(AW) "It's not just" pizza! The only dough recipe you'll ever need!

Adie's best ever pizza dough!

Ingredients:

500g 'OO' type flour
375ml warm water (275ml cold plus 100ml boiling)
2 tsp salt
1tsp dried yeast

Add the salt to the warm water, whisk until dissolved. Add yeast to the water and mix well. Add the water to the flour and fold in. Work this together until a big ball of dough is formed. Rest the dough for 20 minutes.

Turn out dough onto floured surface then stretch and knead the dough for 30 seconds until it starts to resist then form it into a ball. Place the dough ball, seam side down, into a bowl that has been oiled with olive oil.  Cover with cling film and rest the dough for 2 hours.

Tip out the dough on to a floured surface and divide into 4 portions. Stretch and fold each portion five times without tearing it then form into a ball and place, seam-side down, onto a floured plate. Sprinkle the dough balls with flour and loosely cover with cling film. Rise for a further 3 hours until it has doubled (no more than trebled) in size.

Set your egg for indirect, with a pizza stone to reach the highest temp you can. You will need nice, clear vents at the bottom of the firebox and top up with fresh lump charcoal to achieve this. Top and bottom vents can be wide open and don't forget to burp the egg when opening lest you lose eyebrows and arm hair!  

Use your hands to mould each dough ball into a circular shape on a teflon baking liner before loading with toppings. Cook for 12 minutes at 600degF until the base is golden and cooked and the toppings are browned.

(ZA) Zero Alpha's impressive rack

Today we did something a bit different but it was more out of necessity than design! The Epic Eggers'  cooker is up the spout until later on this month so it means we can't use the oven indoors, even if we wanted to. Thank heaven for the BGE as we were able to create delicious herb-crusted rack of lamb with garlicky leek & potato bake with the minimum of effort.

serves 4

Whizz a slice of wholemeal bread with 2tbsp chopped fresh parsley, 2tbsp chopped fresh thyme and the chopped zest of 1 lemon.

Take 2 racks of lamb (6 bones per rack) and french-trim of all visible fat. Brush the meaty side with dijon mustard and coat this side with the breadcrumb mixture.

Thinly slice 500g new potatoes, slice and wash 1 leek and chop 1 clove garlic. Place all this into an ovenproof dish with 2tbsp plain flour, 150ml semi-skimmed milk and 250ml vegetable boullion (I used Swiss marigold) salt and pepper the mixture and then sprinkle over 15g grated parmesan cheese. We baked this on the egg, indirect at 400degF, for 30 minutes with foil on and then uncovered for a further 20 minutes. 

Once the potatoes had started to brown and were almost cooked, we placed the lamb racks on the grill and cooked them to 140degF medium rare with the crumb having gone crispy. I rested the lamb in a cool box, wrapped in foil and a towel for 15 minutes while the veg was steaming and carved into cutlets before serving. 

(ZA) Big Green Egg demos : info cards

Since last year, Adie Webster & I have been part of the Big Green Egg "Eggspert" program. The group comprises a number of BGE owners who go to food fairs, BBQ shows and distributors premises to show what the BGE can do. We cook some incredible taster food and talk to new and potential egg-owners. 

We're not employed by BGE, we don't act as salespeople and we don't work on commission - we simply love the BGE so much that we have run out of friends and family to wax lyrical to about it! To that end, we have had to expand our audience by raving to perfect strangers about how epic it is and this is the perfect way to spread the news! 

Our smart new business cards have arrived today with a picture of our lamb stack kebab and, on the reverse, a luscious ribeye steak. At the demos we do, these will be a much more professional way of giving prospective Eggers our blog and Facebook page information, than writing it all on a paper napkin!

(ZA & AW) Lamb-stack kebab and all the trimmings.

Friday night always used to include a meat kebab complete with some rather manky-looking salad and lashing of hot chilli sauce after a night on the booze. We never really wanted to know what the "meat" actually was, if we're honest, but this recipe uses top-quality lamb and the results are outstanding!

Firstly we took a boned-out lamb shoulder and marinaded in a spicy paste. To make the paste, toast 1tsp each of cumin seeds, fennel seeds, coriander seeds in a dry frying pan until they start to smell aromatic. Coarse grind the seeds with 1/2 tsp black peppercorns in a pestle and mortar and add 2tsp sweet smoked paprika, a good pinch of cayenne pepper, 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, leaves from 2 sprigs fresh rosemary finely chopped, 1tsp garlic granules, 2tsp malden sea salt. Mix everything into a paste with approx 3tsp olive oil and then coat the meat with the paste. Leave to rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

We loaded our custom-made kebab stand with layers of the marinated lamb but you can always use normal kebab skewers.

We heated the BGE to 300degF indirect and smoked the kebab for 40 minutes over hickory wood smoke until the meat was at least 135degF internal temperature in 3 or 4 places across the kebab and had a smokey bark at the edges of the meat. 

I like a yoghurt sauce with my kebab which is made with a small tub of natural yoghurt with a chopped clove of garlic and a pinch of salt stirred in. 

Served the whole lot with manky salad (shredded iceberg lettuce, chopped fresh tomatoes and finely sliced white onion), lemon wedges, pickled Basque hot chillis, yoghurt sauce and the chilli sauce of your choice (AW has Marie Sharp's green habanero and nopal cactus sauce* and I had green chilli sriracha*) Mega-epic!

* Marie Sharp's green habanero sauce and Sauce Shop Green Sriracha both available from Amazon UK

(ZA & AW) New Year smokey lasagne

It's a slightly chilly 5 degrees C outside but we still decided smoking a lasagne was still a really good idea. The benefits of the smokey flavour outweighed the slight discomfort of cooking outside on the first day of the new year! 

The meat sauce was the first for the BGE treatment. two sausages removed from their skins, browned with 300g minced beef, a chopped onion, a grated carrot, a chopped clove of garlic, 1/2 tsp celery salt, a dash of red wine, 1tbsp tomato puree, one beef stock cube and a tin of tomatoes. We smoked it, indirect at 350degF over hickory, for 30 minutes until the meat was cooked and a smokey flavour had been absorbed by the food. I had coated the exterior of the cooking pot with a thin layer of washing-up liquid which makes the pot a lot easier to clean after use.

I brought one pint of milk to the boil with 1/2 an onion, a bay leaf and 1tsp black peppercorns and then remove it from the heat to leave it to infuse for ten minutes before straining. I melted 40g butter in a saucepan and added 40g plain flour. I cooked the flour for a few seconds and then, removed from the heat, gradually added the milk, little by little, stirring constantly. Once all the milk was added, I heated the sauce over a low heat, stirring all the time, until the sauce thickened. 

I place a layer of no-soak lasagne sheets on the bottom of a greased oven dish, topped with a layer of meat sauce, then a layer of béchamel sauce, more lasagne, meat sauce, then béchamel. I continued building until I finished with a layer of béchamel and sprinkled the whole thing with some grated fresh parmesan cheese.

We placed the lasagne back on the BGE, with the hickory smoke still billowing, indirect at 350degF, for 40 minutes until it was golden and bubbling. The smokey flavour that the BGE imparted to the rich, beefy tomato sauce was amazing and took a favourite meal of ours to another flavour level!

(ZA & AW) Amazing, hickory-smoked Spag Bol

Today we are cooking a classic dish and, rather surprisingly, one we have not done on the egg before...Spaghetti Bolognese! I think every family has their own recipe for this meat sauce to go with pasta and this is ours with the extra dimension of hickory wood-smoke and BGE magic.

This recipe serves 3 hungry people. 

First, set up the egg to cook indirect at 300degF and put hickory chunks in water to soak. 

When the egg is at temperature, soften a chopped onion and a grated carrot in some olive oil. Take two, good-quality pork sausages and remove the meat from the skins, break it up and add to the pan to seal. Next, add 500g minced steak and sauté until the meat is browned. 

Add a splash of red wine and de-glaze the pan before stirring in a tin of chopped plum tomatoes, 1 tbsp tomato puree, 1/2 pint beef stock, 2tsp dried oregano, 2tsp dried basil, 1tsp dried thyme, 1tsp dried parsley, a good grind of black pepper and 1/4 tsp celery salt (you can add more of this to taste as it is very strong!) Stir well and add 1tbsp tomato ketchup and a splash of Worcestershire sauce. 

Add a few soaked hickory chunks to the egg and leave the casserole uncovered to absorb all the wonderful, smokey flavour. Check and stir after 30 mins and again after a further 30 minutes then put a lid on the casserole to simmer for a further 30 minutes. 

Serve with spaghetti that has been tossed in extra virgin olive oil and top with fresh parmesan cheese. Goes down a treat with a glass of red and some crusty garlic bread!

(ZA & AW) Feeling chilly? Spicy peri-peri boerwors pizza

Ir's chilly evening in Stotfold UK but November temperatures never stop us from cooking outside and making some epic grub!

We ramped the egg up to over 500degF for this cook. The rib rack means the ceramic stone placed on top, indirect on the grill, is at the perfect height in the dome to cook epic pizza. We shaped our pizzas on the baking sheets that are cut to the size of the pizza stone, spread tomato sauce and grated mozzarella evenly over the dough and then put on our toppings.

Peri-peri boerwors is a delicious, speciality beef sausage from our local butcher (who have links with South Africa) and it is perfect as a spicy beef topping. I simply took the boerwors out of it's skin, broke up the mince and fried until it was caramelised and crispy. This was sprinkled over the prepared base, along with roasted red onion pieces and a roasted, chopped green chilli and sliced, fresh cherry tomatoes.

 A light sprinkling of  little more mozzarella, and pizzas were ready to go in. We were VERY careful to slowly "burp" the egg as the temperature of the dome was a blistering 550degF. Flames were licking through the open daisy wheel on top and through the vent at the bottom! The pizza went in for 12 minutes and came out golden and bubbling with a crisp base and caramelised topping. We enjoyed them with citrus olives and a fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil salad drizzled with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. A touch of the Mediterranean in sleepy Bedfordshire!

(ZA) Hot stuff! Tasty chargrilled tuna steaks

Tonight was the night we decided to chargrill some fresh tuna for the first time. The tuna steaks I had, until recently, bought from our local Tesco were always too thin to be suitable for "egging" and always had a slightly unpleasant, dry after-taste. I have switched to Waitrose and the results are astounding! 

The tuna I have bought from them is thick enough to chargrill and both smells and feels really fresh so we though we'd chance throwing it on the minimax with the cast iron grill for just 2 minutes each side at 400degF and it was absolutely delicious. We served it with *hot pepper sauce and buttered new potatoes. 

*1 chopped red onion, 1 chopped red or green pepper, 1 chopped red chilli, 1 stick of celery chopped saute for 5 minutes until softened then add a tin of tomatoes. Simmer for 15 minutes then add juice of 1/2 a lemon, 2tsp worcestershire sauce and 1/2 tsp tabasco sauce and serve. Goes well with fish and also in an omelette with cheese!

(ZA) New gear update - Jalapeño chilli poppers

This weekend is going to be "Hot, hot, hot" when we try out our new chilli pepper grilling rack! 

This rack was from Amazon UK for under £13 including the chilli corer and holds 18 stuffed chillis. We will be trying out several different stuffings this weekend including cheddar cheese, cream cheese and bacon to see how this bad boy performs!

As always, a blog entry will follow.....

(ZA & AW) Cedar-planked salmon with a honey & pesto glaze.

Tonight's tea is another new dish. A delicate piece of fresh salmon with a honey and pesto glaze cooked on a soaked cedar plank. 

We soaked the plank for a few hours in cold water and then set up the egg to 350degF direct with the flat side of the cast-iron grill uppermost. To make the glaze, mix approximately 40g green pesto mixed with 1/2 tsp runny honey, 1/2 clove garlic minced and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil to loosen the glaze a little. We placed the side of salmon on the plank and brushed it with pesto glaze before putting on the egg for 15 minutes. 

We then placed the cut lemons on the grill and cooked for a further 10 minutes before serving. The fish was done to perfection, flaked perfectly and still slightly opaque. It made a delicious tea served with crispy, buttered jacket potatoes with peppery watercress. We would really recommend that anyone give this a go on their barbecue or smoker as it really does lift a beautiful piece of fish to sublime but affordable treat!

(ZA & AW) Saturday night mixed kebab (No booze required!)

We decided we wanted to cook our own version of doner kebab this evening but add a special element of turkish marinaded chicken kebabs and serve the whole lot in a toasted pitta with the traditional "manky" salad, sriracha chilli sauce and garlic yoghurt sauce. 

First we blended lamb mince with an onion, 2tsp each of coriander and cumin, and 1tsp salt until smooth. We then formed the meat into a fat sausage shape then loaded it onto our specially-made kebab skewer. We wrapped it tightly in cling film and left it to chill in the fridge for a few hours. Egg set-up direct at 350degF, the lamb went in to start cooking. 

After around 20 minutes, we placed chicken kebabs on around the edges of the grill. The chicken had been marinaded in a new recipe we were trying today for Turkish chicken kebabs. To make the marinade, we blitzed together an onion, 2 cloves garlic, 4 tsp natural yoghurt, salt, 1 tbsp tomato puree and 1 tbsp lemon juice until smooth. We coated the chicken pieces in the marinade and left in the fridge until we were ready to load our flexible wire kebab skewers.  

We cooked the lamb to an internal temperature of 130degF, until the chicken was cooked through and had a good, crispy char on the outside. We carved the kebab meat into thin slices and served with lemon wedges, pitta and salad (finely shredded iceberg lettuce, finely slice onion and tomato wedges) It tasted amazing and we didn't even have to be drunk to enjoy it! 

(ZA) Gear update: I do love a bargain!

For sometime now, we have been on the lookout for a small, cast iron casserole dish to use as a "dutch oven" in the minimax BGE. Le Crueset do a beautiful range of cast iron cookware that we really like in a cerise colour and they do an 18cm casserole that would have been ideal if it weren't for the price tag! We are only going to be using this once in a while so we were loath to fork out over £100 for a little pot we would get minimal use from. After a bit of research, I found this little cast iron pot, made by a different company, for £35 that fits the egg a treat both with or without lid...it's even the right colour! It seems decent quality so we shall see if it does the job!

(ZA) Saturday Super Salmon

We decided to cook ourselves a piece of fish as a "trial run" for Adie Webster's official EGGspert demo at the start of September. This will be the fish course of a four course taster menu we will be preparing for those who are looking at investing in a Big Green Egg. I reckon the dishes we've come up with will show off egging at it's best. We're hoping to inspire these would-be eggers with some magical smoked food!

I left this side of salmon out of the fridge for ten minutes to come up to room temperature before placing it on a cedar plank that had soaked for a few hours in cold water. It would need to be soaked for at least 30 minutes but I had the extra time so why not?

I gave the fish a light coating of olive oil and placed it on the wet plank with a few thin slices of lemon on top then transferred it to the egg which needed to be 350degF Direct. The plank sits directly on the cast iron grate. 

This piece of salmon took about 25 minutes to cook to perfection but we checked it after 12 minutes at the same time as placing a couple of lemon halves on the grill. I would recommend that you check the fish every 3 or 4 minutes (after this initial period) to see if it is cooked through as it is easy to over-cook it. 

Served on it's plank in the centre of the table, the fish makes an impressive centrepiece. We squeezed the grilled lemons over the fish. Grilling the lemons caramelises the sugars in the fruit and gives them a sweet/tart flavour, a little less acidic that fresh lemons, which really elevated this dish to something really stunning. Grilled lemons go really well with pork belly too! 

We served our fish with steamed new potatoes and peppery watercress dressed with a honey & wholegrain mustard vinaigrette. (50ml red wine vinegar, 1tbsp wholegrain mustard, 2tbsp runny honey, salt, pepper and 150ml extra virgin olive oil. blitz until blended. If it is too acidic, add a little more honey to taste) The fish was cooked to perfection and had taken on a little smoke flavour from the plank but only enhancing the natural salmon flavour without obliterating it. A really light and delicious summery dish.

(ZA) Upper crust Squire's breakfast muffins

Today's brunch is something with a bit of class. A Squire's breakfast ensemble inside a toasted muffin with a topping of salty, ripe Stilton. Just right for an old bean with a BGE and a taste for the finer things in life!

"Squire's breakfast" is a small fillet steak wrapped around a black pudding stuffing and a couple of rashers of streaky bacon around the whole thing, secured with butcher's twine. 

We cooked these direct at around 350degF for around 10 minutes until they reached an internal temperature of 140degF so that the fillet steak was medium-rare. The bacon takes no time at all to cook and the black pudding is cooked in production so it only has to be warmed through. This allowed us to cook to the steak without having to worry about raw stuffing.

We toasted standard English muffins on the hot grill for serving...

and served the meat in the muffin with a little Stilton crumbled over the top. Rich black pudding, crispy bacon, strong tasty Stilton and soft-as-butter, silky fillet steak was sublime and delicious but even better once we lowered the tone with a squirt of tomato ketchup!

(ZA) "Who needs Dominoes?" rainy day pizza.

New pizza toppings today! It has been miserably rainy for most of the day but we've never been ones to let a bit of British weather spoil our fun so, during a lull in the downpour, we lit the egg, put in the pizza stone and ramped her up to 400degF ready to pop our pizzas in for a few minutes to cook.

I used my bread machine to make a basic olive oil pizza dough. It only takes 50 minutes and is infinitely better than the packet pizza dough mix or ready-made bases so well worth the effort. I shaped the dough on non-stick oven liners, then left to rise again for 15 minutes before I covered them generously with passata,  grated mozzarella and the toppings of choice. 

The pizza pictured above is our slow-cooked short-rib beef with chopped fresh tomatoes and onions that had been caramelised in a little butter until soft and sweet. A topping off with a sprinkle of more grated mozzarella and on the BGE indirect, with the pizza stone sitting on top of a rib holder to get the food right to the hottest part of the dome. Around 9 minutes and we check to make sure the base is cooked.

The home-made dough made a light, airy pizza base and the base was crisp and delicious.

The pizza below is topped with deli smoked pork sausage, ham, roasted peppers, onions and chestnut mushrooms. 

(ZA) Zingy red onion and orange relish

A few years ago, we went to a food fair  where they served Big Green Egg pulled pork with this amazing fresh onion and orange relish. It's taken quite some time to reverse-engineer the recipe but we finally did it and it goes beautifully with belly pork as well as in a bun with pulled pork.

Take two large red onions and slice finely. Place the onion in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Allow to steep for one minute and then drain. Add the juice of five limes (one cup of lime juice), the juice of two oranges and 1tsp malden salt. At this point you could add a very finely chopped fresh red chilli. Mix thoroughly and place in a lidded container in the fridge overnight. The juice will turn pink and the onion will be slightly pickled but still crunchy. 

(ZA) Everybody loves a belly rub!

We asked our tame Butcher for a pork belly, off the bone and skin removed and then marinated it in a mixture of two rubs overnight. Rub one was a piquant, hot, house rub of garlic powder, onion powder, white & brown sugars, chipotle powder, hot chilli powder, english mustard powder and black pepper. Rub two was a sweeter, fruitier rub of cinnamon, allspice, ginger, cloves, chipotle powder, brown sugar and sea salt.

We smoked the pork over applewood chunks for 5 hours at 210degF, indirect and checked to see if it had started to render out the fat. After 6 hours, the pork was cooked and caramelised with the fat having crisped up on the outside and softened on the inside. If necessary, with a larger piece, it could go another hour before being at this stage.

We then placed the pork in a container that was very slightly bigger than the joint (but only slightly) place greaseproof on top and another dish weighted down with cans from the cupboard to press the pork down while in the chiller. Chill for a few hours. Once chilled slice into portions.

When you are ready to serve, take the pork slices and grill them, direct, at 400degF for 3-4 minutes each side until crisp, caramelised and warmed through. 

We served ours with bacon, maple and blue-cheese slaw (see previous blog entry), stuffed goats cheese portobello mushrooms and a red onion & orange relish (see next blog entry). We also put a few lemon halves on the grill for a few minutes which gives the resulting "squeeze" a delicious caramel sweetness!