tekobo

Lovely looking cooks, one and all. Happily I had a good breakfast before I ventured onto the forum this morning so not in my usual desperate post viewing state! I'm intrigued by those blue things too Tony. Can't really see the point and I don't have enough of them. I bought them really cheaply in a US catering store and may well not use them again. They were part of the search for the square ends that @ckreef has on his metal kebab sticks. Being able to turn a kebab a quarter turn a time would be awesome but the brand that he has appears to be out of production. Yes, I like those flat skewers that were on your link. I get them from our local Chinese store and they are really good. Used up my last batch at recent party, must get some more.

That looks seriously hot Pequod. How are you doing with lighting the binchotan these days? Any tips to pass on?

Must be konro season! I made beef skirt and chicken wing suya for my visiting Dad and Aunt last week. No pics of the board sauce but I capitalised on @Pequod's innovation and chopped up the tomato and red onion with some shredded basil in place of the large chunks of tomato and red onion that normally accompany your newspaper wrapped suya in Lagos. They both enjoyed it very much and didn't criticise me for being a deviant. Result.

Hi Paul. Your travels sound like fun. We are rediscovering the UK as a holiday destination and are finding that there are many beautiful places to be explored, right on our door step. Do get in touch when you are next headed over to England or Wales and I would be happy to supply any tips that I have and even meet up with a fellow KK'er if the timing is right. Texan friend brought back some soft corn tortillas on Friday. We have been eating tacos ever since. I am interested in your family recipe tortillas. Are they different or better than store bought and do you have to have to have learned the technique over years to get them coming out right?

So good! I would order from your pizza hut any day @ckreef.

Those steaks look gorgeous, cooked pretty much how I'd like them. Ref your pizza challenges - any more details? I am sure the pizza afficionados on the forum would be happy to help if they knew which of the 100 wrong turns you might have taken. Trust me, I have tried at least 25% of those wrong turns!

What a shame Tony. At 2 ft you might be in range to try a trick that I use to beat blight. You give up on expecting a long season and instead cut the leading shoot off, two leaf axils above the first set of flowers you get. That means you get just one bunch of tomatoes per plant but they are forced to form early and quickly because you have stopped the plant putting energy into leaves. Helps if you have a short season too. There is another trick that I have not tried: making new plants from the little shoots that you pinch out between the leaf axils. Should accelerate new plant production if you want another round of plants before the season's end. Might try it myself.

Thanks for the tip @PVPAUL. I used the Vindulge recipe. They are super yummy and I have had left over burnt ends for breakfast a couple of times to counter pangs from looking at photos on this forum. Why were there any left over? I didn't tell anyone about them when I first made them, that's why.

Reminder of/intro to this sauce for those who may have missed this post. I made a batch at the weekend and followed @Pequod's instructions for smoking and tweaked @ckreef's recipe with some English mustard and half and half sriracha and ground smoked chillis. Two hours of smoke using some strongly flavoured pellets (the lumberjack competition mix) may have been a little long but you do get a distinct smoky flavour. Super sauce for BBQ meats, including brisket and it goes well on ribs too. A friend is taking a jar to the surprise BBQ that her son is having for his wife this weekend. She said she is excited about trying the sauce and watching other people's reactions to it. I have promised her a second jar if she likes it. Bonus was using the left over blueberries to make blueberry syrup for this cocktail from the New York Times. I offer you Delft Blue.

Looking awesome @MacKenzie. Jealous of your haul @Syzygies, my toms are still green and vulnerable to blight. A few more weeks....

I agree, this grill is gorgeous in your setting. You are missing out on the best bit. Get cooking!

Lovely looking meals all. And yes Mac, you have made me overeat at breakfast. Again.

Two things to stop Mac. First stop posting mouth watering photos of food that interfere with my breakfast. Second, stop hoarding food. Next time you find a fish or sausage at the bottom of your freezer from more than two years ago, you have my permission to chuck it. I want you stay alive and I don't really mind if you ignore my first rule.

Yes, Netflix seem to be pushing the taco show quite hard at the moment. We have watched the first couple of episodes. What I found remarkable was how one of varieties of taco meat is what we call a doner here in the UK. Our local kebab shop makes their own chicken doner, piling marinated boneless chicken thighs on top of each other to make a tower of deliciousness. Texan friend is due back from the US soon with some soft corn tortillas. I think I might pop down to the kebab shop for some of their doner and simulate a late night drunken snack in my own home.

Before I started on my KK journey and joined this forum, the only item on the list that I knew was no 2 and that was because I had lived in Australia. @PequodI'll bet that you didn't know what a chook was until the likes of @Aussie Ora you to the term. Thinking we are all schmucks until we are not.

Berry klafoutis. Always a winner.

Hi Tyrus. I have done some searching on the net. The fish comes in a beautiful pink and gold tin that must be kept in the fridge (ask me how I know) and is called ansjovis original. The Husband buys a small stack for me when working in Stockholm. They go really well in potato salad. T'interweb tells me that the fish are small sprats. Hi Basher. I just did salt and pepper, my go to for good aged meat. I didn't check the temperature again at the end of the resting period but I am interested in investigating what I should have done to avoid quite so much juicy leakage when we came to cut the joint up.

I missed this picture of the brisket when I saw your last post Mac. Super gorgeous. Brisket, the mew breakfast food! Nice job Tony. I love Bavette. I think it is a type of skirt but not sure. It is also awesome cooked hot and fast until rare. As for @El Pescador and octopus. How beautiful is that??? You'll have me running to the fish market this weekend. We should get Mac to do the trial run on her konro though.

That must have taken some planning @tony b! Pink is a lovely colour and good to see you honouring it in food. Always a flamingo or could we see Pink Panther next year?? Yum.

Thank you all. Am super happy, given I was so worried about doing that piece of beef justice. It was a legendary feast. Given I use these posts to remind me of how I cooked what I cooked, here are a few notes: Heston Blumenthal gives the option to brown before or after cooking. He claims the Maillard reaction "multiplies" during the cook if you brown first but you are less likely to overcook the flesh if you sear after the meat has rested and cooled a bit. I liked the idea of the long Maillard reaction and didn't want to be attempting to brown the meat with the guests all around so I went for browning first. The joint was browned in the 21. Too big to manoeuvre with tongs. Figure out whether there are gloves you could use or just use a torch to brown. The requirement was to cook at 60C for 4-6 hours. I targetted 100C on the assumption that the temperature close to the meat would be lower than the dome thermometer. Lit half a basket fresh coals in one spot with vents wide open. Throttled back once I had got to about 70C and let the KK heat up to 100C. Two hours after lighting the fire I placed the meat in the KK, towards the back away from the coals. Mistake not to have checked the internal temperature before then. In spite of having defrosted over 1.5 days and been left out for two hours before the cook, the temperature in the centre was -2C. Eeek. The MEATER was a great help. I steadied the temperature at about 80C and monitored the rate at which the IT was rising. All good. That is until about four hours in, the MEATER stopped working. By then I had confidence in the KK holding temperature so I just tested the meat occasionally with my ordinary, old fashioned stick thermometer. I used the hot cold smoker but the meat was only lightly smoked in the end. Good because The Husband was orignally against the idea of any smoke. Thanks @Basher for the reference, will experiment with smokiness on future cooks. Great joy at the end of the 7.5 hour cook to draw the thermometer through the meat and see it hold steady at 51C throughout. The meat rested for one hour before cutting but there was still a lot of leakage at the point of carving. It was very moist to eat in any case. Still super happy and won't be so scared next time.

That bark is looking lovely. For future reference I suspect 12 hours notice required for me to get to where you are...

Ha ha. So you got hold of the cheque book - again - @ckreef. Mrs skreef is way too good to you. Great looking grates.

The party was just great. The weather was fantastic and we were sat outdoors until almost midnight. Quick run down. Banderillas - one set topped with anchovies and other with cubes of prosciutto. Amazing pockets of flavour to go with welcome drinks. Lardo on thin slices of French bread and topped with sweet anchovies. Not really anchovies, a nice sweet Swedish cured fish that I don't know the name of. Super delicious. We had a big pile of seafood skewers. I just put them by the side of the konro and folk turned up to grill their own. Everyone enjoyed that and it took the pressure off me. Deconstructed potato salad. Looks much nicer in the making than when mixed up. Other sides were available but I didn't get around to taking photos The beef. Took about 7 hours to get to temp. Here is the KK shot. I browned it in the other KK. Made big fire with the dripping fat. Won't do it that way again. Beef in the kitchen And starting to slice. A Every bit of beef got eaten up, bar two slices and some people had room for dessert!

Wow that looks just great. You lucky man. I can see you putting off that move to Florida.

So, I am feeling more confident about things. I have a running order and a plan for the beef. In love with Spanish restaurant Sabor and am indexing their cookbook for Eat Your Books. All the sides for this meal come from that book. So, here goes: The Husband in charge of drinks. He has proposed Aperol Spritz. And mojitos for people like me who don't like bitter. To go with drinks we will have banderilas - basically short sticks with stuff on them to eat in one mouthful with your drink. Olives, peppers, ham, stuff like that. Will also be trying an on bread tapa with lardo and salted anchovies. Will trial run tonight to see how that tastes. Sides for BBQ will be a roast/grilled cauliflower dish with dried spanish chillies and nice Marcona almonds, a tomato, avocado and fennel salad and a green salad. Green salad will have my non-Spanish favourite dressing of the moment - black garlic vinny courtesy of the Le Pigeon recipe book. Will have skewers with monkfish, prawn and tuna and a bit of courgette on. Planning to let guests grill them themselves on the konro. Hoping that works out OK. Now for the beef. I weighed it on bathroom scales this morning. It comes to 8.5kg. Not massive and includes bone. Going to try something in the KK that I have done in the IDK before but never outdoors. Will sear the raw meat in the 21 and then move it to the 23 to cook at 60C. Holding the KK at 60C may be a fantasy but that is the level at which it is supposed to cook for about 6 hours to reach internal temp of about 50-55C. Then it needs an hour to rest. I think I will smoke for the first hour or so but not longer because I don't want to over power the meat. What do you think? Any additional advice before I embark on this mad task tomorrow will be gratefully received. And I am sure I will panic about quantity of food and add something in when The Husband isn't looking. Maybe sliced smoked goose breast will make a nice tapa.