Strange meats

Tonight's Menu

• grilled cross-cut baby back ribs
• chips
  
• coleslaw
• sliced tomatoes
• freezer pickles

My grocery store has had some unusual cuts of meat lately. I usually go for spareribs if I'm going to do ribs, but these cross-cut baby back ribs were WAY cheap. We'd had some at a neighborhood potluck not too long ago and they were yummy, so I decided to try something different for a change.

I had purchased a locally produced molasses-garlic marinade for the ribs but upon getting it home, I discovered that soy sauce was the second ingredient on the label. Argh! DH and the girl are allergic to soy, so that meant I couldn't use it. (I have GOT to learn to read those labels a little more closely in the store! I never dreamed a molasses-garlic marinade would be soy-based. Stupid!) So I had to cobble together a marinade from what I had in the pantry/fridge. I ended up whisking together some bourbon, brown sugar, orange juice & zest, minced garlic (I actually grated a large clove on my microplane), garam masala, salt & pepper, onion powder and cayenne. I marinated the ribs in a big plastic zipper bag for about 3-4 hours.

After the ribs had marinated I grilled them over medium heat for just a couple of minutes per side to get some nice grill marks/browning on them. Then I moved them to an unlit burner for a good 45 minutes. They weren't QUITE as tender as I would have liked, but they weren't too terribly chewy, and they were super flavorful! If I made these again, I'd leave them a bit longer over the unlit burner to really render out all that fat and get them nice and tender.

Coleslaw was the usual, left over from last night when we had fish tacos.

We're still eating the freezer pickles I made a few weeks ago from the CSA cucumbers. Yum!

Indoor picnic

Tonight's Menu

• oven-cooked pork spare ribs
  
• chuffed potatoes
  
• coleslaw
• freezer pickles
  

We were expecting rain today courtesy of Hurricane Dolly, but not much materialized. I planned an indoor dinner just in case, though!

I bought a HUGE rack of pork spare ribs at the grocery store. These are cheaper per pound than baby back ribs, at least where I live, and I think they're tastier (probably because they have a lot more fat). I cut the rack in half so it would fit in my roasting pan, then rubbed it all over with a mixture of brown sugar, garam masala, chili powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper and cayenne. I put the ribs on a rack in the roasting pan, added a bit of water to the bottom of the pan, covered it tightly with heavy-duty foil and stuck it in the oven for about three hours at 300 degrees F. Then I uncovered the ribs, boosted the heat up to 425 degrees F, and let them get nice and brown for 20-30 minutes. I didn't bother basting them with sauce; just served some on the side (bottled). They were falling-apart delicious and the girl had seconds!

Chuffed potatoes were the usual, as was the coleslaw.

The freezer pickles were sort of an experiment. Our CSA has given us quite a few pickling cucumbers lately and I wasn't sure what to do with them because I have NO desire to get into the whole canning thing. My mom used to can stuff and it seemed like a huge pain in the ass. I just don't want to mess with it at all. So I tried my hand at freezer pickles instead, and it was way easy! I used the top recipe on this page for this batch of pickles. I think they're pretty darn tasty -- kind of sweet/tangy. I'll probably try a more ambitious recipe for my next batch, but if you're new to freezer pickles like I am/was, that's a pretty good recipe to get you started!

Barbecue!

Tonight's Menu

• barbecued pork on buns
• marinated cucumber salad
• sliced tomatoes
  

Finally, the boy was feeling good enough to eat "normal" food tonight! So I went whole hog (hee! see what I did there?) and made some barbecued pork sandwiches for dinner.

I have to admit, this pork was sort of an experiment. What I did was take a shoulder roast, rub it with salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika, and stick it on a rack in a roasting pan. Then I added some water to the bottom of the pan and dropped in two large-ish whole sprigs of rosemary. The idea was to get the rosemary to barely scent/flavor the meat. I covered the pan tightly with heavy-duty foil and stuck it in the oven at 200 degrees F for about 5 hours.

When I pulled it out of the oven I stuck an instant-read thermometer in the roast just to be sure it was fully cooked, which it was, so then I removed it from the pan and set up the grill for indirect heat (two burners on medium, one burner unlit). I put the roast on the unlit burner and started basting it with a Carolina-style barbecue sauce (I buy this already made; it's a mustard-based sauce that goes great with pork).

After maybe 15 minutes total, flipping it from one side to another halfway through, the sauce had kind of baked on to the meat. There still wasn't any browning, though, so I flipped the roast over to one of the lit burners for just a couple of minutes per side to get some nice grill mark action going. Much better, aesthetically speaking! After resting it for a few minutes, I shredded it and served it on buns with thinly sliced sweet onions and more barbecue sauce on the side. Delicious! And not as much trouble as it sounds, honest.

This cucumber salad is one of my favorite things. DH and I first discovered it at a Hungarian restaurant near here and we absolutely fell in love with the way this refreshing, cool salad contrasted with the rather rich main dishes (I admit it, I'm a chicken paprikas addict). A couple of years ago I was poking around in an antique store when I found a little pamphlet of Hungarian recipes. Lo and behold, there was our favorite cucumber salad!

Here's how you make it: take two good-sized cucumbers, wash and peel them, then cut cross-wise into thin slices. Put them in a bowl and sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of salt, then set aside for one hour. After an hour, start squeezing the cucumber slices in your hand, discarding the liquid. Put the squeezed cucumbers into a non-reactive bowl, then mix together the following:

3 Tbs white vinegar
3 Tbs water
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/4 tsp minced garlic (I grated it with my microplane)

Pour the vinegar mixture over the cucumbers, toss to coat, then sprinkle another 1/4 tsp or so of paprika over top. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour. We like to serve it the way they do in the restaurant, with a tiny dollop of sour cream on top.

So yummy, and the crunchy, vinegary cucumbers were a nice foil to the rich barbecued pork!

Oh and P.S.: the cucumbers and tomatoes were from the CSA, natch.

A peek inside the CSA box

Now that our CSA shares are featuring oodles of veggies and not so many greens, I'm starting to go a little nuts, but in a GOOD way. Opening the box every week (well, every two weeks in our case) is like opening a big surprise package, and I find myself oohing and aahing over each item and fantasizing about what I'll make with it!

Yes, it's true. I'm a food nerd.

Here's a little peek inside this week's box, and the fantasy recipes I've been concocting:

Early Girl Tomatoes - oodles of 'em! We usually just eat these sliced on sandwiches or wedged in salads, but I have a secret desire to roast them a la my fabulous foodie pal, Kim. Maybe I'll set a few aside for salads/sandwiches and roast the rest!

Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes - I KNOW what I'm doing with these -- they are going in a big bowl with the red cherry, red pear, yellow pear, chocolate cherry and snow white cherry tomatoes that I've picked this week from my garden and my dad's. Then I'll shred in some basil (see below), maybe sprinkle on some very thinly sliced red onions (ditto) and dress them very simply with some good EVOO and balsamic vinegar. Voila, tomato salad!

Onions - several little bulbs of white, red and yellow onions. We've been loving the red ones on focaccia lately and they're great in salads and sandwiches as well. The yellow and white ones I'll use in everything. I go through a LOT of onions when I cook, y'all!

Sweet Basil - we got big hunks of this in our box and I am SO EXCITED, because my own basil is doing horribly this year. We'll eat this in EVERYTHING -- salads, casseroles, in sandwiches in place of lettuce, you name it!

Zucchini - two HUGE ones and two medium-sized ones. I'm using some to make these chocolate cupcakes (can't WAIT to try them!) and will probably grill the rest or fry them up in a skillet with bacon and onions.

Pattypan Squash - OMG, we got two of these and they are as big as pumpkins! I really like the pattypan squash casserole I made last night, but I'm wondering how these would be if I peeled them, chunked them up, then stuck them in the oven with some orange juice & zest, honey and cinnamon? I know that works with acorn and butternut squash, but what about pattypan? I don't know. It sounds good, but it could be gross.

Okra - quite a few pods of this! I love okra just breaded and fried, but I'll bet money DH wants me to make gumbo with it. And I just might! He's been really hungry for it lately and I haven't made it in forever. Ooo -- possible Father's Day dinner idea? Here's hoping he doesn't read this beforehand and ruin the surprise!

Cucumbers - two skinny ones and two big fat ones. The skinny ones will go into our almost-nightly salads, but I'm going to make a marinated cucumber salad with the big fat ones. It's a dish DH and I love from a local Hungarian/Romanian restaurant and I finally found a recipe for it in an old Hungarian cooking pamphlet at the antique store. I'll share the recipe when I make it!

Peppers - both sweet banana peppers, which I love sliced in salads, and green bell peppers, which I'll throw into side dishes or grill with fajitas.

Red Potatoes - we use a lot of these! I can make my chuffed potatoes with them, or my favorite summer salad (which also features tomatoes and basil), or potato-onion packets on the grill. Yum!

Ichiban Eggplant - we received several of these teensy, adorable eggplants and this is where I started getting a little weird. I want to roast some garlic and mix it, along with some shredded basil, into some ricotta cheese (obviously it would be seasoned with salt and pepper and whatnot as well). Then I want to grill the eggplant the way I do zucchini and wrap the grilled strips around spoonfuls of the ricotta mixture. And then just pork them down like chips. Is that nuts? Would it work? I'm going to have to try it!

We also got some lovely zinnias, but I have no plans to eat them. Hee!