tekobo

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.

Ha. No I have not tried it nor have I run out of cupboard space. Looks suspiciously like a tagine and I already own one of those and don't use it very often. I do use a cast iron Dutch oven when I bake loaves indoors but I don't think I have done a comparison to see what it is like without and whether it is actually worth using the Dutch oven at all. One more burn mark from a hot Dutch oven and the time will be ripe for a test that allows me to ditch all such crutches.

I went hunting through old photos to find the one time I cooked a pig's head for dinner. It was 2008. Basher's point explains why four of us found this whole head daunting!!!

Nice looking cook @Basher. We found eating a half pig's head on a plate a bit daunting when we tried it but pig (or beef) cheek bourgignon is very good and chopped up cheek and snout meat helps to amp up the tastiness of home made sausages.

Looking forward to seeing pictures and hearing what you think of using soapstone in your KK.

Yay! Amping up the sour flavour is nice sometimes. I hope your friend appreciates the restraint that you have shown. I would have had to have a slice.

Curious. My instinct would be to try the soapstone out as a heat resistant work surface. Another potential way to use it would be to have a piece that you heat up and then bring to the table to cook on. Its heat retention would be a real advantage there. I am not so sure about cooking on soapstone in the KK. The time taken to heat up would see me choosing my cast iron griddle over soapstone. Having said that, a semi-circular piece could be fun. If possible it would be good to get a lip around the edge so you can cook without having stuff drip down onto the fire. If nothing else, it should be really beautiful! P.S. You asked whether it should go over the grill on your half grate or next to it. I would say next to it. Moving between the soapstone and the half grate bars would give you options.

Hi @coolpapabill. I just had to go and read up to find out what soapstone is. Interesting. It seems to be good with heat, either as a work top or as a wood burning stove. What are you thinking of using it for? Cooking direct on top of the soapstone in the grill?

Neat!

Happily, I think I may be able to resist this one. At least until you give me your killer argument for having one. I do already have a dutch oven that works fine for round indoor bakes.

P.S. This is a photo for @Basher. I looked up on the train when I went through last week and noticed where I was. For a meeting tomorrow I have been practising how to say Ystradgynlais.

Reading the FAQs that @Pequod shared, I now have a name for my "problem". I am moving from a stiff starter to a liquid starter and I may well not have got the liquid starter reliably rising and falling as it should. I am away for a few days now but will get to it when I have a few consecutive days at home to allow me to refresh the starter daily. I have to fess up to yet another new toy. I kind of backed into this one. A friend brought me a gift of some koji condiments over New Year's. They are made by a couple of Japanese women in London who turn up to market once a week with limited stock and shut up shop when it is all sold. My friend had to go early and lie in wait to get me some. Very very delicious. I don't live in London and don't have time to lie in wait so instead bought the Noma guide to fermentation. The conditions for making koji are very precise and I was struggling to figure out how I would get the right heat and humidity combination. I finally came across a post that recommended using an egg incubator or a bread proofer. Duh! A bread proofer was so obvious and so useful. Before now I had been running up and down stairs to the only room that had the right temperature for proofing in the winter. Now I can use the proofer for bread and, when I get to it, as a koji making chamber for the 48 hours that it takes. For once this was not a KK shopping channel purchase but good to have validation that both @Pequod and @MacKenzie have one of these. I got the extra rack so I could fit two proving baskets in there, one above the other.

Thanks Paul! Cabrito is great. My freezer is bursting at the seams at the moment but I see a goat in that 32's future.

I did buy some fancy pants stoneground grits when I was last in Texas. Just have to get around to cooking them!

Nice looking cook. I am sooooo happy for Andy Reid!

Tee hee. Do you know where you got yours from @jonj? Annoyingly the husband gave one away so there are 5 and I can't get them symmetrical. Of course I can make 5 symmetrical but I want that 6th one back! @MacKenzie I am glad you enjoyed the post. Ignore any ribbing about the week old fish, I got ribbed enough here for trying to get anyone to eat it. In fact there was a vote and the fish was the very clear loser. @Tyrus, no salt was involved in the ageing of this fish. @Pequod, yes, those are Himalayan pink salt blocks at the bottom of the fridge. There is some argument that they help the ageing. I don't really know how. I was mainly worried about blood dripping on to the blocks but the company said they last for 2-3 years and I can clean them. They are pretty anyway.

I have disappeared down a dry aging hole and I am loving it. I managed to get a good deal on a dry ager that i had been drooling over for years and would highly recommend it if you like aged meat. Here is where I have been over the last few months. First use was to cure sausages after my marathon sausage fest. Temperature and humidity set at 15C and 70% respectively. A much safer environment than the area I used to use outdoors, under the eaves. Then we met up with @Braai-Q and his wife in London and alarmed the waitress in the restaurant as we swapped meat between our cool bags under the table. This huge chicken is one of the presents that he gave us. The Husband wasn't pleased with my decision to age the chook for a week before we ate it. Thought I was risking a perfectly good chicken and quoted the old adage that everything looks like a nail to someone with a hammer. Well, this time it worked. A friend declared it the best chicken he had ever eaten. Temp down to 2C and humidity up to 80% for aging meat. I wanted to do a comparison with brill. The one on the left got eaten fresh. The one on the right ended up in the bin. A week's aging was too much in this case. I have since aged red mullet and hake for a few days each and both were very good. Flesh firms up and skin is nice and crisp when fried. This is today's adventure. The very kind folk at a restaurant that we went to showed us their cold room and described some of their techniques, one of which was coating meat in fat and aging it for months. Here are two Dexter cote de boeuf at the start of the job this morning. They use liquid nitrogen at the restaurant. I just painted the fat on every ten minutes or so and put the chops in the ager in between times. Fully coated. Not to be opened before 1 April 2020. Sitting in the dry ager. Hanging on the top right is a strip loin that has been in for two weeks. I cut a bit off and wipe off the mould when we want a piece. It has aged beautifully and is so much more fun and tasty than defrosting a steak from the freezer. The pichanha below has dried out quite quickly and will be difficult to cut and grill Brazilian style. No worries, will grill it flat and eat it up, very soon.

Hey Tony, your post piqued my interest but I still haven't managed to make your recipe for shrimp and grits. Next best thing is having my Texan friend make me some on her return from a cookery course in New Orleans. She made the grits with stock and served with shrimp and sausage. Her husband said it was the first time her grits didn't taste like wallpaper. I thought they were great. I am now a convert to grits and will be trying your recipe. Soon.

Hi Paul I did a quick search before I saw that you had provided a link and I found this article: https://www.wired.com/review/vermicular-musui-kamado/. They don't seem to be particularly impressed with this tool, particularly given its relatively high cost. I now see that Sean Brock recommends it. Maybe he got something out of it that the reviewer didn't. For my part I probably prefer old school Japanese pottery and my dedicated sous vide machine to this hi tech solution.

Thanks! I had been making the decision about when to use the leaven by looking at it but then lost confidence when I decided that I needed to fit with the float rule. Who needs rules???

@Braai-Q recommended a teppanyaki appliance which was flat when cold and dished when hot. I thought that was pretty cool but cannot find the reference. Will search. Didn't need to search, he has sent me the link: http://www.cookndine.com/en/built-inROUND.html Not cheap but it is awesome.

Help! I have been working on my leaven and trying to pass the "float test" as set in the Tartine book. First time I tried I managed to get a piece of leaven to float about 24 hours after I refreshed it. I tried yesterday and the leaven looked good and lively after 12 hours but would not float. Went to bed and 24 hours from refresh the leaven looked flat as a pancake. I have re-started the starter and will see what it looks like in the morning. Should I just trust my instincts and ignore the float test?