tekobo

Starting to prep for our New Year's Eve party, four days out. Today was marinade and sauce day with a little bit of tortilla action thrown in for good measure. I picked a recipe for chicken tacos with chilmole. The recipe said that preparing the chilmole would remove the ability for the air in your kitchen to sustain life, such is the level of capsaicin that would be released when you roasted the 100 arbol and 8 ancho chilies to the level of blackness required to make the sauce. I had a simple solution to that - fire up my 23 KK, get it well heat soaked and "broil" (we say grill in the UK) the chillis in there. I also made the al pastor marinade as per @Troble's recipe. I doubled the recipe. Our sturdy Vitamix had a job on its hands, getting all that achiote blended in! See this post for more about tacos al pastor After all that work I ended up with three tubs of al pastor marinade and one of chilmole. I also wanted to experiment with tortillas. I started off with beautiful purple corn. This is following the wash after nixtamalisation. Some people say to wash a lot, some say to wash a little. This time I washed a lot. Just depends on when I remember that I don't need to slough off ALL of the outside of the kernel. Machine in action, grinding the corn. IMG_4010.MOV Working on my own I managed to make 42 tortillas in under half an hour. I have left them to cool and will test the reheating methods tomorrow. 42. The Answer to Life the Universe and everything. It is a sign.

Thanks for the explanation @C6Bill!

IMG_3981.mov Late to the party. Merry Christmas. Went for simple, reliable chook cook for my Christmas.

That pic looks gorgeous @remi! @jonj I don't know that I am likely to cook a prime rib anytime soon. I tend to cook one rib wide joints. More surface area for the char and also the fact that I would cook one blue for me and rare/medium rare for other people. The only annoying thing is that people who profess to want a medium rare cook end up eating my blue steak and enjoying it, leaving too much of the medium rare for me to eat. Oh well, if that is the price of converting people to the dark (and wobbly) side, I might be happy to pay it.

Oooh. Thank you @PVPAUL! Both methods look good and reasonably fast. Will try both and report back.

I was a little lost with this one until I realised it was because I don't actually know what a prime rib is. Turns out we call it a standing rib roast here in the UK. Yes, I agree with @djami's bottom line - you don't want to overcook one of those! I had not heard of @C6Bill's twist - taking the meat off to rest before searing it. Is that just because it is the time it takes to get the flames going or is there a benefit from resting the meat before searing it? I might have been tempted to sear first over flames before the KK is heat soaked and while the meat was cool to reduce chances of cooking the inside. I might then steal @C6Bill's idea and rest the meat while you let the flames die down and get the KK to target temp for the indirect cook.

Tee hee. I am thinking of christening @Syzygies's method the Noah's Ark. Fillings are easy by comparison - chicken skin, cubed chicken thigh and pork Al Pastor. We have a couple of vegetarians and will have beans, squash and avocado to satisfy them and accompany the meat protein. Looking forward to the jeopardy!

Feliz Navidad indeed! The challenge here is wanting to be "authentic" while not chaining myself to the stove and keeping people waiting on the night. Both of the options that you describe - two by two and/or re-heating directly over a gas flame - are less work than starting tortillas from scratch but still require a lot of activity at point of service. I was hoping for a towel saviour. Maybe one where I wrapped a stack of tortillas in a towel and heated them up either in an oven or, horror of horrors, in a microwave. When I serve tortillas normally I store them in a heated bowl with a lid. They become a bit more pliable than when they come direct off the heat and work well for filling and rolling. Thinking floppy not crispy?

Calling all tortilla afficionados. I need some help please. I am cooking for about 50 people on New Years Eve and have decided to go the taco route. Key to this is being able to prepare the corn tortillas in advance (probably earlier in the day on New Years Eve) and then heat them up quickly and easily in the evening. Any tips about how best to hold and store the tortillas and also on how to heat them up so that they are close to the texture that one would normally want? I will of course experiment a few days before to be sure that I have a winning solution as I cannot afford to disappoint on the day!

That looks great @David Chang. Drool worthy.

Made arancini with black chanterelles and a mozzarella centre last night. Fried rice balls. With added cheese. What's not to like?

That looks just perfect @Basher. Really looking forward to seeing your whole sirloin cook.

Enjoy the journey @Tony8919. As @BOC said, it is all about the fire and you can reduce but can't eliminate variation. I only go wrong when I fail to remember that simple truth.

Have you tried using a pasta roller attached to your kitchen machine @Syzygies? I use the pasta roller that I bought with my Kenwood Chef and it works well but I will admit that the dough I make is not especially stiff. If you haven't tried a kitchen machine version I would be happy to try it out for you on mine if you tell me how you make the dough. And yes, I covet your bigolaro!

🤤

Yum. Do you sieve out the seeds or do you whizz so well that they disappear @tony b

I agree David, we live by the sea and it is hard to beat the super fresh seafood we can buy from the fish market by the harbour. That said, I have got into buying some frozen fish for convenience. 4kg of frozen black cod (sable fish) steaks arrived this morning and my mouth is watering at the thought of the delicious meals we are going enjoy from that haul. No chance of getting that at our local fish market. I also found that when you cook super fresh flat fish like Dover sole it turns out like a rubber tyre. Apparently it needs to rest and relax for a few days before eating so the dry ager comes in handy there. You are so right - a konro grill would not enjoy the rain. Mine lives under cover in our greenhouse and has survived many a wet winter although it is always used under cover or sunny weather.

Veal chop for dinner yesterday.

Lovely @Syzygies. I have a load of chillis still ripening in my polytunnel and this looks like a nice recipe to try out.

We used the chicken fat and juices as a sauce. It was lip smackingly good!

Chicken cooked on top rack of KK. All that fat came out of the chicken and was super yummy on roasted potatoes. Cooked for 45 mins at 210C and reached internal temp 89C.

The cauliflower dish from Friday was from Ottolenghi's book Flavour. Link to an online version here: https://www.irishexaminer.com/recipes/?c-recipeid=4124 Some of the Persiana recipes are here:https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/12/persiana-recipes-sabrina-ghayour-cookbook The rice on Saturday came from the Moro book. A version of the recipe is here https://www.latimes.com/food/la-fo-mororec19g-2009aug19-story.html And, especially for @C6Bill and his lady friend, here is a link to a very close version of the aubergine dish. I promise you won't taste the purple! https://saffronandherbs.com/2021/10/23/mirza-ghasemi/

The products of Friday's cook went into dinner last night. Here is the aubergine dip with walnuts on top. It was a hit, with some naan bread. We had five courses, each matched with a cocktail. Here is the fleet of limoncello sour drinks. Followed by roasted poussin and saffron rice with barberries and crispy onions. Luckily there was a break in the weather and I was able to get the poussin off the KK without getting soaked! The gluten free carrot, pistachio and coconut cake, half cooked in the KK and half in the IDK oven turned out nice. We finished with poached dried apricots stuffed with clotted cream and topped off with walnuts. Simple(ish) and tasty. All but one of the recipes came out of the book Persiana. I will try to find and post the recipes that are available online.

Cake ended up in the IDK oven to finish off while I cranked up the KK to cook the chicken and warm up the cauliflower. The chicken came out great after one hour on the top rack at 200C. Crispy, crunchy skin and juicy inside. Super yummy. Reminds you why it's good to have a KK.

As you can imagine, I have been a bit busy today. What with cooking, chatting and eating with my Aunt, running in and out to the KK and making up the next dish to go in. Now got to get out of daytime clothes into something more presentable for when our guests arrive in 15 minutes. So... recipes will need to wait until Sunday but here is a bit more on progress today. The legendary KK skill at keeping food moist worked against me with the cauliflower. After the first 30 minutes it was lovely and soft but no crisping, not like when it is cooked in the oven. I cranked the KK up after an hour and it was cooked a half hour later. Probably a bit too cooked, some of the onions were quite black. But it was all very tasty. So tasty that I am going to abandon the idea of cooking potatoes tonight and we will have the cauliflower with the chicken instead. KK legend is that you should not overshoot your temp or it will take you ages to get it back down. I have never really bought into that legend. To lower the temp today I wound the top hat down to just off the seat and closed off the bottom air supply to about a quarter. Here are my timings: At 15:12 the temp was at about 215C Half an hour later it was down to 200C. An hour later it was at 180C and finally, at 17:00, a full 1 hour and 48 mins later, it was down to my target 160C. So yeah, I accept that it does take a while to get the temp down when you have heat soaked a beast as big as a 32 but it is not impossible. Dark outside so I took a picture of the cake indoors before it went into the KK beside the pot with the lamb shanks in. The only problem that I have now is that the cake is cooking slowly and I need to raise the temp in the KK to put the chicken in. This is where I wish I had followed @ckreef's advice. If you have more than one KK or piece of BBQ kit, just light both, all. You will likely need it and it is better to have it hot in time than not!