tekobo

@Aussie Ora, subliminal pusher?? I was stood in a shop in Padova kicking my heels while The Husband looked at grog and pasta, waiting to get to the next bar with yummy snacks when I saw this: Really? Vegemite AND Marmite in the heart of Italy? I think I need a drink...

Happy to. You just need to join the EU before we exit so I can send you the good stuff.

I know it is heresy to say this but I still haven't got into Purple Crack. That is my cowardly way of saying I don't like it. Don't drum me out of the club and don't think me weird for promoting marmite butter. Am even thinking that marmite just might bring some umami flavour to a meat rub. Here's your challenge @Chanly1983, if you wish to accept it: make up something that makes us all love Purple Crack AND marmite.

Tee hee. I am looking forward to some tasty jerk chicken when we get home. I agree, no need to make it toooo hot but will look to push the boundaries.

Thanks all. The Mangalitza picture is a bit of a cheat because it comes from 2016. We had cut up lambs and even half a small cow before but a whole day on that pig almost killed us. And it was a squeeze, keeping it all cool in our various fridges while we worked. Since then we have left the butchering to the experts but still always buy a half or whole beast from the farmer. There is a lot of righteousness around nose to tail eating but my main motivation is the tastiness of a lot of the forgotten bits and just how damn cheap it is to buy meat in bulk. In my language we have an expression called "gba won loju gba". In your language/my other language it means "make like a bandit". I often feel that way when a farmer tells me the price of their wonderful products. For instance, the two boxes of pork at the start of my post cost just £155 in total. Here in Italy ALL of the wonderful pig parts below, bought direct from the maker, cost under 150 Euros. Really? I wanted to run out of the shop dancing. Instead I thanked them profusely and will return. I hope Brexit doesn't mean we end up with duties and constraints on my kind of shopping.

My friends know I love pork and regularly buy me piggy cards and ornaments. However, even The Husband thought I had gone a bit over the top when I told him I had bought a half pig in order to get pork shoulder for a Chicago Southside Thin. Here are the two boxes I picked up last Friday. Lots of chops and steaks for a summer BBQ, cheek to try to turn into guanciale and fat to turn into lardo. Bonus! We are now on a driving holiday in Italy and I succumbed to my bulk buying gene when I came upon this hoard. Tee hee. No, I did not buy the lot. Just one and they boned it out neatly so that we will have lovely proscuitto for pizza for months to come. And finally, a gratuitous Mangalitza photo for @tony b. I had wanted to try meat from one of these wooly pigs for a long time and pestered a Welsh farmer for a couple of years to get one sent to me in the post. It took us a whole day to process it and turn it into sausages, fat and joints for cooking. We liked it but not as much as the 55 day hung Middle White pig that we buy from another farmer so the only repeat is the blood sausage that they make with bits of fat and bacon. Pig with extra pig. Yum.

@amusedtodeath, going to have to try some jerk chicken myself. I know it doesn't have to be all that hot but there is some pleasure in the pain!

I am a fully paid up member of the Marmite hating brigade and I refused to even taste Vegemite, in spite of living in Australia for 15 months. Big BUT coming up though... Type in Typing Room and marmite butter into Google and you will find many converts to this weird taste. They include me. The Typing Room serves IPA rye bread with Marmite whipped into butter and it is seriously addictive. I still haven't quite got my head around actually buying some of the stuff and trying to make the butter myself though. Could work well for you @Bruce Pearson - make some beer based bread and whip your Vegemite into some butter and you could be on to something. Good luck!!!

Hi Bruce, the cabbage is not pickled. They had trays of barbecued cabbage on their work counter. I looked it up in their recipe book and it looks like they parboil the halved cabbage briefly, then barbecue it to colour and wilt the leaves and then dress with oil, lemon and salt and pepper. Very tasty!

And finally, to get back on topic. @Shuley, my friend's teenage son often comes out to eat with us. I can confirm that your choices are teenager approved. He loves Barrafina - we have been there many times together - and enjoyed Dishoom when we all first tried it in April. I also followed up on the Turkish restaurants in case you are interested. They are away from the centre of London but, if you go to Greenlanes, you will get the authentic experience. Friend tells me that the subject of which restaurant is best is the subject of hot debate but her choice was Antepliler. She also said that you could go to Turnpike Line to Tarshish for a place that is a bit smarter. Have fun, whatever you choose!

Thanks for the recommendation @alimac23. The food was really good but the best bit was their ice cold Breton cider. OK, so it wasn't the best bit but it went really well with the food. @MacKenzie was right, I had more photos but was on the train and couldn't upload easily. Here they are so you can have the whole experience. I arrived early so they were still in the middle of their staff briefing. The guy was getting all excited by the wine. I was happy with my cider. Menus The food Sourdough with bone marrow Pig's head scrumpet - delicious and not as scary looking as it might have sounded. Smoked beef neck with divine shiitake mushrooms. I have tried making the shiitake mushroom pickle at home. It was nowhere near as good as this. Onglet. I think that is what you call hanger steak. Hispi cabbage

Cool. I hope you like the book. It regularly make their slaws, use their instructions for Q and their house rub is a great go to rub. The amended tea smoked duck came out of that book too.

Don't know what you mean? You gotta fly the ocean, like @Shuley is planning to, if you want to partake of our wonderful British food.

The things I do for you. I was due to meet a good friend tonight after meetings in London. We were booked into Oklava, one of our favourites. When I read of bone marrow mash, thank you @allmac23, I felt it was my duty to investigate on behalf of all of us. My friend was happy to go to Pitt Cue instead because a) she had been to the old Pitt Cue restaurant and loved it and b) she is the one who started me on this road by giving me the Pitt Cue Co book as a present in the first place. Yes, bone marrow mash is a very good thing. As was the rest of the menu.

Yes, but it had bone marrow on top! I must post that one one day, it is soooo good.

I second that. I haven't actually been to Pitt Cue Co but I rely heavily on their cookbook for learning how to BBQ and their rubs and sides are awesome.

They look fabulous but I am pretty sure I would be eating meat for my next meal!

Ha ha. I love that this African immigrant is getting to comment on classic British food. A bit like when I used to represent England at a regular four countries meeting that included an Englishman who represented Wales, a Scot and a Northern Irish representative with an incomprehensible (to me) accent. I am sure there is a joke in there somewhere. It made me giggle inside anyway. Bubble and squeak is a meal made up of left overs from Sunday that was made and eaten on washday Mondays when mum was too busy to cook a proper meal.

Hi there @Chanly1983. Guessing you will have/will soon be placing your order. Exciting eh? I had a long, drawn out process of choosing my accessories when I was getting my KKs. Your idea of getting everything now so you don't regret it later is a good one. However, you may find that you never use some of the things you buy. I use about half of what I bought. One of my current constraints is that I don't yet have power to my ODK. That means I have never used my CyberQ cloud kit and fan, nor my rotisserie or the Octoforks on my KK. I am not sure I will ever need or want to use the Cyber Q but I will definitely be trying the rotisserie when I finally get power. If I was only allowed three Dennis accessories they would be: pizza stone, rotisserie and sunbrella cover. Three non-Dennis accessories would be my MAPP torch, MEATER thermometer and cast iron plancha. A close fourth would be my La Chamba cookware - having stuff you can transport straight from the KK to table is great. Oh yes, and I do use the smoke pot a lot. And my cheap spiral cold smoker... You can see why we should rename this forum "the KK shopping channel!"

That looks good. Potentially less hassle and more stable than threading the legs through skewers as I have done in the past. Happily, there are a few different versions available in the UK. Will look to see if they have locking legs like yours. AND they do wings too. Yippee.

Great toy and great looking cook. Of course, I want your drumstick hanging toy. Where did you get it from?

Tell me about it! I won't be trying the Mozza recipe for a few weeks yet. I need to re-visit the Ken Forkish Enzo and 48hr doughs first to see if I can make them reliably. I may also want to go back to @Pequod's Chicago South Side for a bit of yummy reassurance before I launch myself on the Mozza recipe and @ckreef's latest. So much food, so little time! That's so funny @MacKenzie. You know what that has taught you don't you? Eat pizza at home!

Lots of stuff! The green splashes were parsley and oregano, the base was deep fried cubed potatoes rolled in aioli and white crab meat and more parsley, the red sauce was a paprika ketchup and it was all topped with a raw egg yolk that was blasted with a brulee torch. Most of the dish was prepared earlier in the day so the main work was getting the potatoes fried and the scallops cooked. This was an example of a risky night. We were hosting a birthday meal for a couple who are our close friends and I asked them to invite four more people of their choice. There was every chance of crashing and burning given the next course included hanger steak (not typically seen as a special occasion cut here), raw oyster mayonnaise and deep fried oysters. I made espresso panna cotta for dessert - simple back up that would soothe anyone who had hated the previous two courses. Happily they loved it all and one 58 year old confessed to enjoying oysters for the first time in her life. So my feeling rubbish today can really only be blamed on the amount of wine I drank.

Sure, I don't disagree with you at all @cschaaf. I am not about forcing people to eat stuff they don't like. We build an instinct for what people like about the food we cook and we learn to tailor that to different audiences and circumstances. What doesn't work is being forced to cook the wrong thing for the tool and time that you have.