Thousands of enthusiasts of the Big Green Egg outdoor cooker gathered in Stone Mountain Park outside of Atlanta for the 22nd annual EGGtoberfest. The tickets to be one of the cooks to prepare food on 300 Big Green Eggs set out in the huge parking lot sold out in less than a minute this year, and the lucky winners offered samples of their culinary creations to hordes of “Eggheads” traveling from tent to tent to choose the people’s choice winner.
In addition to the amateur chefs, two tents presented instructional cooking demos from notable culinarians from across the country and Mexico. Of course, in addition to all that education, attendees were able to sample the dishes prepared by the pros at the end of each session.
Under the Flavor Fair tent, the day’s classes kicked off with local Atlanta favorite Deborah VanTrece of Twisted Soul Cookhouse & Pours. Chef VanTrece walked the assembled crowd through the preparation of coffee-rubbed Springer Mountain Farms chicken legs served with smoked potato salad, and her happy students gobbled up every bite of her presentation.
Two Charlotte-based eateries that are members of the same restaurant group shared the bill for the second session, cooking up vastly different cuisines on the Big Green Egg. Matt Barry of Midwood Smokehouse used the smoker in a more conventional way to cook up some delightful brisket burnt ends topped with a novel cold brew coffee redeye BBQ sauce. Barbecue fans go crazy for burnt ends in just about any situation, and these little morsels with their crispy layer of smoky bark certainly did not disappoint.
Barry was joined by Shai Fargian of the fast casual Middle Eastern street food chain, Yafo Kitchen. Chef Fargian actually used the cooker more like a bread oven to prepare a delectable breakfast dish from Georgia – the country, not the state. Using prepared pizza dough, he formed a canoe of bread filled with feta and parmesan cheese topped with an egg that he actually poached on top of the dish while it was baking in the egg. Ripping off a chunk of the flat bread and dragging it through the cheesy, eggy topping made for a fantastic morning treat.
The Charlotte chefs were followed by a trio of talented chefs from south of the border who make up the Big Green Egg Mexico cooking team. Olga Zambrano led the team of Adrian Seyffert and Rodrigo Martinez through the preparation of Mexican Adobo Pasta Tacos and a delicious smoked cheese with Mexican guava jam for dessert. The chefs used a cast iron skillet placed directly on the Egg’s grate to stir fry fideo, a short skinny pasta reminiscent of angel hair and then finished the pasta by braising it in the rich red adobo pepper sauce.
The headliner of the day under the Flavor Fair tent was the appearance by world-renowned grilling cookbook author Steven Raichlen. Any barbecue or grilling aficionado who doesn’t have at least a few of his 32 books on the kitchen shelf isn’t worth their seasoning salt.
Raichlen took on an ambitious four-course menu during his half hour session and managed to pull it off, serving an appetizer of pork shot glasses made with bacon and sausage filled with cheese and shrimp as an appetizer, a perfectly-cooked spinalis and grilled asparagus as the main course and a sweet treat Mexican dessert quesadilla to finish off the meal. An engaging teacher and a fantastic chef, Raichlen was the perfect closer for the day of instruction.
