KlausVanWinkle

And from last night. It's the heat of the summer. No excuse not to fire up the Primo and keep the heat outside. I tried @dstr8 's recommended 3-5 day cold fermented dough recipe. The wetter dough is a little harder to work with. It kept soaking through the flour I put in the board to let it slide off the peel, hence the misshaped crusts. I did my usual pepperoni, mozz and pecorino using a marcella hazan-style pasta sauce altered to be a pizza sauce. Grilled at 550F air temp, 500F baking steel temp. Dough after 5 days and some proofing in the warm oven. Fire (mostly from grease burning off the main grates). Pepperoni Pizza. The dough on this one ended up being chewy. Might have been from keeping it warm while the other one cooked. At 550F on the kamado grill, these both took about 6mins each. Tomato, basil, burrata, mozzarella pizza. The crust on this one was perfect and crispy. Keeping the baking steel slightly cooler than the grill seemed to help cook the top and bottom at the same rate.

My old, meat-loving partner was in town and staying with us this weekend. So we ended up grilling Friday and Sunday, and went to the local BBQ place on Saturday. Friday night I grilled some sweet sriracha marinated jumbo shrimp, garlic bread, peaches and burrata, and summer squash skewers. Saturday we had brisket, candied bacon, smoked chicken wings, mac n cheese, greens, buttermilk biscuits, etc. Sunday night, we had friends over to see my old partner. And I loaded up the grill more than ever before (corn on the deflector plates, lamb and ribs on the main grate and chicken up top). We grilled 18 lamb shanks; a rosemary/garlic rubbed, spatchcocked, heirloom chicken; corn for a miso roasted corn salad; half a rack of ribs; watermelon, mint and feta salad, and fresh artisan bread with some 2010 Coquelicot estate sauvignon blanc. I really recommend that winery if you're every in the Santa Ynez area. I swear this was a candid photo. And last weekend, I grilled a rack of ribs, peaches with burrata and mint, garlic bread, and yellow beets.

Grilled some sweet Sriracha glazed jumbo shrimp, garlic bread, squash and carrots on Saturday. And some yogurt marinated lamb kabobs and bread on Sunday.

That's been my experience too. I tried the aluminum pan thing last night but it melted. Going back to the ceramic plates on the lower grate, steel on the upper.

I have a Primo XL. I wanted the oval shape but couldn't swing a KK yet. I cook it on the upper grate so the lid of the grill acts as the upper plate. I'd like to slot it between the two grates but the legs for the upper grate get in the way. I can usually get the top and bottom to cook evenly, but not if I'm using the baking steel as the deflector. My wife wanted to see what I'd been working on, so I cooked even more pizzas last night. This time I tried using an aluminum pan to deflect heat instead. The grill heated up more quickly, but my lower grate must be a lot closer to the fire than on a KK, because the pan melted after about 40mins. Pizzas still turned out well. I'm trying to replicate the pizza at Pizzatown USA in Elmwood, NJ. It's a coal-fired style with minimal cheese, and a real savory/buttery sauce. Last nights: This was the setup from the other night:

My wife's been out of town. So I've been doing some pizza experimenting. I tried trader joes dough, and Serious Eats NY pizza sauce. But I thought it tasted too much like marinara. So last night I experimented with my own sauce recipe based off Marcella Hazan's pasta sauce. I also made my own 24hr cold fermented NY, coal-fired-style pizza dough. This dough was a revelation. I could finally stretch the dough into a decent sized pizza shape. I grated some mozzarella and tried my best to dry it. 5mins in the kamado on a baking steel at 600F. The bottom cooked a little too quickly. Next time, I'll move the ceramic stones to the felt line so the steel doesn't get too much hotter than the ambient temp.

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Delicious. Very juicy and flavorful. Even the leftovers were good. We saved the carcass and bones for some future stock and soup.

Smoked and roasted a pasture raised, heirloom chicken that actually tasted like chicken. Spatchcocked, Dry brined, butter under the skin, and coated with oil. Lightly smoked with applewood and pecan.

Stop following me McKenzie!

Went for an Argentinian-style steak dinner this weekend. One of the better steaks I've grilled. We went for an Argentinian-style meal. Grass fed skirt steak. Kosher salt/corn starch rub, with a quick trip to the freezer. Then reverse seared with mesquite smoke. Topped with a chimichurri sauce. My wife added home made sour dough bread, pasture raised butter, and great northern beans cooked in a made from scratch stock. And we opened a 2010 Tempernillo Reserva. Now go through the process with me: