tekobo

Have meat hanger, will travel. My husband and I drove the 2.5 hours from our house to visit with @RokDok and his wife Helen this last weekend. I wanted to show him the hanger and I also wanted to try a hot and fast cook. I took one tandoori marinaded chicken and one suya marinaded chicken with me. The marinade from the Tandoor Cookbook by Ranjit Rai includes papaya and I remembered others' warnings that leaving meat too long with this tenderiser could make your meat soft and pappy. Sooo... on the first evening we tried the tandoori marinated chicken. @RokDok has exactly the same colour and tile(!!) 32 as I have at home so we didn't miss a beat. The book recommends 250C temperatures and a very quick cook after slashing and marinading the whole chicken. The recommendation was about 10 mins for the first cook, out to rest for 5 mins, baste with ghee and then cook for another 10 minutes. In practice the whole cook took about 45 minutes. The legs did get burned but the meat was generally juicy. We followed the chicken with duck legs gently cooked in fat in the KK with lovely roast potatoes. Ain't nothing wrong with double protein unless you object to being so full you can't fit in dessert! I wanted to improve on that chicken cook so, the next day for lunch, I positioned the suya marinaded chicken higher up on hook to get it further away from the fire. We also heat soaked the KK for longer so that the breasts would cook a bit faster. Main lesson learned? You need a shield to stop the lower extremities burning in a hot and fast cook for something that takes as long to cook as a chicken. I should have cooked the chicken away from the fire for the first 30 minutes and then moved it over the fire to crisp it up at the end. That said, this was a mighty yummy cook and between us we picked the carcass clean! Dinner was this yummy steak with more potatoes. We all had a lovely time and Paul has now ordered his very own duck/meat hanger. Hurrah! I suspect that skewers will be a really good use case for a hot and fast cook on the hanger so I will try that next. I hesitate to do this but hey... @RokDok got a local farmer to bring him a squirrel which he proceeded to skin, cut and cook on a skewer. I refused point blank to taste it but it did look good and he and my husband professed to enjoy it with their beer.

Hey there @Bruce Pearson! It's great to hear from you. Good to make decisions about how you want to live and great that your daughter can take on your beautiful 32 and cabinet. I hope you will get to visit in Hawaii. Hugs from across the water.

Yay! Nothing beats a good bangers and mash meal. Except, maybe, toad-in-the-hole!

Rotisserie chicken. Tasty.

Wow, that is beautiful @Pequod!

Super cool! I am guessing that all this expense means that you won't yet be allowed to add a pizza oven to your collection. Or are you pulling an out-of-sight-out-of-mind trick on your wife by moving your expensive kit to New Mexico?

I think I read @Syzygies say that he had changed his mind and didn't think we needed the heavy mass of the aluminium disc anymore. Hopefully he will chime in and explain. I want to know because it is his fault that I have a heavy aluminium disc cluttering up my bbq cupboard. 😜

Interesting... I turn up my nose at hondashi for Japanese cooking and make my own dashi from scratch. That said, compound butter using the powdered stuff does look like an interesting prospect.

My huacatay plant is still at teeny weeny seedling stage. As are my aji amarillo plants. Plenty of time for you to perfect the recipe @Troble!

Nice try, good looking colour @David Chang

Not pretty but super delicious. Roadkill chook alla @Aussie Ora with extra added suya spice.

You're bread shaming me now. So far, I have been to our local bakery and they won't give or sell me their starter. I have also bought the latest Chad Robertson book as recommended by @Syzygies. I have opened the page where it tells you how to start your starter. I will get to it...

You just know that those loaves will have tasted great! Entry level drug. You all have finally pushed me over the edge. I will start feeding my starter again.

Yeah, I lived in Sydney for a year in 1998 and visited a number of different locations in Australia about ten years later. Your food just kept getting better and better. Lots to be happy about. We fell in love with Movida Next Door in Melbourne just because we enjoyed losing an afternoon at the bar eating tapas and talking nonsense. We have never managed to quite recreate that joyful experience anywhere else.

Slap and fold is a satisfying technique when you get it right. Having your dough finally change from a wet claggy mess to a beautiful, living extension of your arm is a great thing to do. That said, it does take a lot of effort. How do I know that is a bad thing? A few years ago, one or two days after an op on my throat, I decided to have a vigorous slap and fold session. Let's just say it was not a good result for my surgery wound! It was then that @Pequod turned me on to the stretch and fold method and I have not turned back since. Kudos @Pequod, they look great.

Aha! Finally found the MSR poster. It was @Forrest. Linked here to keep all pot smokers in synch.

Great looking paella @remi! I love paella but don't think I dare try and make some for our Italian friends. They love food but the Venetians think that Tuscan food is foreign let alone trying to impose an import from Spain!

For some reason I thought you lived in California Paul. Obviously not with those temperatures!

I use 100% extraction einkorn for a simple loaf made with yeast. Delicious. P.S. Beautiful proofing cradle. Nicely done.

Hurrah! I've got my foccacia mojo back. I realised that while I use bread flour in the UK, the flour available in Italian supermarkets is "flour for bread". I am guessing the latter has less gluten and so when I went for a long 12 hour rise my dough just collapsed into a wet puddle. Until I find other, better flour I have restricted the initial proof to one hour and got good results on my 16 KK. Cooking tips - you need a hot dome and a pizza stone to get the desirable crunch on the base and light crisp on the top. I let the KK dome heat soak for an hour with nothing in the KK and then I added in the grate and stepping stone shield. A pizza stone would have been better and I will get one for next time. In the meantime, we all enjoyed this with our chicken dinner last night. IMG_4929.MOV

Nice toy Mac. A bit expensive though...

@tony b this stainless steel comes up clean very easily in the dishwasher and also with a short soak in soapy water. PBW is worth the soaking time and cost when it comes to getting grill grates nice and clean but I don't find that I need it for things like rotisserie forks.

In Italy at the moment. Baby artichoke risotto for lunch was delicious.

Hi Paul. No, I did not use a drip pan. The set up is as per the photos - I didn't move or remove anything for the chickens' photo shoot. On low and slow cooks I put the smoke pot directly over the fire. That acts as my shield and I rarely use a drip pan for such cooks. No flare ups at all. I like rotisserie chicken for the crisp skin and the fact that the meat is "rarer" than it is for the low and slow smoked chicken. That said, I think you could cook hot and fast with the meat hanger, e.g. for a tandoori cook, but I have not tried that yet. Chances are you will need a drip pan for that but it depends on whether or not the longitudinal splitter could be used to keep the fire away from the drips. It is relatively easy to move the hook on the hanger to turn the chicken if you want a bit of the kiss of the fire on both sides. And yes, set up and clean up with the meat hanger is easier. No motor to haul out, attach and plug in. That said, I have no problem with cleaning the spit rotisserie. I just put the prongs in the dishwasher and run a sponge down the spit itself.

I have actually tried to make sourdough crumpets using left over starter. The results were disastrous. I made sure there were no pix. Jealous to hear of @Pequod's instant success, if the truth be told. Liking your bread Dave. Although I might prefer the pen holder. I love the idea of individual slots for each pen. No fighting to separate them to determine which is working and which is not.