The texture was amazingly like restaurant prime rib, my usual defensive dining choice at any credible place that means well. Next time we may go a few degrees lower (134 F is medium rare and we prefer a bit more rare) and I may encourage more of a raging inferno for the fire. The sous vide technique, nevertheless, makes for an extraordinarily predictable, reproducible result. I can see why restaurants like it.

Re: New to ceramic cooking It's a small world, and I don't know of a cookbook that does this justice. We've all learned by experiment and from each other. If one doesn't naturally cook with fire, it's possible a gift Komodo might not take. If one has grabbed every opportunity to milk the best out of whatever fire-cooking apparatus was available, I haven't heard of a single case of buyer's remorse. A good ceramic cooker (KK makes the best) is a pizza oven, tandoor, smoker, Weber, pie and bread oven, you name it, all at once. I'm a mathematician, we believe in going to original sources. The tandoor predates the KK by oh, thousands of years. One of my favorite cookbooks is Tandoor: The Great Indian Barbecue by Ranjit Rai, ISBN13: 9781585671441, ISBN10: 1585671444. Written for Indian audience, and alas out of print.

Re: Apricot Pork Loin Pinwheel Roast We're going to have to make this. Too good. A bit of a stretch, but this reminds me vaguely of "cima" a rolled veal breast popular in Genova, Italy. Nice, France and Genova, Italy used to be the same region before the countries of France and Italy emerged, and I learned a very similar dish in French cooking lessons. But apricots? Yum. Moroccan rocks, they do fruit and meat all the time.

Re: fathers day cook !!!!

Re: Trying High Heat Brisket For First Time (pics) And the verdict? (Another traditionalist, but very curious...)

Re: Fathers day piglet...... That's truly beautiful. I'm so jealous, Laurie won't even let me cook rabbit.