I Dream of Ribs...

This post is about ribs.  No sides, no nonsense, just ribs.  Sorry vegetarians, but there is no substitute.  Unfortunately we do not have a smoker, so we had to make do with the oven.  As I write this post, the ribs are still cooking, so I don't even know whether they will be any good, or fully cooked before midnight.  But however they turn out, we will pretend that everything went according to plan.

We got two racks of fresh babybacks from Fairway.  Went for two different styles: one rack chipotle barbeque, the other rack we experimented with a tangy orange-honey glaze.

The first step to good rack of ribs is a solid dry rub.  For best results be sure to rub the ribs the night before, at least 10-12 hours before cooking.  Rather than my normal approach of throwing in seven different kinds of heat and calling it a day,  I went for two distinct, simple rubs.

Brown sugar, garlic, mustard powder, and cumin formed the basis of both rubs.  For the barbeque, also added chipotle powder, paprika, and black pepper.  For the sweet-spicy rub, added cloves, ginger, and Chimayo, a New Mexican chile that I found in my box of spices.  It's sweet, smoky, spicy, and a little bit tangy, which was perfect for our purposes.  If you can get your hands on some, I would highly recommend it.





I can't say for certain what the proportions for each rub were, not because it is a closely guarded secret, but because I did it 100% by taste.  I can say go light on the mustard powder and heavy on the brown sugar.  Bout equal parts cumin and garlic.  For the BBQ, add quite a bit of chipotle, depending on heat tolerance; and for the sweet-spicy, go light on the cloves and heavy on the brown sugar and chimayo.  Run of the mill chili powder and cayenne might make a good substitute for the chimayo.

Sorry for the long-winded description.  The basic idea is you want the sugar to bring out the natural sweetness of the pork, and the spice because who wants to eat bland ribs?  Once you have your rub composed, it's time to prep the ribs.  Use a small knife to separate and peel the membrane from the backside of the ribs, then sprinkle each side lightly with salt.

Plant eaters look away now.

Personally not a big fan of overly salty foods, but it is necessary whenever cooking meat as it helps break down the texture, making it more tender and juicy.  Give the salt 5-10 minutes to soak in, then coat each side liberally with your dry rub.

Be sure to get those exposed edges too.

Wrap 'em up in foil and let them sit overnight.

Now, I started this post the day of cooking, while the ribs were in the oven.  However, time flies, and here I am a week later finishing this post.  The point being, I don't remember exactly the cooking times or temperatures we used, but you should allow at least 6 hours to ensure properly tender slide-off-the-bones ribs. 

The original plan was for me to start the ribs cooking early in the day since I had the day off.  However, I ended up going to a Mets game (they lost) and the ribs went in the oven around 6:00pm, at about 200 F.  While the oven preheated, we pulled the ribs out of the fridge, then stuck them in the oven still wrapped in foil.  Then we hit the sauce.

Hittin' the sauce with an IPA.

Cooking Sauce: an action shot.

First we grabbed the ingredients for both sauces:

Oranges, orange zest, honey, beer, apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, bourbon, mustard (didn't use any), chipotles, chopped red chiles, tomatoes, onion, garlic, butter, and habaneros. 

I think we finally figured out a good BBQ sauce.  We started with the same approach as the May 5th salsa:  blacken a few onions and tomatoes in a skillet. 

Once those were done we threw them in a food processor with chipotles and a few garlic cloves. For the honey glaze, we fried the chiles in a skillet with some roughly chopped garlic, then added that to a blender with a few oranges.

 

Meanwhile, we heated up half a stick of butter and a plash of apple cider vinegar in a medium pot, one for each sauce.  Once the butter was melted we added the processed and blended mixtures, along with a tablespoon or so of their respective dryrubs, and a healthy shot of bourbon, and a dash of beer.  Also added some Worcestershire to the bbq and some honey to the honey sauce.  We let each simmer on the stovetop for a while to thicken.

Barbeque

Honey Glaze

Quick note:  The bbq sauce came out great, smoky, spicy, and hearty.  We didn't add the orange zest or the habanero to the honey glaze, but in retrospect we should have.  It came out a bit sweet, while not very spice and lacking in that orange flavor which would have really given it some character.

After about two hours we pulled the ribs out of the oven, drowned them in sauce, and covered them back up to cook for another 30-45 minutes.

We then cooked them for about half an our uncovered, after re-saucing.  

After just over three hours of cooking time, they were looking great:

Getting a little impatient. 

By this point it was well after 9:30pm, and we were getting pretty hungry.  So we cranked up the heat to blast them for another 45 minutes or so.  They came out plenty juicy, but not quite slide-off-the-bones tender.  At any rate, it was late, and it was time to eat, so we slathered on some more sauce and ate like kings. 

Hallie joined us for the eating portion of this excursion, and can testify that they were indeed tasty.

There you go, ribs in ~30 easy steps.  What will we cook next?  Who Knows?!  Seriously, send us some suggestions.  

P. S. On a personal note, I got a new phone and still need a lot of people's numbers, so text me: 682 559 0670

It Ain't Easy Bein Cheesy

Today, we channel our inner Cheesasurus Rex and make chipotle mac n' cheese!

Please don't sue us kraft

How can you say no?!?

Saute about a half pound of ground pork.  Add some cumin, chipotle, salt and pepper.   Cook until slightly browned.  In a separate pan, saute sliced shiitake mushrooms in oil with some pepper.  

So delicious you will hallucinate

Today's beer pairing, we're going out to Northern California to the Bear Republic Brewery.  We also suggest something culinary appropriate to listen to.  Maybe a little String Cheese Incident...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCODxHMwuEo  

NorCal gold!

Before we get to ahead of ourselves, get some water boiling for the Mac!  We went with ziti because that's what we had in our cupboard.  Luckily, ziti lends itself well to be being baked.  While all that crap is going on, start chopping up some green peppers, chipotles, and cheese.  We went for a blend of a half block of extra sharp cheddar, a half block of pepperjack, and a small bit of Pimento, just for good measure.

 Once the mac, shrooms, and sausage are done, combine it with everything you just chopped up in a big cauldron, add some butter, cream, and stir until the cheese begins to melt.

Double, double toil and trouble

 Pour the contents into a nice big casserole dish (there should be enough to feed the Canadian army) and top with a little more grated cheese, bead crumbs to give it a crispy top, a little oregano  and some pepper.  And throw it in the oven at 350 degrees until the top is slightly browned.

Y'all come back now, ya hear

And that's how you make fried chicken!!  And I know we've been making a lot of promises on what else we're gonna make, but in all seriously, RIBS are on the menu for us this week!

Cinco de Mayo, the Most American of Holidays

This is the post in which Graham and I prove we actually have friends... by hiring a Guatemalan migrant worker and getting Graham's sister, Chrissy, to invite her friends, Megan and Mike.

Chrissy, Megan, and Mike, from left to right.

So how do you celebrate the day when Mexico won a semi-decisive battle against France?

Enchiladas!

 We made two different kinds: half with shredded chicken and half with roasted veggies.  Both batches were filled with cheese and green onions, topped with cheese, sauce, guacamole, and salsa.  Everything was homemade, obviously.  Of course nothing goes better with enchiladas than fresh margaritas.

Allow me a short digression regarding the margaritas.  By the time I got home from work on Sunday, the party was already underway, with mango salsa made by Megan and Mike going around.  (Digression within a digression: the mango salsa was delicious, but I didn't get the recipe, and it was demolished before we could get a good picture.)  Back to the point;  when I walked through the door I was confronted with Graham filling the blender with a mixture of tequila, lime juice, and blue liqueur of a most unnatural color.   Needless to say, we quickly put Chrissy in charge of the margaritas, which proved to be one of the best decisions of the evening.

This batch was strawberry!  Remnants of the Blue Grahamarita visible in foreground.

Alright, back to the food!  First step to enchiladas was cooking the filling.  Graham seasoned some chicken cutlets with a hearty dose of chipotle powder, paprika, cumin, and epazote.  Those went into the skillet while we chopped some vegetables. 

Technically speaking, we had a mix of vegetables, fruits, and fungi.  We sliced some onions, carrots, red and green peppers, and mushrooms and drizzled with olive oil.

David Harlor, our Guatemalan, hard at work.  Was informed that Guatemalans are in fact not from Mexico.

Sliced the veggies thinly for maximum variety per enchilada.  Cooked in a couple large skillets with a dash of beer each, light sprinkling of cumin, paprika, and epazote.  The veggies require less seasoning than the chicken since they develop their own unique, complex flavors, which complement the sauce (mentioned below) nicely.

Beer adds a little flavor and helps to caramelize the veggies a bit.

Meanwhile, Graham got serious with some tortillas:

We don't mess around when there are 70 tortillas at stake.

While we had our slaves party guests shred some chicken.

Preheat some tortillas briefly in a dry skillet to make them more malleable

and have another margarita while you're at it.  We also had a batch of more traditional lime margaritas, but it was hard to get pictures of the drinks as they were going fast. 

Anyways, once the chicken was shredded, tortillas heated, and veggies cooked,

it was time for Enchilada Construction!

Step 1: Veggies and/or chicken in the tortilla, pinch of green onions.

Step 2:  Layer of cheese.

Step 3:  Rollin', rollin', rollin'.

The process in motion.

Finally, no enchilada is complete without a hearty, spicy sauce.  This recipe is actually courtesy of mi madre.  The basic idea: a simple roux (equal parts flour and oil) with no small amount of garlic and chilis.

In your skillet, lightly brown about equal parts garlic and peppers (jalapeno, habanero, bhut jolokia, whatever you can handle) in olive oil or butter:

Then add oil and slowly stir in flour so as to avoid lumps.  Simmer the sauce briefly, and it never hurt to add a bit of chipotle sauce.

once all ~50 enchiladas are rolled, coat liberally with sauce and shredded cheese.

Apparently shredding cheese is just the bees knees.

Top left: the "non-dairy" enchiladas.

Sadly, our two gallons of sauce still wasn't enough for all the enchiladas, but we spread it as far as we could. Anyways, once those suckas are prepared throw them in the oven (round 250-300 for a few minutes) and get back to work on the salsa.  For a smoky chipotle style, throw some halved tomatoes and quartered onions in a skillet with a dash of oil.

Cook until one side is blackened.  In lieu of a smoker/grill, burning one side to a crisp gives the salsa that beautiful smoky flavor.

When the tomatoes look like this, throw the them and  the onions in a food processor with some fresh garlic and chipotle peppers.  Graham and I made a schoolboy error by purchasing chipotle sauce instead of peppers, but the flavor came out alright anyways.

What happens when you don't pay attention to details.

Briefly process that food, then serve while still hot.  Simultaneously, crush some avocados with lime juice, chipotles, garlic and lime juice for some nice guacamole.

Guacamole, pre-crushing.

In the words of Dave Harlor, the Guacamole was "a work of Art."  Also, the leftover mango salsa added some nice undertones.

Pro Chef Tip: Make sure your guests don't eat all the salsa and guac before the enchiladas are done.

Once the toppings are prepared and the cheese melted, the enchiladas can come out of the oven and onto the plates.  Serve with guac, salsa, and hot sauce (Cholula and Tapatio are good standard options).  Interesting observation: Google Blogger tries to correct "Cholula" to "Cholera." Hopefully just a coincidence...

And finally, the moment you've all been waiting for: cue drum roll and brass section: daa-da-da-daa-daa-da-daaaa.....

EAT!

Aerial view of "eating."

 And, finally,  no sibling hangout is complete without a little sibling rivalry:

Hard to say who is winning.

Well, there you have it.  Enchiladas and good times.  Sorry the post was over a week late, but there were a lot of drunken photographs to sort through.  Special thanks to the aforementioned guests who helped us shred cheese, roll enchiladas, and get drunk.  Couldn't have pulled this off without you... well, we could've gotten drunk just fine, but you definitely saved us with the food preparation. 

Keep an eye out for tuna or some other fancy fish in the next post.  As Ryann Hall pointed out to me, fish is not a vegetable, so apologies in advance to our strictly vegetarian readership.  Not sure if any of you are vegans, but if so I would imagine you would have long given up hope on this Drunken Galley.

P.S. Ribs are on the horizon...