tekobo

Chicken cooked in double bottomed pan went very well last night. The bread heels soaked up the juices and were lovely. Followed by tarte tatin. Enjoyed the meal with @RokDok and his wife who came to ours for an overnight trip to pick up the sausages we made for them.

Hello Max! He does look like a lovely boy. Such kind eyes. What is his history @C6Bill? I do hope you have a long and happy time together.

The journey of discovery continues. The thinner Asahi board arrived and my husband set about cutting it down into more handy sizes yesterday. I think it is 15mm thick and it was pretty floppy as a large board. Cut down, it makes for good sturdy small boards for quick jobs. Pic of workshop set up below. He has since sanded down and bevelled the edges and we have already started using them for small jobs in the kitchen.

We spent the weekend at @RokDok's cutting up a rare breed pig. We got half and I spent an hour this morning cutting some up for mincing to make pies. Just look at that marbling! And just look at that space. It was a joy, cutting this up on my new Asahi board. I think this light coloured one will become my raw meat board. I'll be able to see any marks and stains and can keep it extra clean by sanding it down once in a while. Introducing these boards simply replaces the plastic and Epicurean boards that we used to use for food prep. I still have a wooden board for chopping and a range of wooden boards for serving. I hear you, @David Chang, regarding micro plastics but I don't plan to use a serrated knife on this and will be intentional about using a different board if I need to do any heavy chopping. It actually makes me wonder about how much chopping one actually needs to do when you are not butchering an animal and needing to chop through bone. I do the rocking action for cutting things small and chopping, on any surface, must incorporate little bits of the material that you are chopping on. I am enjoying this journey so far. The black boards are due to arrive from Japan next week. All of the boards that I bought are 20mm thick. My husband usually does the procuring of stuff around here and I think he felt a bit left out. He has bought a thinner Asahi board to cut up to make small boards for quick jobs. Lots to look forward to in the lead up to Christmas.

Hey @C6Bill. It's tough when we lose our best friends. I hope you had lots of good cuddles.

Let the fun begin!

Thanks @5698k. I remembered your obsession with knives and was hoping to get a response from you. I am particularly taken with you saying that you are able to hold an edge on your knives for up to a year as a result of using better boards. Thanks for this input re the Hasegawa board @Syzygies. It looks like it is lighter than the others as well. Before I started this post about boards I searched the site to see what else had been said on the topic and found a post from you that I would summarise as "go big or go home" i.e. get the biggest cutting surface that you can to help you work efficiently. As for you @C6Bill? Your input helped me remember that there are perfectly acceptable, cheaper ways to tackle this problem. That said, I was already half way down the rabbit hole when I posted and your message didn't succeed in hauling me out. I have ended up ordering one plain Asahi board at 600cm x 33cm x 2cm, two black Asahi boards at 600cm x 30cm x 2cm and one composite Hasegawa board at 600cm x 30cm x 2cm. We will try them out and see what we think. I see us reserving the Hasegawa board for sushi and fish filleting. I particularly liked the advertised heat resistance of the Asahi boards. The Apex boards I was previously looking at should only be washed at relatively low temperatures and have to be stored flat to avoid warping - not a great idea when enthusiastic friends or house guests might get hold of them and "help" without realising the damage they might do. There is a chance that we might cut at least one of the black Asahi boards down to get more manageable sizes for quick use. That might be unnecessary and we might end up buying a few small, cheap boards for things like cutting lemons for drinks or other quick tasks. Plan is to ditch our very old and scratched Epicurean boards and to select which of our wooden boards to keep. The only remaining wrinkle is making sure we have enough boards with a channel that allow juice from resting meat to gather. That'll be likely in the wooden board category. Thanks for all your help. I will report back when we have had a chance to try them all out. P.S. I just looked at my avatar and realised it is of Sinbad, our beloved cat, who died just a couple of weeks ago. He had the best death of any of our cats to date. Having just celebrated his 14th birthday he was still running around like a kitten until one day, he just went out to do his usual patrol of the garden and my husband later found him dead on the ground. The vet thinks he had some kind of a heart attack. Rest in peace S. He will stay here as my avatar.

Hi there. I am about to dive down a new rabbit hole and I thought I would drop by and see if you could help me dig deeper. A number of top UK chefs recommend the Apex cutting boards. They are eye wateringly expensive if you search generally on the web but I managed to track down the UK source and managed to get it down to a manageable £165: https://rowandsons.co.uk/collections/chefs-at-home/products/apex-cutting-board I then did some more searching to confirm or change my choice and found this YouTube video in which asahi and hasegawa cutting boards are recommended. They are more reasonably priced and the Black Friday sales would be a good option for renewing our very old stack of cutting boards. We would keep the good wooden ones for serving and chopping but a fresh set for fish, meat and veg prep would be great. Grateful for your views and recommendations before I pull the trigger.

Simple ribs and wings cook on my "portable" KK Passed the bend test and then sauced. Wings. Naked.

Hey there @Troble. Did you ever nail an updated Peruvian crack recipe? I have four giant Huacatay mint plants and am looking to cook your pollo alla brasa recipe this coming weekend. I found this description of a sauce from the company that sold me the seeds. Does it approximate to what you have found too? To make authentic Magical Peruvian Green Sauce or "Ají de Huacatay": You need: 1 rocoto pepper , 1 hot yellow Aji pepper - both with the seeds removed!, 1 cup of huacatay leaves, a small sprig of mint leaves, Lime juice, lots of garlic, olive oil, salt. Put everything except the oil in a blender. Blend the peppers garlic and leaves together, adding oil until you get a smooth puree, kind of like making mayonnaise. Add salt to taste.

Mac's photos reminded me of my chicken cook on my 16 last time I was in Italy. It was swelteringly hot and I imagine the KK could cook the chicken low and slow without even being lit! My evening guests were sensible people and I didn't imagine them wanting to stand outside with me while I tended to my cook so I decided to cheat. I got the smoke into my chicken legs by cooking them in the KK in the afternoon. They did come out nice and crispy. I also roasted some peppers and grilled some skewers. A blessing because there was no way I was going to light an oven in my non air conditioned kitchen! The cheat? When my guests arrived I heated, and further crisped up, my chicken legs in the air fryer. Not as juicy as when they first came out of the KK but they did retain a lovely smoke flavour.

As far as I know @alimac23 has a 32.

Great looking cooks all. Late to the party but I have to say that that porchetta looks mighty good @remi! As for you @C6Bill - what lady friend wouldn't be happy with a partner who cooks her a whole turkey AND bakes the bread for her turkey sandwich?!

Hey there, it is soooo delicious. I bought some at our local salumeria in Padova and really wanted to work out how to make it. Turns out it was relatively easy, just needed a sous vide machine, a meat press, some patience and a meat slicer. I will post full details in the sous vide recipe section when I next make it from scratch. Yeah, it was a full on dessert night. The non-lactose intolerant folk had deliciously wobbly, slippery elderflower panna cotta, which was the original choice to go with the roasted strawberries.

Last night I got out two frozen chooks that my Italian butcher had spatchcocked and deboned for me. Per another post on this forum, I tried dusting one of the chickens with baking powder to see if the skin came out crispy. Heat soaked the 32 to 250C and cooked the chickens on the top grate. IMG_0175.MOV That fat came out of the chickens. Soooo delicious. The chicken on the right was the one with the dusting of baking powder. It came out a little browner but no real discernable difference in skin crispiness. I also cooked dessert on the KKs. Roasted strawberries with sugar and black pepper followed by a few drops of rose water at the end. Then I cooked some chocolate fondant Everyone thoroughly enjoyed their KK cooked dinner! P.S. The starter was not KK cooked but it is worth a mention. Sous vide cooked octopus legs, compressed in a meat press for making ham, cooled and then sliced to make octopus carpaccio. Game changingly delicious with a drizzle of good olive oil.

My start to our long weekend here in the UK was a semi-fail. I struggle to get reliable crackling on pork in the KK, just because the KK keeps everything so moist. So...I decided to light the KK and get it to settle around 180C and, in the meantime, I blasted my leg of pork in my home oven at 220C for 30 minutes. It came out with a good crust and here it is, ready to go into the KK. At the end of the cook there was some crackling on the pork but a fair bit had softened up again. The meat was of course as moist and delicious as ever and I had the benefit of the smoke that I had added in the KK but not the reliable crunchy crackling that I get in the home oven. Any tips or tricks that others would recommend? Here is the pork at the end of the cook. The potatoes had only just gone in, which is why they are looking so anaemic. I wonder if I should have turned up the temp on the KK for the last half hour of the pork cook?

The biggest KK that I own is a 32 so I don't have the flexibility to cook in the middle as you describe. I think you'll find it fun to experiment and may choose to split differently for different cooks. Hopefully someone who actually has a 38 or 42 will chime in with more useful input!

My advice? Start with the biggest one that you are likely to genuinely need. You will regret it if not. You can supplement with a 23 if the second is simply to allow you to do things at a different temp as opposed to giving you the equivalent space again.

Woo hoo! Our Mexican neighbour helped with making the tortillas. I think her expectations were low and this Al Pastor recipe far, far exceeded her and her husband's expectations. Hurrah for @Troble. I made fish tacos to start, followed by Al Pastor and then finished with pineapple and ginger sorbet. I was touched by the fact that she has not been able to get to Mexico for a while (looking after sick old dog) and so was super happy to have the taste of Mexico brought to her. And her husband loved rolling the meat in the fat that accumulated in the bottom of the pan.

Well, please wish me luck. Tomorrow is the day. I am at our place in Italy and I have promised to serve our Mexican neighbour and her Italian husband home made tacos. That involved making the fresh masa at home in England earlier in the week, vacuum packing it and transporting it in the car. I bought some pork shoulder from the market this morning and marinaded it in the bright red marinade for al pastor. I also bought a pineapple and have scoped out some fish to buy tomorrow so we can have some fish tacos for starters. A brave (or foolish) move, trying to cook someone else's native food and telling them that you do it well! I will report back after the event. In the meantime here is a couple of photos of the work in progress.

I use my spit and fork more often and I bought an extra set of double ended forks so that I could spin 3 chickens at a time in my 32. The cradle is more unwieldy but does help with larger joints and I would probably recommend it over a spit and fork for something as large as a turkey. That said, I have never spun a turkey and don't even like the stuff so I am not a good judge! I am away from home without access to my 32 so sadly cannot answer your question about dimensions.

Yes, as @jonj said, the South African is @Braai-Q. I am pretty certain he shared his boerewors sausage recipe with me but I just can't lay my hands on it at this moment. Hopefully all this tagging will wake him up and he will find his way over to help you! Great looking cooks all. Can't wait for our summer to kick in.

Not one to be outdone, I started to look up avocado plants that might survive the UK climate. Pulled myself out of that rabbit hole when I remembered that I probably eat no more than 2 avocados a year and that increasing my intake by the magic of shopping might be a better option.

🤤

Wow, that's great @Troble. I remember when you were first planting your garden. Fresh home grown avocado. I think I need to move to warmer climes!