Green Egg

Lotje Deelman was editor-in-chief of ELLE Eten, has been working for Allerhande for almost 15 years, and worked behind the scenes on television programs such as MasterChef, de Worsten van Babel On Tour and De Nieuwe Lekkerbek. She ate pig’s trotter with Anthony Bourdain and flirted with Gordon Ramsay in his Aston Martin. Lotje is the (co-)author of more than ten cookbooks and, in her kitchen in the Drenthe countryside, is never too squeamish to set something on fire. On FavorFlav, Lotje shares what’s on her mind every week. This time: Lotje is baking them darker than ever…

Chicken thigh, marinated in ginger and lime, tender on the inside, super-crispy on the outside and deeply infused with smoke. I’ve never made such delicious satay. The grilled salmon with asparagus the next day is better than ever, too. New potatoes baked in their skins on the side. Really delicious. I’m really good. Because I have a new barbecue. A Green Egg. Fuck yeah.

Vans

When I have something new, I’m usually so happy with it that I want to play with it all day, look at it or wear it every day. I wear my new sunglasses, bought for quite a lot of money at an Italian airport, every day. Even when the sun isn’t shining. New Vans spend their first night next to my bed, so they’re the last thing I see when I go to sleep and the first thing I see when I get up. Really. Just ask my children.

Back to that egg. I’d always wanted a Green Egg, but in much the same way I’ve always wanted a Corvette Stingray. I’m a pretty good barbecuer, especially for a girl. I was barbecuing in winter and with a lid back when Jord Althuizen was still at hotel school. I’ve worn out quite a few barbecues in my life. But never a kamado.

Whole hog

I was given this one (not by Green Egg, by the way), and I spend all day thinking up what I’ll make on it that evening. It’s the smallest green egg there is, and if you’re not immediately aspiring to whole hogs, that size is fine. It actually feels more like an extra pan than a barbecue. I’m not very big myself, so it suits me. Small people are fun, by the way—or was it fat people, or small fat people…

Shades of black

Anyway, everything I’ve made on it so far has worked out, except the pizza. I did find a small pizza stone to fit it, but without an extra layer of protection over the coals (it’s called a deflector, a strange word though), they all turned different shades of black. I did use that pizza stone under the chicken, though. As a deflector. After 45 minutes, the whole chicken on a beercan-contraption looked like a Peking duck, its skin so beautifully taut and smooth.

France

The entrecotes the next day are delicious too. Even though they’re slightly overdone, which actually has its charm. A bit like in France, where you don’t know exactly which cut of beef you ordered at that little restaurant in that rather ugly village, and when it arrives you think, shit, what have I done again, and then it turns out to be really delicious, and you think, how do they do that? Well. Like that.