tekobo

Wow. Just wow.

Yes @rick, I will keep the bark on any trimmings from fruit trees. One of Lumberjack's selling points is that they keep the bark on so, like Tony, I'm going with the pros.

Nigerian Jollof Rice with Chicken and Dodo This is a typical Yoruba party dish in Nigeria. I cooked as much of it as I could in the KK and I am very pleased to report that it tasted great, just like home. A quick run through the component parts. Jollof rice at parties is typically cooked over a wood fire so I simulated the effect by smoking some washed, raw rice before cooking it in my donabe rice cooker. I fried some finely chopped onions in goose fat, fried the smoked rice and then cooked the rice with half water and half smooth tomato sauce. The tomato sauce can be cooked with any spices you like but make sure it has a lot of chilli in - always use a bit more than you think you can stand and it might be close to being right. The rice was fluffy and tasty. A bit more smoke (hoping to have pellets for my Dennis smoker soon) and a bit more salt next time. Smothered some chicken in cooked down onion, tomato and sweet peppers and added some chllis for good measure. At a Nigerian party the chicken would have been deep fried before going into the sauce. Next time I will brown on the KK before the sauce stage. If you have read this far I am guessing it is because you want to know how I came to be cooking an extinct bird. Dodo is what we call fried plantain and has nowt to do with the other dodos. The ripeness of the plantain is important. Green ones won't cut it. The riper they are, the sweeter they taste. The Ivoriennes go so far as to get them to a soft, almost rotting stage before deep frying and slathering in hot sauce as a road side snack. They call it aloco. We don't go that far. Here are some semi soft plantains. Here they are, chopped party style. I guess they go further if cubed this way. When deep fried they absorb a fair bit of fat but come out very tasty. My father prefers them cut on the slant with less surface area exposed to the fat. I was going to give you a triumphant view of my new rotisserie "air fryer" but the less said about that debacle the better. The picture at the start of this thread shows the cubed dodo, deep fried in my IDK. I will continue my experiments with the roti in secret.

Hey there @jr.008, not sure why your photos are not showing on the forum. How did you try to insert them into your post? I use the choose files option usually. That aside, I did manage to download a couple of your photos and your ham looks mighty fine. Good job! Juicy meat and good looking grill marks. Very nice Mac.

Now look what you made me do. I was staying in an Airbnb when I wrote the message above and at about 1am I gave up the fight and got up to make myself a mid-night snack. Fried up some bacon and an egg and, in so doing, set off the smoke alarm. Turns out the alarm also rang in the main house and caused a panic until my host sleepily read my hasty message telling her to ignore my sneaky snack. No more midnight forum forays for me.

I think you should go with what you think will look best. Another consideration is whether you expect to move house. It may be easier to take your KK with you if it is not built into your ODK. Either way, have fun choosing and make sure you have room for a second when you realise how much you love cooking on the KK.

Wow, you are so lucky! Great story and what an elegant looking KK. Pebbles definitely cook best and that colour looks great.

It's midnight here. Shouldn't have hopped on to the forum at this time. All these beautiful pictures will see me gnawing on ribs in my dreams tonight. But first, I shall start with Aussie's wings and will mop up the juices with @Pequod's bread. Just how am I going to get to sleep now?

Good point. Will stick to my own trees, which I have not sprayed. Now that I think about it I have apple, cherry and a mixed native hedge that contains some interesting varieties. I will look them up and make sure to save our prunings. Yay.

This is indeed a fun post. Interesting to see how many wishes have been fulfilled in the meantime. I keep saying I like the 42 and the 22 but I know in my heart of hearts that my 21 and 23 are just right for my needs. I think a small Argentinian grill is still in my future. I like playing with fire and the way the v-shaped grill bars channel the fat away from the flames.

Thanks for the tip @Basher. We have three apple trees on our allotment and it never occurred to me to keep the prunings for smoking food. Will definitely do so this year and will see how they work out next. I'll say this quietly: I am not a fan of purple crack. but I do like to try new stuff and will look out for Cornish Pepper Leaf to see if there are parts of the plant that are of interest.

@MacKenzie you are not wrong, but just remember it's all about the eating and you can't eat a pix no matter how good it looks. Yes, now that I have worked out how to get the fire going quickly this is a super simple dish to make. Fire on, roti bar loaded and in no time at all you have something good to eat. I often have trouble attaching and bracket on the motor to the KK, the springs are a bit stiff and alignment not always easy to achieve. Having read that @ckreef leaves his motor attached the whole time I think I might take a leaf out of his book. Will make roti a more frequent choice here.

Reporting back: I tried wings in my flat rotisserie basket. Had them for lunch yesterday. The colour was great and more even than I expected given the fact that they were encased in a metal grid. The wings were nice and succulent. So good, in fact, that there is no photographic evidence. Thanks for the inspiration @Aussie Ora.

Hey Tony. Your post made me smile. The expression "reach out to" is so American. It has crept into business parlance here in the UK and, when anyone says it to me, my reaction is to think "keep your hands to yourself!". Obviously it is a head thing and I need to get over myself. Yes, I did reach out to the company and they said that pecan and beech are all that they have. I am thinking two pecan blend and one beech blend. They seem fairly versatile, looking at the descriptions of use on the lumberjack website and the smoking wood charts that you and @Basher posted a few weeks ago. 60lb of pellets will be a lot so I will have to get used to those flavours! I am keen to try smoking things other than meat and seafood so I guess this is my opportunity. I am still unsure about what all the bits that came with the cold smoker do but will get to that soon.

Thanks for all the tips. Working my may through the options here in the UK. Lumberjack - 3 No 20 lb bags at £39.69 seems to be best value. This source only has beech and pecan. https://shop.americanbbq.co.uk/bbq-pellets-26-c.asp A-maze-n - lots of variety and bags sized from 2 lb at £6.95 or 5 lb at £11.95 - £13.95 https://www.bbqgourmet.co.uk/smoking--wood-pellets-99-c.asp Traeger - 1 No 20 lb bag at £17.99 and lots of variety - apple, cherry, hickory, maple etc https://abell.co.uk/search?q=traeger+pellets&Search= Seem to be spoilt for choice here. From what you guys have said and what I have been able to read, Lumberjack seems like a good option even though the variety is limited.

How did you get on with these pellets @Pequod? I have found them on amazon.co.uk and they are indeed much cheaper than the A-maze-n pellets which I have also been able to find here. Any advice gratefully received as I prepare to use my new hot/cold smoker.

Beautiful. I can just imagine the nice, sliding flakes of fish hot off the barbecue. Delicious I am sure!

I watched your video all the way to the end. I was fascinated by the comings and goings of your dog in the background. Very well behaved, not to be begging for some of that good looking pork!

I agree. I keep mine, with all its probes, because I think there will be a cook sometime in the future that demands the security and ease of a controller. In practice I would do better to put it up for sale to someone who would actually use it!

Great news Alex. I just read your post out to The Husband. He remarked on the difference between planning for a 23" and ending up with a 19" AND a 32". Good job KKC! Have you chosen the same colour as your 19" or are you taking a non-matching route with the 32"?

Yay! What fun. I am separated from my grills at the moment but will join the fray on my return. In the meantime I am enjoying raw seafood Italian style and marvelling at how hot their peperoncino sauces are. It shows what a mash up food culture is - the Japanese do not have the copyright on sushi and we Africans do not have a monopoly on heat and spice. Looking forward to the first food posts here!

Enjoying watching the canal flow by here. I will give your proposal due consideration sir. I am minded to propose one amendment and one addition to this initial wager. May we consider best season record in each conference i.e. who is the no 1 seed in each? Also, there may be some merit (and fun) in betting on which bottom placed team will make the most improvement this year. I am open to suggestions as to how to measure this but my plan was that we could only choose between the eight teams that came at the bottom of their division last year. What say you?

Looking through the various categories, there is not an obvious place to put an African recipe section. Keen also that African recipes are cooked by all, not just those who are African given it was @tony b and @Pequod who contributed most to the advancement of the Nigerian suya thread. Up to @DennisLinkletter to decide if there is a sensible place to showcase African inspired cooks. In the meantime we could agree to tag such recipes with the word "African" so that they are easily found by others who are interested. Does that sound OK or do others have a better idea?

Congratulations on the win @tony b. Awesome result, as Steve said, at the competition and dinner!

Of bowties and things. Just waking up in Padova @Tyrus. Verdict on last night's pizzas (we went to two recommended places and shared a pizza in each) was that they are not as good as we make them (to our taste obviously) on the KK at home. The seafood fritto misto snack that we had for lunch was fab though. Won't subject you to swimming across the Atlantic when you lose our bet this year. Will work out a lighter wager that you can afford to send without harming your first born child. No African cooks on my mind at the moment but I think your cast iron pot will do well for a nice slow cooked black eyed bean dish. I normally resort to my pressure cooker these days but there must be some fun ways to use the KK to add smoke and taste in a similar way to open fires back home. Will experiment. Just need to wait for @Braai-Q to set up our thread. In the meantime, you enjoy that bow-tie Martini.