Buildings and add ons for our outdoor kitchen. It’s continually spreading out, like an oil slick.
Structures
Category: Outdoors
Sigg Bottles
If you want a metal bottle, buy a Swiss made Sigg. I was a bottle tester for Sigg once, and I beat the ever loving hell out of the test bottle. All I could do was dent it a little.
The story: When I was in the outdoor recreation industry, our rep for the North Face picked up Sigg as a new product line. I was already on the pro staff for US made Ross Reels (a fly reel company), so he wanted me to try them out. I didn’t tell him I had had a Sigg bike bottle for years.
Rep: “Would you like a free Sigg bottle to test?”
Swag city.
Me: “Sure, but you should know that I can tear up an anvil.”
Rep: “You will love these. They are as close to bombproof as they come.”
Was he ever right. I still have the test bottle in the picture, and have worn some paint off it, but it will probably last longer than I will. At least it will keep me from being thirsty for many years to come.
Barbecue Without the Smoke
I really can’t get excited about smoking some pork for hours over hickory coals, when one the best pit barbecue joints around is a few miles away from me (the Top Hat in Blount Springs, AL), and they sell the stuff expertly cooked by the pound. This may be sacrilege, as I live in the state with the most barbecue joints per capita in the country, and we have manifold styles of barbecue, but I make mine without smoke.
How can that be done? I stole a method from the great chef Rick Bayless, who in turn stole it from some cooks in Mexico. I believe composer Igor Stravinsky said, “Good composers imitate; great composers steal.” Same thing with cooks.
The technique is essentially to boil dry a big piece of pork two or three times, and to let it fry in its own fat the same number of times. Fill up your pot with water up to the top of the piece of pork, and just let it bubble. It takes anywhere from two to four hours to do this, so this is really slow cooking. The result is some fabulously tender meat. Just don’t forget the salt. Maybe it should be called Neo-barbecue.
Tuscan Style Grill
This is an idea that came about from my sudden interest in Tuscan outdoor cooking, where a fire is built on a hard surface, and then a grill is placed above. I thought, why not make it as flexible as possible? Also, I had a number of leftover bricks to do something with. So Rustico decided to make a multi level open hearth grill.
The foundation may not look like much, but that is one hundred pounds of concrete. The grill is behind my wood burning oven, and next to my rustic cabinet. No worries, there will be a brick wall between the fire and the cabinet.
Eventually the inside will be lined with slate, as soon as I find an adhesive that can take the heat. I’ll probably go with thinset mortar mixed with fireclay, and buy a couple of grates to go along with my Lodge ones. Then it’s off to a dream project–Stew Stoves like the ones in the kitchen at Monticello. Old school is the best school.
Steamed Sponge Cake with Fresh Berries and Cream
We have wild blueberries in the woods, and fresh strawberries at the Festhalle, our local farmer’s market. How about a spring dessert?
Just cut up the strawberries, and add some sugar. The blueberries don’t need anything but their own fine selves. Whip up some heavy cream and steam a sponge cake.
Ingredients for the Sponge Cake
2 organic Eggs
1/2 cup organic Sugar
Vanilla
Meyer Lemon Juice
1/2 cup Flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Separate the eggs, and turn the whites into a meringue with the sugar. I used our thirty year old Kitchen Aid, but a whisk will do as well. Add the yolks, vanilla, and lemon juice, beat for a minute or so, and then slowly fold in the flour and baking powder. Butter a baking dish, and get to steaming.
I bought a USA made wok from the Wok Shop in San Fran, but made my own lid out of an old mixing bowl. The knob is dogwood that I turned on my lathe. The lid is exactly the right size. It accommodates a steaming rack and a cake pan.
The steamed cake has a wonderful texture and taste. It better, as it has all that juice to soak up. The last bite, which is nothing but cake mush and berry juice, is the best.
Wild Blueberries
The first wild blueberries are ripe here, which is the cause for some serious noshing (see the next post). These tiny buckshot sized berries have a mind blowing sharpness of taste.
Every other year I will spend an hour or so picking enough of these little devils to make one of my favorite sauces. Here it is: Wild Blueberry Sauce. Serve it on crepes or any pastry.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon Butter
1 cup of Wild Blueberries
2 tablespoons of Honey
Juice of 1 Key Lime
2 drinks of Brandy (One for the dish, one for the cook)
Cook the blueberries in the butter, and then add the other ingredients. More or less honey may be needed depending on the tartness of the berries. Lemon juice can be substituted for the limes, but I always use what I have (my wife grows Key Limes and Meyer Lemons). A crepe is really just a thin pancake, but once again, everything sounds better in French. You could use cognac instead of brandy, but they’re just different priced versions of the same thing.
The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams, 1883 – 1963
so much depends upon
a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white chickens
Inspired by one of my all time favorite television shows, Shaun the Sheep, I put my very own mini-junkyard in my new chicken fortress (the sheep flock in the show spend hours jimmying with the discards in their junkyard) . It’s only an old wheelbarrow, but the chicks can run for cover under it whenever they get buzzed by a hawk. Just today, the entire flock was snoozing under it.
The old fellow lost its wheel while getting dragged up there to the fortress. I hand mixed tons of concrete in this thing, and the dents prove it. No worries, however–I have a new red wheelbarrow.
Red Flour Paint
Cook some paint! Or not, as this really doesn’t have to be cooked. Cooking changes the consistency of the starch used, so do some chemistry experiments, or just throw the ingredients into a jar and shake.
Ingredients
Flour (Rye or Wheat)
Water
Red Iron Oxide
Linseed Oil
I left off proportions, because everyone wants a different consistency with paint. Rye is the traditional choice for flour, but wheat is less expensive. Cook those with the water, then add the pigment–there are tons of natural pigments to choose from, and a very little goes a long ways. My advice is to stick with the mineral ones, as they are fade proof. I use food grade linseed oil for interior paint, and nasty boiled linseed oil for exterior paint. It just dries faster.
Once you get into the natural paint deal, you may never buy prepared paint again. To steal a comparison from Wendell Berry, it’s like the difference between real food and industrial food, industrial food being like industrial sex.
The Geese Who Ate Edna Henke’s Yard
If it had not been for baseball, the New York Yankees, and good times down on the farm in Cullman, Alabama, Edna Henke, Bill Henke’s sister, would have not had her yard destroyed by my grandfather’s flock of Cotton Patch (weeder) geese. Strawberries, a raging bull, and German obscenities also have a role to play in this story of woman versus bull and bird.
So this whole thing started about a hundred years ago, when the New York Yankees tried to sign my shortstop playing grandfather to a major league baseball contract. It was a laughingly small offer, and my grandfather said no thanks–this is at the same time some Chicago White Sox players threw the World Series because they were so poorly paid–though my grandfather later would always say, “I could never play for a team called Yankees.”
My grandfather then became a hugely successful farmer, who grew two main crops–strawberries and sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes practically grow by themselves. Strawberries need tons of labor, because they are small perennial plants that are easily crowded out by weeds. Hiring little old German ladies in the neighborhood to weed his strawberries became his main expense. That’s when he decided to replace his human labor with geese.
Edna Henke just happened to be one of those little old German ladies, and she wasn’t too pleased with the decision. She was even less pleased when my grandfather’s new flock of geese flew across the road from his strawberry field into her yard, ate every blade of grass in it, and then left her piles of souvenir droppings. She immediately decided to sue for damages.
There was one problem–she had no way of going to town to the lawyer’s office, as she had no vehicle. She put on her best “I’m going to town to sue somebody” dress anyway, and called my grandfather (he also owned the local phone company). She asked for a ride with him into Cullman, as she said she had some business to transact. My grandfather said, “Sure, why not. I’m going to town anyway.”
Edna high tailed it over toward my grandfather’s house, and took a short cut through his cow pasture. His prize bull didn’t much like that, and started chasing Edna. She escaped by climbing an oak tree that was in the middle of the pasture.
By now, Edna was sorely pissed off. Her yard had been eaten and crapped on by geese, and she had been chased and treed by a bull. My grandfather said he looked out his door, and saw her shaking her fist at the bull, and cursing a blue streak in German. My guess would be she said something like “Heilige fliegende kinderscheisse.” The polite translation of that would be, “Holy flying baby poop.”
After my grandfather fished her out of the tree, and they left for town, he asked Edna where she wanted to go.
Earnie: “Where do you want to go, Edna?”
Edna: “Lawyer’s.”
Earnie: “Why do you need to see the lawyer?”
Edna: “Sue you.”
My grandfather, silver tongued as usual, talked her out of it before they got close to the lawyers. He had her yard fixed, and sold most of the geese. A few of the worst offenders ended up in the pot. My guess would be that Edna got one or two for herself. Then he had to re-hire all his old workers, but eventually dumped strawberries in favor of growing watermelons, another low maintenance crop.
Moral of this story: I feel sorry for the geese.
Trangia 25–A Sustainable Outdoor Stove
In my never ending quest for sustainable whatever, this one just about takes the prize. The Trangia “spirit” burner, which is the little brass thingy in the middle, will burn anything from denatured alcohol to Everclear. In short the fuel is completely renewable, especially as long as the world is populated by drinkers of bourbon.
And then it just disappears! Yes, all that stuff is in that little package. It may not be the hottest stove out there, but they are inexpensive enough to buy a couple or three, and they are still made in Sweden. Confession time–I own five Swedish made outdoor stoves.
I actually met the chief designer for the Optimus stove company, back when it was still Swedish owned, in Salt Lake City, of all places, at an outdoor trade show (I was in the industry). The young man asked me what stoves I used, and I told him I had three Optimus, and two Trangia. He was most impressed by the two Trangia, and took off on a typically European rant about Americans all being gear heads.
Stove Designer: “Every boy and girl scout in Sweden uses Trangia stoves. Here you give kids gas stoves that can explode. It makes no sense whatsoever.”
Technically, he was probably correct. If you can light a match, this stove is perfectly safe. Just don’t drink too much of the fuel.
Southern Fusion Cooking 