tekobo

I can only dream of making loaves that look as good as @Pequod's and @mackenzie's. Beautiful crumb, blistering and all round goodness. Bravo!

Hey @Tyrus, your new piece of kit is looking way too clean. It'll be good to see it in action!

That's more like my minimum order when I buy a half or whole animal. These hoarders are amateurs, that is all I can say! And NO, I do not want a power shortage round here! Will have to rely on The Husband's hoard of about X hundred bottles of wine to keep us going. Uh. Maybe not so bad after all.

That looks like a lovely sauce and pot @Tyrus. Yes, we all need to try and keep well. Although others are saying you need to catch a little bit of virus to build immunity. We will see which happens!

I was looking at Dennis' insta feed the other day and saw that someone had two 42" KKs. I missed that momentous unboxing. Where are the goats???

Congratulations! I vote for unboxing and using just as soon as you can. Happy Day.

Nice inspiration @tony b. Chicken here tonight. Might make it a suya roast. Yum.

Of course! The ultimate grill accessory. Congratulations.

Lead me not into temptation. Baby back ribs with suya chicken thighs on the side.

I may never make it to the French Laundry but I have had "mashed" potatoes at the Joel Robuchon restaurant in London. Yes, so silky and with what appeared to be 60% butter content. It's probably a good thing for my heart that I have never managed to reproduce the effect at home.

That looks really delicious @ckreef. I love pink lamb but would never have imagined that lamb shank could stand that treatment. Like @Basher, I am interested how/where it was cut from on the animal.

What he said!

Funny you should mention mashed potatoes Tyrus. I wondered who @Saucier was and so I went and looked up his profile. One of his previous posts was about cooking potatoes for mashing sous vide. That had never occurred to me but the logic of cooking veg sous vide and keeping the nutrients "in" makes perfect sense. Welcome back @Saucier. I look forward to reading more of your posts.

I agree. Learning to make bread takes time and, just when you think you have a good formula, it kicks back at you. Made some buckwheat bread at the weekend and I wanted to cry when it came out, mostly, flat. The good news is that my guests didn't care and wanted to know where I'd bought it! @Pequod, thank you for sharing your rich seam of references. I am already enjoying the read and I'll hopefully learn a lot.

Thanks. I love pasta made with 100% extraction flour but have been a little less adventurous with bread, sticking to Chad Robertson's ever more complicated/varying mixes of high extraction, whole grain and bread flours. Do you have any idea what colour the wheatgerm is? I have assumed that if I simply sift out the brown bran I must be retaining the wheatgerm but that assumption could be completely wrong. Do you have a go-to recipe/hydration level for using 100% extraction wheat flour? I also seem to remember you saying you used a modified Tartine no-knead method. Care to share?

I have been meaning to ask about wheatgerm. A number of the Tartine No 3 recipes call for, say 70g, wheatgerm alongside 500g of high extraction flour. Given the fact that I am milling my own flour it seems to make no sense to be buying additional wheatgerm when the flour that I mill will contain wheatgerm in any case. Thus far I have got over this hurdle by sifting the bran out of my milled flour to get to about 85% extraction. Where the recipe calls for wheatgerm I simply use more of this high extraction flour. What do you think? Should I be looking to buy wheatgerm as well?

Hi @Pequod. Did you ever find the Einkorn recipe you were looking for? I have just ordered this book if you are still interested: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0804186472/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_n0UuEbP9XVG0K

That looks great @Basher. I have finally got my leaven to float reliably and look nice and lively. I have been trying a different loaf from Tartine no 3 each week and I find that the high hydration doughs end up a little flatter. Still tasty but not that plump look that you got there. I think I have had most success when I have refreshed the starter twice and then made the leaven. Will experiment more to see if that is indeed an important factor.

Well done! Sounds like an epic effort. What did the punters think of the pork?

Rumbled! You identified my underlying motivation. I am a roast pig girl and don't much like pulled pork, hence all that distraction activity around crown joints and such. Happily for you, other more sensible people turned up to give better advice. I like this idea @Basher. As you say, no chance to move grates much but it sounds like a good way to vary the cooking times. Only challenge would be how to get the crunch on the roasted joints. Maybe put them in close to the end and raise the temp once you have taken out the pulled pork joints? Help! Didn't realise the choice round here was pix or death!!

Yay. I went to Abidjan on a school trip for French language learning when I was about 14. I was amazed that people actually spoke this language that we were being forced to learn. Set me off on a lifelong journey to learn languages and the food was good too. I am interested in the pork and gruyere dish. I remember eating fried plantains with hot sauce by the road side when I was there.

Hi @ZooBeeQ. Some options: When I say hot and fast for leg I mean cooking max 4 hours and aiming to make crackling of the skin. I think the usual US low and slow ends up with something akin to pulled pork. Here we are looking at sliced meat, particularly if you de-bone the leg and tie the joint. I haven't tried any of the recipes on the links that follow but they are typical of what I would be looking for. So.... for roast leg of pork you could use a recipe like this one: https://www.olivemagazine.com/recipes/meat-and-poultry/roast-leg-of-pork-with-perfect-crackling-and-ambrosia/ for the mid section, loin join you could go for a fancy crown: https://cookthestory.com/pork-crown-roast/ or for a guard of honour: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/double-rack-of-pork-with-burnt-orange-caramel-pan-sauce-368932 I am sure that is all too much work when you have so much to do. Good luck with whatever you decide to go with.

Hi there @ZooBeeQ. First, commiserations. A big job for a chilly day. If you are going to have to chop it up then I would go for cooking the different parts of the pig differently. Low and slow for the shoulder and hotter and faster for the legs and mid section. See @Basher's recent post for a good looking pig head. Good luck!

I was waiting to see the olives being pressed! I guess it would have been a bit messy to be doing that in the middle of a busy restaurant. Where did you go in West Africa?

It took me a while to figure out what the prongs at the bottom were for and then I noticed the screw at the bottom and realised it is a bit like a vertical roti. I would like the frame and the ability to hook meat onto the top of the frame. My current adaptation when cold smoking ham is to use the half grate. This frame would improve on clearance and allow you to hang bigger joints in the KK. Below are a couple of hams, brined in beer and molasses for a few days and then cold smoked.