Big Green Eggs without the Ham

Have you noticed that the shades of the afternoon light have shifted from intense brightness to warm golden tones, marking the transition from summer to early fall and harvest? The squirrels are chattering again and snatching the last of the walnuts, taking bites from the remaining pears and saving up for the winter.
For us, here in glorious Sonoma Valley, we are still living the majority of the days out in Mother Nature’s Playground surrounded by an abundance of late summer herbs, tomatoes, corn, squash, peppers, apples, peaches and pears. Our way of saving up for the winter is by putting food by, canning and preserving the bounty of summer for enjoyment after the golden shades of sunlight have faded.
Savoring preserved foods post-season transports us back to those moments and tastes of the harvest at its freshest. The process of preserving instills a sense of comfort and well-being for the future. It’s very meditative and satisfying. Each time I do any canning; I am transported back to my grandmother’s house in Nebraska where every summer my mother and I joined my grandmother’s network of friends to can what was ready: watermelon into pickles, corn into relish, sweet onions to be pickled and a variety of berries to be turned into pie fillings and jams.
Seasonally, this is my favorite time of year. I continue to occupy my outdoor living space; most importantly my outdoor cooking area. This is where I do my canning of our region’s bounty: jams, pie fillings, chutneys and pestos as well as smoking Copper River Salmon to ‘put up’ for when it is not available fresh. Homemade smoked salmon is easy to do with the proper equipment and so delicious; far better than store-bought.
I’m a big fan of wood-fired cooking which I do all year long both in an outdoor oven and on a charwood–fueled cooker. The very best, most efficient cooker I’ve discovered for this kind of cooking is the Big Green Egg ceramic cooker/grill/smoker. No, it doesn’t come with ham, though fresh ham smoked on it is absolutely delicious!
Not only do I cook regularly on my Big Green Egg at home, but I also get to play on and show off two at Ramekins Cooking School, where I teach classes on wood-fired cookery. In our introduction to cooking on the Big Green Egg, we smoked a salmon filet in less than 20 minutes. It was the most succulent smoked salmon I had ever tasted! We recently taped a cooking segment at Ramekins featuring the ‘Perfect Holiday Turkey’ cooked on the BGE (as it’s known in the egg-world). A 15-pound brined bird was roasted to crispy, smoky perfection within three hours. It was the most flavorful, moist turkey any of us had ever eaten.
Big Green Eggs, modeled on 3,000-year old ceramic cookers are absolutely extraordinary; one of the most efficient cookers available.* When you cook on one, it’s likely you’ll want to join the growing community of egg-heads. I surely did.
*Local distributors: Villa Terrazza in Sonoma and Barbeques Galore in San Rafael or online at www.biggreenegg.com.
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