tekobo

That's neat!

Welcome to the new Obsession! I understand your madness @Syzygies. I made bigoli three days in a row on a short six day Italian trip, tweaking the recipe and listening to my bigolaro crack and pop as I pushed the dough through. It happened whether the dough was wet or stiff and my husband thought the noises were due to air finally making its way out as I pressed my balls of dough through the body of the bigolaro. So, do I want your modified handle? Yes please! And your dough recipe. Even Evan Funke, he of the very thinly rolled sfoglie and devotee of 00 flour, notes that bigoli is made with whole wheat : https://www.cleaneatingmag.com/clean-experts/how-to-make-noodles/ That is good because with my diet controlled diabetes I want to eat pasta but I don't need it spiking my sugars. That said, my only really successful version of bigoli this trip was with 00 flour. We return to Italy at the end of January. The experiments will continue and I hope to be able to share a successful recipe using buckwheat and wholegrain flour. In the meantime I look forward to reading through all the links supplied above. I do not plan to diversify my extruded pasta shapes in the short term. I have just two dies - one for bigoli and one for maccheroni. Alongside hand rolled pasta (I am learning at La Vecchia Scuola Bolognese) I should end up with all the pasta shapes I can handle. Handle. The power of suggestion. I will DM you to arrange getting hold of one of yours. Thanks.

I agree! The bit of advice I did not take at the beginning was to buy as large as I could afford/had space for. I therefore started with a 21 and 23 but a few years later I saw the light, sold them and went for a 32,23 and 16 combo. That 32 is a multi tool and if I only ever had one KK it would be the 32. I no longer hanker after the 42 (plus free goat). I can lift and wash the grates in my 32. I dread to think of the sheer effort required with a 42.

This experiment was a big FAIL initially. The doughs were way too wet to put through an extruder. I remembered @Syzygies once lamenting the fact that some bread recipe writers do not take account of the amount of liquid introduced by the levain. Well, without counting the liquid added by the levain, the hydration of this Chad Robertson recipe was at 45%! Waay too high. My neighbours kindly and friends kindly ate what I produced but it was substandard. I finally ended up with a very stiff dough, somewhere between 28% and 32% hydration depending on how you count the water added by wetting my hands while kneading. It was really hard work turning the lever to push the dough through the bigolaro but the result was worth it. Bigolaro action: Really simple but delicious pasta recipe called bigoli in salsa, made with just onions and chopped up anchovies. The dough was fermented for 18 hours. I think the pasta tasted better than any I had made before but I will do a side by side test without levain to see if that is just my imagination. And the KK action came in the form of roasted short ribs (should have been low and slow but I fell asleep and they cooked hot and fast instead!)

When I was trying to decide what size KK to buy, all those years ago, @ckreef's advice was to buy two. He was adamant you needed more than one to make sure you got all the components of your dinner ready at the same time. Well, I took his advice and here is Christmas dinner, cooked on my 23 (high heat throughout) and 32 (very low and slow for most of the time and hot at the end to cook up the pigs in blankets). Happy Holidays everyone! I never normally have turkey but here is a boned turkey leg which I seasoned and then my husband added lardo and rolled it up for roasting. Rolled turkey leg and standing rib roast in the 32 after first having been browned in the 23. Potatoes were roasted in the 23. And the pigs in blankets (sausages wrapped in bacon) were cooked on the 32 when the other meat was taken off to rest. I finished off the skin on the beef roast with the MAPP torch before resting. The cook was edge to edge perfect, with the very low and slow time it had in the 32. It was an outstanding Christmas meal, with just the Brussel sprouts and sauce cooked indoors. Deeeelicious!

Back in Italy to enjoy the lead up to Christmas. Cooked ribs on the 16 last night. Came out great. No pix. Used the heat shield/paving stone for the first time. It was a good call, the short distance between the fire box and the grate means I have found it difficult to genuinely cook low and slow without something to shield the bottom of the food from the fire. I am near Venice and in the home of bigoli pasta. Today I am trying three versions using a Chad Robertson recipe that uses up spent leaven. Here we are at the first stage: I am experimenting. Bigoli are made with buckwheat flour as the base. I made three variations. The first with durum wheat, the second with whole wheat flour ground from UK hard wheat grains and the third with Italian 00 flour. I followed the quantities for the recipe without thinking for the first one with durum wheat. It was too wet and I made the necessary adjustments for the second two. Will see how each extrudes, using the bigolaro, later today. KK action? Boiled meats are a speciality here and, as well as capons, they include beef short ribs. I have set the KK going and will do a nice slow cook in place of boiling and will see what the Italians think of it. Warming up now:

I have some potential FAQs and forum folk could help with answers: 1. I'm sold, I love your product but I don't know how to convince my spouse/inheriting child/my bank manager that this is a good idea. What is a killer strategy that works every time? 2. What do new owners say surprises them the most when they first start to use their KK? 3. What do KK owners most like about the KK?

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.