vietnamese spare ribs

What happens when you stick someone who loves Asian food in the South? Well you already read the title right... So there's a cool little restaurant here in Atlanta that does southern style hickory smoked BBQ - with a twist. The chef, originally from Korea, weaves in Korean spices and flavors into the rubs and sauces. Everyone raves about it and it's definitely on my short list of places to try. Unfortunately I haven't been there yet, but it did get me thinking...

So I came home from the grocery store the other day with a rack of St Louis style pork ribs. St Louis refers to the cut - basically the ends of the ribs are trimmed off so that the rack is completely even (making cooking slightly easier). The marinade I put together was logical, if not easy: lemongrass, ginger, garlic, fish sauce, Chinese five spice powder, oil, and dark caramel. Just looking at the ribs sitting there in the fridge, getting all happy overnight, made me smile!

The great thing about ribs, and really any meat that is pretty high in fat, is that they're very forgiving. You basically slap them in the oven and roast them as long as you want (within reason I suppose). Patience and a little planning are typically rewarded with these types of cuts, but you have to try pretty hard to screw them up badly. I roasted these ribs about three hours at 275ish. To complete this Southeast Asian (and Southern) inspired meal, I served a few of the ribs on top of rice vermicelli with sliced cucumber, a mix of fresh herbs (culantro, thai basil, mint, regular basil), and some nuoc cham on the side. I'm pretty confident this would sell rather well on the streets of Hanoi :)

Vietnamese Ribs (serves 3-4)

1 2.5 lb rack of spare pork ribs

Marinade
1/2- lemongrass stalk, finaly minced
6-8 cloves of garlic, finely minced
1.5" knob of garlic, finely minced  (basically you want equal parts garlic, ginger and lemongrass)
3-4 tbls fish sauce
1.5 tbls Chinese five spice powder
1.5 tbls Caramel (can sub in honey, agave syrup, or brown sugar)
1/4 cup oil

Directions
Mix all the ingredients together for the marinade
Rub the marinade onto the ribs
Place the rack in large Ziploc bag and refrigerate for 12-24 hours
Cook in 275-300 oven on a sheet pan for 3 hours or until the bones come off the meat very easily.

chops

Not all pork chops are created equal. Several of my devoted readers have far more experience with this than I do, and as always, plenty of others have written about this on the internet. In fact I found a pretty good description of all the different cuts here. I'll let you read that if you want, but in the meantime here are a few basic rules to ensure you get a perfectly cooked chop at home.

1. Fat is good - very good. Fat provides flavor and moisture. It'll reduce the likelihood of overcooking and will help you get a nice crust on your chop. Look for a well marbled cut, usually from the end of the loin closest to the shoulder - the blade chop or blade loin. This is typically a cheaper cut anyway. The completely lean pink pork chops will invariably be dry. If you are watching your weight, just eat less of it, but at least this way you make it count!

2. Salt is good. You can brine your chop or roast, but then its hard to achieve a nice exterior crust. In my opinion its better to salt immediately before you cook the meat. Be generous with the salt, though if you salt the chop too early, the salt will draw the moisture out of the chop and you'll get a drier chop and find it harder to get a nice crust.

3. Bones are good. Bones add flavor. That's why we make stock out of them. They also help prevent overcooking. Boneless chops are not the end of the world, but if you have a choice, bone-in will yield a better tasting chop.

4. Thick is good. Do not buy those paper thin chops. That's a recipe for disaster, they'll be dry before you know it. A nice thick 1.5"-2" chop is perfect. If that's too much for one person, slice it later and give each person part of a chop. A thicker chop gives you more control over the internal temperature of the meat.

5. Bring your chop to room temperature before cooking it. Let it sit out of the fridge for up to an hour. This makes it easier to cook it through properly without having to burn the outside. If you have flies at your house, you'll probably want it to be covered!

6. Most good restaurants will cook the chops on a hot skillet with a fat to get a crispy salty golden exterior and then finish it in a 400-450F oven until it reaches the desired doneness.This is a great way to cook chops, but you might want to open the windows if you don't have a commercial grade vent. You don't need the skillet to be smoking, in fact i find that a medium hot to hot pan is perfect. Just don't touch the chop until its crisp. You can use a non-stick skillet, but you'll get better results with a stainless steel or cast iron skillet.

7. The wonderful USDA recommends cooking pork to 160F. This will result in terribly dry meat. Use a thermometer and pull your meat when the center (or close to the bone if it's bone in) reads 135F.

8. Resting the meat after cooking is critical. After you pull it off the heat, let it rest 10 minutes. The chop will continue to cook to about 145F on its own. The meat will also be more likely to retain its juices once you cut into it. You'll get a slightly pink interior that is juicy and flavorful that way.

Enjoy!

thai sausage

Another brown looking dish... I really have to work on that. Well in any event, a while back I posted some pictures from my sausage making day. I ended up making 5lbs of sausages that day, including 2lbs of Northern Thai sausages. I first enjoyed these in Chicago at Sticky Rice, a great Northern Thai restaurant. Then I sampled them in Thailand, and really fell in love with their unique flavor. So when I decided to make my own sausages, trying to recreate what I'd eaten in Thailand was a no-brainer.

I found this recipe online that seemed pretty authentic. In with the ground pork went a ton of lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal (like ginger, with less spiciness), cilantro and red curry paste. The process of making sausages is pretty straightforward, although time consuming. You season the meat and let it marinate for a day, grind it, then stuff it into the casings. I used all-natural pork casings which I purchased at Butcher & Packer, and soaked in water for a few days before using. Stuffing the meat into the casings is the challenging part - particularly if you do it alone. With one hand you have to push the meat through the grinder assembly, through the stuffing attachment, and into the casing. With the other you're trying to hold on to the casing, ensuring that there aren't any air bubbles, that the whole thing doesn't get jammed. Of course everything must be done quickly to make sure it stays cold. Definitely a two person job. Now I know.

Five pounds of sausages lasts a while (in the freezer)... So today I grilled a couple of them up on the bbq and served them with baked eggplants and fried tofu topped with a red curry sauce. The flavor of the sausages is pretty much on point. I'm not sure I could make a living selling these from a food cart in Thailand, but for our purposes here in Atlanta, it sure hits the spot.

Just for kicks, Thai rice and  pork sausage balls and a garlic sausage on a stick from the streets of Chiang Mai... god I miss Thai street food!!!

buta no kakuni

Ok, so you're not sick of Japanese food... good, cause I'm on a roll! Tonight: Buta no Kakuni - braised pork belly! But rather than spend hours describing how delicious dinner was, I'm going to review the cookbook I used for the recipe.

Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art was originally written in 1982 by Shizuo Tsuji. At the time, Japanese food was relatively unknown in the US, especially outside of a few coastal cities. Many of the key ingredients were nearly impossible to get. Sushi was still exotic. Yet there it is, uncompromising in it's use of traditional ingredients and chock-full of great information. The book is both insightful into Japanese culture and extremely useful to anyone interested in learning how to cook Japanese food. The first section discusses ingredients, techniques, tools, and much more. This isn't a typical five page list of basic things you need in your pantry, as with most other cookbooks. No, this is 340 pages of detailed and carefully researched information, including six pages on the art of simmering, 15 pages on how to select and cut fish, and a discussion of every ingredient used in the book. I haven't read the whole thing, but whenever I need answers quickly, I know where to look.

The second section includes another 100 pages full of recipes. Each includes a philosophical explanations about why certain techniques are used and the purpose of the key ingredients. There are only a few pages of color photography at the beginning of the book, but you really don't miss pictures as your thumbing through recipes. Most pages have clear illustrations detailing the many critical techniques used - which makes the book seem less "dense" and a pleasure to read. The only possible reproach I have is that this book doesn't have any "modern" Japanese recipes. This is traditional food. But in my mind this is hardly an issue, because it teaches you the essentials, educates you about ingredients, and you have the entire internet to find whatever other recipe you might want. 

I'm going to steal a line from an Amazon review I just read. "At it's worst, it is impressive".  If you have any desire to learn Japanese cooking, this is where you should start. As for the pork belly braised in soy, dashi, mirin, sugar and sake - this picture doesn't do it justice. It's a perfect balance of sweet and salty, with plenty of umami, whatever the hell that is. Delicious!