Syzygies

Whoops. Egg on my face. What doesn't Dennis obsess about? At least I feel better that with all this theory I was having a hard time telling the stones apart in actual use! I'll start using the Dennis stone, I also agree that heating it up in a KK isn't a problem.

I have both the Fibra-ment stone in question, and the stone from Dennis. They're both great stones; in casual use I can't really tell that much of a difference. In practice I fell back to using the Fibra-ment stone, as it controls variables adjusting to the KK; I know it well. Density is not the same as thermal transfer rate. One can have a dense stone that's sluggish at retaining and releasing heat, or a dense stone that conducts heat too quickly. One example of such a material is soapstone, which one could naively crave as a pizza stone material, but in fact is never used to line pizza and bread ovens, despite its prevalent use to make massive wood-burning stoves for rural New England heating (e.g. a Vermont ski cabin). Soapstone has way too high a thermal transfer rate. The Fibra-ment people claim to understand and optimize thermal transfer rates. Pretty much everyone else pours a stone in the right shape, tries it, and sells it if they like it. Moreover, the Fibrament people refused to sell me a thicker stone, claiming it would be impractical for home use. It's one thing to open the pizza shop in the morning, with the oven running all day, and another thing to burn fuel from a cold start in order to make a couple of pizzas. Fibrament sells thicker material to line commercial pizza ovens, but strongly discourages home use of these thicknesses. That said, I have some cognitive dissonance applying all this theory to practice in a KK, or my earlier K7. I've been placing my stone on the upper rack, direct fire, no liner, with a long preheat till the fire is stable at 600 F or so. Cooking pizza directly on the stone, my crust burns before my topping cooks, and this is with a cracker-like crust and rather spare toppings. I'm striving for the best thin pizza I've had in Italy (Genova, or islands off Sicily) not the best glop pizza I've had in Chicago. My adaptation is to use parchment paper for the first three minutes, then a pizza screen (any restaurant supply house carries many sizes) for the remaining time. This way the crust breathes, and doesn't burn. One could instead use an indirect fire, e.g. with a heat deflector stone on the main grill, pizza stone on the upper grill. We settled on the parchment/screen approach because it works for us. I like the idea of a stone that's so hot, I need a screen between it and the pizza. The effect is as I imagine. Direct heat may heat the pizza stone primarily from below, with the stone itself functioning as a heat deflector for the upper dome. This is a very different environment from placing a stone in an oven. With a thicker stone such as Dennis makes, the problem may be mitigated precisely because the Fibrament people may be right: The thicker stone fails to heat through. But I'm guessing here. So if you buy a Fibra-ment, you'll be happy. If you have the stone Dennis makes, you'll be happy. Either way this requires experimentation to dial in the pizza you crave. My read is that the Fibra-ment people strive for the same perfection in their stones that Dennis achieves in his cookers, but they haven't tuned their stone to the environment in a ceramic cooker. On the other hand, Dennis pours his stone as a service to his customers, and his focus isn't on the pizza stone to the degree that the Fibrament people are obsessing over this. So in the end, it's up to you to make any stone work.

Pizza on Saturday, burgers on Sunday. Very busy weekend traveling to a plant sale in Napa, then preparing and planting our garden. The pizza was a perfect storm of everything that could go wrong when one is distracted (missing crust ingredients, new and very wrong cheese, ...) but I swear the KK could make Charlie Chaplin's shoes taste good. Burgers were better.

Here's a post of mine on my favorite tandoor recipe for the KK: Tandoori Chicken. Read that thread. More generally, I recommend the book Tandoor: The Great Indian Barbecue by Ranjit Rai. One can simplify these recipes considerably, e.g. buying a tandoori spice mix at an Indian store, but it's still better to do the dumbing down yourself, rather than having someone making simplifying choices for you. This guy is the real deal. The book is Indian, reprinted for but not aimed at our market. There's a lot of synergy to how a tandoor works, and also to how a kamado works. One doesn't want to necessarily mix and match, any more than one would want to splice the genes of a zebra and an elephant. Rather, play around and get the results to taste good. The KK is certainly capable of the intense heat one wants. I've been using the upper rack, turning every 5 minutes at 600 F while basting with ghee. I want to try the rotisserie instead, at a lower temperature.

Re: Parchment paper No, instead add the yeast after the sponge cools down to an appropriate temperature. Might not get the flying start it gets by proofing the yeast, but it works.

I don't think you'll be happy cooking it to that stage. If it were me, I'd cut it into thick (double chop) medallions, brine them in a light brine (< 1/2 cup salt per gallon, but at least 1/3 cup, and less sugar), and smoke/cook them to 140-145 F internal (to taste) When I buy this cut, I get it from a butcher bone-in, and cut off a very meaty rack of country ribs, to cook 6 hours like spareribs. That portion around the bone benefits from the long slow cook. More frequently I do a "house-cured ham" recipe, making up a seasoned brine and computing the salt.

Re: Parchment paper

Yes that's sad; condolences to his family. I remember his posts well from back in the day. Profile of Harry Demidavicius

So we made an experiment with lamb shoulder yesterday. Marinate in a garlic, olive oil paste, with rosemary and lemon peel from the garden. Cook 6 hours over apple smoke at 230 F or so. By the time it should have come off, we were many bottles of wine into a neighbor's party, which turned into dinner, so we brought it over as another meat course. Well received, but I had been hoping for a cross between pulled pork and braised lamb shanks. I never foil, but I'm thinking foil the last several hours, next time. Perhaps even make a wine reduction to add at that point. Not much left, though there were five dogs in attendance and I love dogs. Made a quick hash for lunch with red onions, yellow potatoes, parsley, half-dehydrated garden tomatoes from our chest freezer, Aleppo pepper, salt, pepper and an ample splash of white wine. Better than I remember from last night, the wine helped to moisten the meat. Any advice? Is it possible to make slow-cooked lamb shoulder of the gods in a KK, or do I have the wrong animal? Roast lamb shoulder is a specialty of a region of Spain, served in cazuelas, but roasted at a higher temperature: Ribera del Duero is famous for its slow cooked roast lamb; Asador in Aranda

That's way cool. I have to say, a long narrow bed beats a square bed, I didn't know this putting in ours.

On a lark we used boiling water to make a sponge for pizza dough last night, waiting till the temperature dropped to add the yeast. Using (home ground) whole wheat flour, the sponge instantly turned to cream of wheat breakfast cereal, giving me pause. (As in, where are the take-out menus?) But the final dough kneaded much more smoothly, and the crust was the closest we've come to Italian cracker thin crust greatness. Just a thought. I've never heard of this for bread dough (I like to experiment), but the first time I saw anyone make pasta dough, it was for pot stickers, and boiling water is apparently part of the standard technique.

I've taken four weeklong intensive classes with Kasma loha-Unchit in Oakland, CA (people travel to take these classes) and I've taken a month-long food tour of Thailand with her. Her web site, and cooking, is the authentic real deal. Plenty of online recipes, ingredient recs (note my photo credits in many places): http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/

Yes, the Lazzari factory is nearby: Lazzari Fuel Company http://www.lazzari.com/ Brisbane, South San Francisco 11 Industrial Way Brisbane, CA (415) 467 2970 I generally load up my VW GTI with 8 40# bags of oak lump, and perhaps a bag of hickory or apple chips or chunks. The price is right. If you're going to go with one smoking wood, choose apple. Not too aggressive, everyone loves it.

I'm a fellow K expat, also in the Bay area (Concord). Looks like your K held up better than mine. [said in understated tone to background laughter in various forums]

Bark tastes odd, better to get the bark off. And the wood into chunks of the size you want. Other than that, just store in a dry place and let nature take its course. Should be good after a year, which passes faster than any of us would like.

Rotisserie Tweak So we ordered the six inch rotisserie from Viking, and the OneGrill motor. When I went to install it, there was a bit of slippage on the rotation, fixed by a piece of 5/16" x 0.028 stainless steel tubing from the local hardware store: The first picture shows what happens when I push the other end of the rotisserie all the way in, to prevent slippage. I have to hold the rotisserie by hand this way, not so practical with a live fire. The second picture is my fix, using a piece of 5/16" x 0.028 stainless steel tube. In other words, with this tube I can push the other end of the rotisserie all the way in, insuring no slippage. Just as any nearby discussion needs to mention flashback for newbies, let's throw in here that aluminum may or may not cause dementia (I don't recall) but galvanized metal is certainly poisonous, and has no place in a cooker. I made a point of finding steel tube for this reason. I tried three tubes. The first was longer than the "OEM" part, and ended up too long. So I cut the second to match the "OEM" part. For the third I tried leaving room for the extra spring Dennis threw in, but the second was better. Any ideas why my tolerances were off? I'm thinking Viking shaved a bit of metal off their bottom line? I measure 17 7/16" rim to rim for the rotisserie, what do other people get? Thanks. (Can't have slippage. Ever seen Jiarby cook a chicken, with half lemons under the skin for breasts? Without an even tan that would be rather obscene.)

Acetone Oh this brings back memories. When I was a little kid I made a "kill jar" for collecting bugs, with an acetone-soaked cloth in an old jar. I got four of the weirdest looking beetles, knocked them out using the jar, brought them back to my room and laid them out on card stock. I was about to label them when I was called to dinner. Came back and no bugs in sight. They never did turn up... My Mom got quite used to this. I later collected praying mantis pods to sell door-to-door for people's gardens. People would close the door "what? are you out of your mind?" then think about it and send their daughters chasing after me. (Oh boy I was too young to appreciate this!) Then I got bored and my entire inventory hatched in my Mom's closet. She had a word with me.

Right hand rule Rotate the fingers of your right hand in the direction you're planning to rotate the bolt, and your thumb will point in the direction the bolt moves. For more lift, you want the bolt to move in, tightening the spring. Believe it or not, I teach this same rule for multivariable calculus. There, the cross product of two vectors (e.g. flush with a surface) points in the direction of one's right hand thumb (e.g. a "normal" vector to the surface). It's possible to make a screw thread that goes the other way, but this is rare. For bike pedals, one of the two feet is threaded the other way, so the pedal tightens rather than loosens in use. Dennis doesn't have this concern, so he certainly chose a standard "right hand thread" for every thread on the Komodo.

Baby goat is wonderful. I haven't tried it on the KK, but I make it following "Baby Lamb Hunter's Style" from Ada Boni, still my favorite no-frills Italian cookbook. (Many of us of a certain age learned Italian cooking from this book when it first showed up on remainder stacks in the 80's.) (This also does wonders for chicken. It would probably make Charlie Chaplin's shoes taste good.)

You'll never look back! I was at post 262 when we made our move. You're obviously more decisive that me!

Brined salmon on bed of basil Our favorite way to cook salmon is to brine it lightly for four or so hours (1/2 cup salt, 1/4 cup sugar per gallon water) then lay it on a bed of supermarket basil (the weed, not anything you'd make pesto from, but readily available and perfect for this application) then smoke over apple chunks gently at 225 F or so till melt-in-your-mouth done. A Spanish cazuela is a perfect vessel for this dish, but anything will do; the salmon never touches the pan.

I buy 40# bags of wood chunks from the Lazzari factory store in San Francisco. If I had to pick two woods, they'd be Apple and Hickory. We have perhaps seven kinds of smoking wood in the garage, and seven kinds of salt around the house, but truth be told, we'd be entirely content with bulk sea salt, and Apple wood.

I've done lots of experiments along these lines. I recall a rather strident debate on exactly this question on an earlier ceramic forum; let's first celebrate the more conversational tone here. The two salient points I believe are: 1. People get better results on full cookers. 2. It doesn't take much to tweak the humidity of a nearly empty cooker to resemble a full cooker. That said, my new KK is much tighter than my old K7, which in turn was tighter than any piece of metal I'd tried. I sometimes put a cup or so of water in with a cook, in some vessel such as a cup-shaped cousin to a cazuela. It's very easy to go overboard; then one is steam-smoking. Think of how good a pot of beans can be, then how much better baked beans can be than that. Same with e.g. the bark on a butt. Too much steam and the baked beans come out tasting like a pot of beans.