A couple of months ago, I was inspired by Maggie Mason’s Mighty Life List (a Bucket List for the young, healthy and positive-minded) to make my own (though I’m not so young and some might argue the other two points). As you probably could guess, quite a few cooking-related items are on there, despite their relative unimportance to the bigger stuff. But I’d argue that perfecting my smoker technique or turning out a sublime focaccia could add more value to my daily existence than seeing the Northern Lights, becoming fluent in French or going on an Auntie Mame-style journey around the world. (OK, maybe not that last one, but you get the idea.)

Not one to dawdle when I have a goal in mind, I took my first steps to making the Weber Smokey Mountain my bitch this weekend. I’ve selected Gary Wiviott as my mentor/guru/pitmaster for this journey, based on Jason Perlow’s review of his program at Off the Broiler. I used my smoker a few times last year with imperfect results, so I consider myself enough of a novice to follow Wiviott’s program to the letter (begging forgiveness for changing the marinade to something more of my liking). The entire thrust of this book is that everything you know about BBQ is dead wrong and what you really need to do is learn to build a proper fire, arrange the meat correctly, leave it the hell alone and trust your instincts. No futzing with a fancy thermometer or different fire-building techniques for different meats for him; because I run from complicated grilling/smoking setups, this works wonderfully for me too. He gives explicit instructions in the book, so I’m confident that someday I’ll be able to get all Jedi on that BBQ.

Anyway. I marinated chicken halves in harissa with some olive oil, sauteed onion and the juice of a small (and old and somewhat withered-but-still-going-strong) lemon. Building the fire proved a bit, um, challenging with the windy day I chose, but I eventually got the whole thing built to spec, assembled the smoker, and let it go. An hour and a half later, I opened the lid to find The Most Gorgeous Chicken I’ve ever seen (at least at my house):

Daaaaamn…

After the chicken came off at the perfect temperature and at the exact moment Wiviott said to start checking for doneness, I threw a few hard boiled eggs on the top grate for smoked deviled eggs. As a mini experiment, I peeled three of them and heavily cracked the shells of the other three before smoking, hoping to get a Chinese tea egg effect on the whites. (It didn’t work; the eggs were much less smoky-tasting even with the cracks in the shells, so live and learn.) Because the fire was so low after 90 minutes with the chicken, I smoked the eggs for about 45 minutes, until the shelled ones turned a gorgeous amber color.

Homemade mayo has been vexing me lately, separating at the drop of a hat just to mock me. For these eggs, I wanted to give it one more try, and used the milk mayonnaise recipe from Food52 (which I’ve just joined – yay!). It came out thick, creamy, thoroughly delicious and was much, much easier for me to make than egg-based mayos (but also much, much messier).

I made a couple of fillings for the eggs and was pretty happy with both (though I lean more toward pickle flavor in my deviled eggs – personal preference).

with sun-dried tomatoes, up front

also, chives

So all told, it was a pretty good weekend for the Life List (which I’ll have to rename for myself sometime). Changes I’ll make for next time:

• Marinate chicken for 8-12 hours — it was a pretty powerful marinade, but didn’t come through as strongly as I wanted, which was also the fault of…
• Use pecan wood instead of hickory for chicken — hickory was delicious, but overpowered the marinade
• Peel all eggs before smoking (and make the deviled eggs right away — a night in the fridge didn’t do them any favors in the looks department)

Recipes after the jump

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I fully intended to give you a rundown of our July 4th menu today, complete with a couple of lovely side salads inspired by Mark Bittman’s picnics column from last week, but today’s fare was ribs and there’s just no way I can write about vegetables at a time like this.

Since I first posted about the grilled vegetable salad I found on The Kitchen Sink, it’s been a weekly fixture on our table, so I knew Kristin’s featured recipe for baby back ribs wouldn’t disappoint. As ever, through poor planning or simple willfulness, I adapted the recipe a bit, but can’t imagine them being any better even with the full complement of ingredients.

The adaptations were fairly minor, but worth pointing out. To start, as embarrassing as it is for a Southern girl to admit, I have no bourbon in the house. Lucky for me, there is a lot of Jack leftover from some party or other, so that went into the glaze instead.

Though I seem to have an extremely well-stocked spice rack (okay, well-stocked spice bins), my refrigerator is lacking in the saucy condiments department, so I went without the plum and hoisin sauces called for in the glaze. I thought the finished product would lack some depth because of these omissions, so I tinkered a bit on the front end, baking the ribs in a favorite marinade for flank steak — equal parts pineapple juice and soy sauce with a hefty dose of garlic — instead of the stand-alone pineapple juice in the recipe.

Gil and I ran out while the ribs were baking and we were treated to the most mouthwatering smell as we walked up to the front door two hours later. Poor Rufus was left alone with the baking ribs and was beside himself with pork lust by the time we got home; to reward his patience, I gave him a tiny piece of meat with a little fat attached, fresh from the oven.

And I’m not too proud to admit I rewarded myself, too. Mmmmmmm…

At this point, it was a simple thing to fire up the grill, brush the ribs generously with the glaze, and grill them until the crispy bits outnumbered the soft.

As Rufus would (and did) say, “NOM! NOM! NOM!”

recipe after the jump

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And I aim to please. With gorgeous weather predicted for this Memorial Day weekend, I knew I’d have to break out the smoker, and what better way to kick off the summer than with a 7 1/2-pound pork butt?

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Flexibility is the key to a happy marriage. Gil doesn’t complain about picking me up at the train station when I work late, and I don’t complain when he snores like a congested bulldog at night. Also, I suck it up when he changes our dinner plans on the fly by proposing to pick up BBQ from Bourbon BBQ, the new temple of smoked meats in Hawthorne, NJ.

Right. Like I’d ever turn that down.

Tonight, we ordered pulled pork and sausage along with beans and potato salad on the side, but was that good enough for me? Oh, no. Not when I can come up with some way to make things a little more difficult for myself.

I felt like Carolina pulled pork sandwiches, so I threw together a quick vinegar sauce (though I used only one teaspoon of salt instead of the full TWO TABLESPOONS –which must be a typo — called for in the recipe) and tossed it with with an even quicker slaw made of thinly sliced fennel and napa cabbage, sprinkled with brown mustard seeds. I was a little worried that the fennel wouldn’t be so good in the slaw, but it really was terrific and balanced the smoked pork nicely. We piled the pork and slaw on toasted baguette slices and made short work of the mini sandwiches.

Of course, I’m not sure we made much of a dent in the meat overall, so I hope it freezes well — we’re heading to Toronto in a couple of days and it’d probably be confiscated at the security checkpoint, if not sooner.