tekobo

Naaa. Mummy is still in Lagos, Nigeria. I told her about the cook on the phone. The Husband, on the other hand, is here and found the large one I gave him chewy but loved the smaller one that followed.

I wouldn't want to be in the area when they took those ropes off! I can imagine him getting angrier and angrier as he lay out there in the sun....

P.S. The oysters were strange in a good way. Their briny taste alongside the mayo and hot dog worked well.

I agree. We did drink some red wine but I really want to get to a cocktail and dog combo that he would have liked. Onwards and upwards...

The great thing is that once you finally get your KK, all memories of these trials fade. Life-after-KK-arrival is really that good.

This was my first Bourdain tribute meal. Hot dogs. Bun slathered in garlic mayonnaise, dog wrapped in proscuitto, topped with deep fried oysters and a squeeze of black garlic vinny (courtesy of Le Pigeon). I have a vague memory of Bourdain discovering and loving oysters in France in his teens. This was a good but not great tribute. Will continue to work on it. Lack of dedicated alcoholic beverage made this inauthentic. Stlll so sad that he is dead.

We are having the best summer ever here. I learned about square foot gardening from @MacKenzie just before I took over a new plot at our allotment. It has been great. The best bit is succession planting so you have just the amount you want rather than a massive glut. The only problem is that the summer squashes didn't get the memo. We have a LOT of squash at the moment. Here is a grill full of home grown produce: \ The revelation of the evening was the peas in their purple pods on the top left. Pick them up and chew/suck the peas out of the pods like edamame peas. Delicious! Kept the veg warm while I cooked the marinaded octopus. My mother had never heard of people eating octopus. She asked if I was really talking about the things with eight legs. I was. And here they are plated. Had another. And another.

That looks lovely @tony b. Will give that a try.

Cool. I don't have an instant pot but my vac packer comes to the rescue. Chicken carcasses get squeezed down to very little in a vac pack bag. We store them in the freezer until we have a good number. The all day simmering method isn't such a big deal when you are making a lot of stock in one go. Horses for courses...

This is really funny. I have not used a Maggi cube in years. We got told at some point that they were full of MSG and so abandoned them. You may be on to something though. I have not managed to get my stews to taste like back home since I stopped using back home spices. I hope you find the missing taste. I will share what I know when my Mum arrives with the ingredients and I try making some myself.

Hurrah! The Husband and I, having often spent hours trailing round a new city trying to find some special item and then finally finding it just a few minutes from where we started, have a theory. It is: "Everything you could ever want is usually within 5 miles of where you are." You just have to look. Not always true of course but it works very well as a good starting assumption.

I had already accused @Aussie Ora of making up weird combinations elsewhere and didn't want to be rude and comment on his use of wing sauce on pig but hey, we must bow to the magic of Aussie O.

Belated Happy Bastille Day @Pequod. Your cook looks really good. Question for you. Your daughter loved the Milk Street version. Did she love these more "authentic" versions or does she prefer the modified recipe from Milk Street? I plan to try it myself sometime.

Tee hee I love the idea of Nigerian suya crossing the ocean from the USA to Oz. I would like to say that you are not allowed to try one of your mad combos, like pineapple rub over suya. But.... I know that you will come up with something that tastes fab that I'd never have thought of so experiment away....

@RobCordeau, I know that sinking feeling when you forget to trust the voice inside your head and then find out it was right all along. The good news is that there is always another brisket and the hope that the next one will be the best ever. (As @_Ed_ is going to find when he gets a taste of mine.) I don't use a controller and cook brisket very low. I start with a half turn of the top vent to get the fire going but settle at less than an 1/8th of a turn of the top vent and one of the smaller holes on the LH vent giving me about 115C. Works well and doesn't burn through very much lump at all. Good luck with your next try!

I am so glad you are not too far away from me @_Ed_. Once I have got my brisket cooking down pat I think I can get one in a cooler and on the train to stalk you in London to prove how good UK brisket can be. I am currently leaning towards Dexter beef being the best for this and that has just the best fat ever. More experimenting to do first.

Oooh. I was not expecting a return parcel. That will be fun. I don't want a replica though. Every suya spot has it's own secret rub. Need to be able to detect a @tony b signature.

This made me laugh. You are demonstrating just how obsessive us KK folk can be when it comes to getting the result we are looking for. I look forward to the results of your experiments. My mother is due here with recipe and ingredients next month. I suspect it will be for yet another variant on the same theme. All good fun.

Wow!

This week night cook turned out so well I thought I would share the pictures with you. I found a recipe for tea smoking rainbow trout. It was all complicated, with rice, jasmine tea leave, sugar, star anise etc all getting heated up in a wok. You then had to find a way to seal it all up and smoke for 60 minutes. Easy with a KK. Set up the basket splitter in the 23", put a pan with the smoking ingredients on the direct side and the fish on the indirect side. 60 minutes later, the fish was at 55C internal temperature and here is the gorgeous result. The husband lifted the skin and fillets and was impressed at how perfectly cooked it was. And I thoroughly enjoyed the eating. So happy to own a KK.

Woo hoo! Jealous that you are getting fresh corn so soon. Looks super tasty.

Thanks all. I think I am less worried about the brisket than you are. I made a fundamental mistake in changing the target internal temperature and can easily revert to my normal target next time. The real insight for me is in, finally, understanding that the briskets that I buy here are much smaller than the ones that you use in the US. I only buy beef from three sources and they all use particular rare breeds that don't get all that big. So I need less lead time in future so that I am not trying to hold the brisket for up to six hours before people are actually ready to eat it! The fun thing about my meat suppliers is that we are friends now and we have a two way conversation. The funky cow guy got in touch to say he thought 5 weeks aging on the brisket was about right but did I want him to go further? I said no, we would go with where he had got to and see what it tasted like. Unfortunately my mess up with temps means that the only useful feedback I have been able to give him so far is that the dairy cow may be too small for a brisket cook. The good news is that he is an aggregator for a number of local farms and so will tell me if he thinks there is a different breed I should try. And so it goes. Did I tell you I am obsessed with food? I went on a similar journey with my Longhorn beef supplier and he has settled on 75 day aging as his standard "premium" product. No problems with the taste or texture of his brisket and I am surprised that you saw such a marked difference between eight day and four day aging @Syzygies. It may be that that is where some significant change happens in that time window but it is much shorter aging than any beef I buy here.

Really pleased to hear that they are all out now. Fantastic effort by all involved and sad for the family of the rescuer who lost his life.

I got the bargain $249.50 box. Now, I'd better get back to work to earn that money back!

If one has the option, I agree that firing up 2 KK's is definitely the way to go. For the Sunday cook I finished off the brisket in the 23" and started the ribs on their way in the 21". Texan friend arrived early to help with sides and when we needed to blacken some green pepper for the succotash I was able to up the temperature in the KK vacated by the brisket and do the blackening direct on the coals. I then throttled the fire until shortly before I put the cow chops on. All sooo convenient and reduced competition and chaos in the IDK. I must say, her cornbread jalapeno muffins are to die for.