Pork

I got a 7-lb Boston butt from the Virginia farm that raises forest-fed pigs ("Babes in the Woods"). I'd been wanting to try pulled pork in the Big Green Egg since I got it, but the 10+ hours of cooking it was a daunting prospect. So Labor Day became the big day to try it.

As always, I used my barbecue bible, the Jamisons' book, using their rub of paprika, pepper and other ingredients and their mop of vinegar, leftover rub and more pepper. I applied the rub the night before and another coating in the morning when I took the butt out of the fridge. I lit the fire at 7 and got the pork in at 8 at about 220 degrees. I mopped it every 45 to 60 minutes and in the afternoon inserted my newly acquired digital thermometer probe into the meat. It was at about 120 degrees and needed to go to 180 according to Jamisons. Other recipes had put the internal temperature at 160 to 180, so I was willing to accept the lower end of the range. The new probe, for what it's worth, registered the "oven" temperature about 20 degrees lower than the Egg's own thermometer. I pulled it out at 6:30 at 160 degrees and wrapped it in foil for half an hour.

The pork was delicious and was a big hit with the family members who came over for the holiday, but it was different than I anticipated. I thought I would have a tender, fibrous, gray pork that would shred at a touch to turn into those piles of pulled pork we had on our road trip last summer. I had prepared the vinegar sauce to go on this pulled pork. What became evident as I sliced through the crust to the pink meat underneath was, as Henry said, "I don't think this is the shredding kind of pork." It was in fact, as Henry also observed, much more like ham, though with more of a smokey, porky flavor than you usually get with ham. It was very tender and pretty moist, but firm and I carved thin slices for the platter. The vinegar sauce was still delicious on it.

Clearly there's some things I don't understand about barbecuing. Was this more of a picnic cut, so that I got smoked pork shoulder, rather than a real butt with the marbling that would yield the shreddy texture I anticipated? Are these forest-fed pigs, which have great flavor, simply too muscular to get that kind of marbling? (There was plenty of fat, but as a slab along one side of the cut.) Is the Egg simply not going to yield the kind of result that a real smoker would?

Don't get me wrong -- it was a great meal and a very successful recipe. But I would like to have a better idea of what I'm doing. Everybody brought great sides and Andrea did her delicious corn sticks. I also grilled some wings (about three dozen) and sopped them in a "Basque" sauce from Thrill of the Grill (this was very good and will prompt me to try more recipes from there) and in Frank's Louisiana sauce, said to be the sauce of the original Buffalo wings.

Ribs

I've been wanting to try ribs in the Big Green Egg since I got it. Let me say right away the ribs came out really tasty and fairly tender, but they were not moist and falling off the bone and I'm not sure why -- whether it was the meat, the recipe, the Egg, the execution (timing, temperature?).

I followed the Kansas City recipe from Jamisons' Big Book of Outdoor Cooking, which had a rub of many ingredients (paprika, chile powder, smoked salt, etc.), applied one-third the night before, one-third just before smoking, and one-third halfway through the cooking. I got three St. Louis cut slabs which weighed 6.25 lbs altogether. I also went ahead and got the Weber rib rack to hold them in the Egg. I used just beer and Worcestershire sauce for a mop (every hour). I kept the temperature pretty steady at about 200, though in the late stages it snuck up to 250 when I wasn't looking and I had a little trouble bringing it down. I gave up on them getting more tender after 4 hrs and applied the sauce (tomato sauce, brown sugar, corn syrup, tomato paste, etc.), cooking for another 40 min. Then I wrapped then in a double layer of foil for about 45 min.

It occurs to me that brining might get them more like the Rocklands finished product, but I also think these ribs (from Whole Foods) may have been a bit too lean. Researching a bit just now, I'm thinking the "country style ribs" from WF were more like baby backs and less like spareribs. Also the 4-hour cooking time specified by Jamison is too short, 6 hrs would be better. Temperature usually given as 225, so outside the 180-220 range Jamison calls for. Live and learn. I will no longer take Jamison as the last word or the gospel, but will consult other sources, too.

Used the pinto beans with beer and pepper from the same book, with the Rancho Gordo pinto beans. They were great but the recipe called for 2 Tbl of lard to sautee the onions that are added towards the end of cooking and it tasted too much of lard. Also, the beer does lend a slightly bitter taste, which I didn't mind but I might use a blander beer next time (or Mexican, as they recommend).

But it was a great meal, rounded out with Andrea's corn sticks, a big green salad with goat cheese, and a very seasonal fruit salad (peaches, plums, nectarines, raspberries) in mint sugar.

Spring

It's nice when thing things start to come together, as with a spring menu we prepared for guests over the weekend. Even though it turned out to be unseasonably cold, it was fun to anticipate the warmer weather with the food we associate with spring.

At the last visit from the New Morning farmer's market earlier this month, I got a leg of lamb from the Blue Rooster Farm, a family-owned Pennsylvania farm that raises its own sheep, beef and pork. The website describes how their Border Collie, Mac, herds the sheep. Like all meat sold at farmer's markets, it was frozen, so I was able to keep it in the freezer for this dinner. We had already used some lamb shoulder from Blue Rooster in another recipe and knew the lamb would be tasty. While it's almost impossible to improve on a leg of lamb roasted with garlic slivers, I wanted to try a recipe from Paula Wolfert's The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen for a slow-roasted leg of lamb with pomegranate glaze and do the roasting in the Big Green Egg.

Our half-leg was smaller than what the recipe called for but it was plenty for four people. The pomegranate glaze was a simple whisking together of pomegranate molasses with water, onion, and garlic. You coat the lamb in the glaze and then let it sit at room temperature for a couple of hours. You heat the oven, or in this case the Egg, to 450 degrees, put the lamb on the rack and reduce the temperature to 250 degrees. I'm still learning the ropes on temperature control with the Egg, so I had trouble getting the temperature down quickly, and only got it to 300. So I checked the internal temperature early and when it reached the 130 degrees called for, pulled it off and let it rest in a warm oven. The other concession to outdoor cooking was to baste it with the glaze instead of the pan drippings as Wolfert calls for, since pan drippings didn't survive even with the foil pan underneath the lamb.

Once the lamb was off the grill, I switched to direct heat and grilled the asparagus. Ideally, we would have shopped for vegetables at a farmer's market, but it was probably too early for local asparagus anyway and we got this Victoria Island product at Whole Foods. Ditto for the baby spinach that we prepared with bacon and goat cheese in an Epicurious recipe that used some of the bacon grease to dress and wilt the spinach.

I cooked the luscious runner cannellini beans from Rancho Gordo with garlic, olive oil and chopped fresh sage, then dressed them still warm in more olive oil. For dessert, we had Andrea's delicious cornmeal pound cake with strawberries macerated in lavender sugar. A young but classy Bordeaux was an excellent accompaniment to everything.

Everything came out well. The lamb was still nice and pink, not dried out, and had a wonderful flavor. Everything else tasted fresh and Mediterranean. Now all we need is warm weather!

BGE Update

Having great results with the Big Green Egg as the experimentation continues. Had a smoked filet of salmon that was really nice. A whole filet of Coho salmon from The Fishery about 16 in. long and 3/4 in. thick, slashed with diagonals to help even cooking, rubbed with salt and pepper and brushed lightly with olive oil. Midway through its 45 to 55 min. smoking, mopped with a dill butter (12 Tbl butter, 1/4 c. minced dill, clarify the butter). It was supposed to get another coat of dill butter at end, but I skipped that part. Served as an hors d'oeuvres on wonderful small corncakes with a dollop of creme fraiche and a sprinkling of chives.

For a special occasion, splurged on a lovely standing rib roast ordered through Broad Branch that got a heavy duty salt and pepper rub the night before. Smoked at about 240 degrees for 4 hours, using apple and oak chips, to an internal temperature of 125 degrees, mopping every half hour with a mixture of A1 Steak Sauce and Worcestershire Sauce with 2 Tbl of butter melted into it, kept warm for mopping. These were real Flintstone ribs when carved and were tender and delicious. Yabbadabbado. I would probably go up to 130 internal temperature next time to get closer to medium rare. Also, though this was delicious, would probably try grill roasting -- 450 degrees for an hour and a half without the smoke or mopping -- next time to get more of that restaurant prime rib taste. I was trying this time for wonderful flavor of the beef rib roast I had at Jack Stack in Kansas City summer before last. This was somewhat different but equally delicious.

I also tried the chicken on a throne, including injection, but found it a lot of trouble for what in the end tasted a lot like roast chicken. Think I'll just try a simple roast next time.

The real test will be ribs, and that will come later this fall. The recipes, btw, are from my bible/primer for all things barbecue -- The Big Book of Outdoor Cooking and Entertaining by Bill and Cheryl Jamison, which has been 100 percent reliable as well as remarkably clear and comprehensive. I took a class from them when I was in Santa Fe summer before last, which was not great, but they really know their outdoor cooking.