The recipe: p896, "Spare Ribs in White Wine"
As we reach the halfway point of the Random Kitchen project, it's time for a confession. When a recipe looks like it's going to be problematic in terms of ingredients or equipment, I try my best to compromise and find a workaround. There is, though, the possibility of a veto if the choice is just too outlandish. And that's where we find ourselves with this week's first selection from The Silver Spoon, the innocuously named Genoese Salad (as it transpires, an unjustifiably weak translation of "cappon magro").
The Silver Spoon version of this particular concoction takes up an entire page, with a laundry list of ingredients including tuna mosciame (?), scorzonera (??), 1.5kg of scorpion fish (!!!) and - best of all - "one large live spiny lobster".
Uh-huh. Let me think for a moment...
So the random.org wheel is spun again, and we end up with the significantly less challenging Spare Ribs in White Wine instead. In fact, if anything this seems distinctly underwhelming (seriously, Silver Spoon, I've blogged about you this many times already and still no pasta?!), plus we've been to a barbecue the previous day so we're not exactly craving meat - but hey, it beats grappling with a live lobster, so let's roll with it.
The prep: For some reason I expect the local supermarkets to only have ribs pre-marinating in all kinds of Chinese and BBQ sauces, but procuring the unsullied variant turns out to be dead easy. I end up having to substitute fresh sage leaves for dried, tweaking the quantities accordingly, while the white wine component of the recipe corresponds neatly to the contents of one of those handy "I fancy a wee tipple on the train home" bottles. Fun-size sauvignon blanc, if you will.
The making: Not that I cook a lot of meat that isn't chicken (though the Random Kitchen project is changing that - hurrah!), but spare ribs are something I associate with marinades and slow, slooooow cooking in the oven. It comes as something of a surprise, then, to learn that this is a stove-top recipe requiring nothing more complex than a geet big saucepan.
Olive oil, butter and the sage are heated in the aforementioned pan, then the ribs are added and cooked over a high heat for a few minutes until browned a little on all sides. The heat is reduced to pretty low (the recipe doesn't actually specify, but I decide to assume that "burnt to a cinder" isn't the desired outcome) and the ribs are cooked for 20 minutes before being seasoned with salt and pepper. Then they're cooked for a further 40 minutes while being "sprinkled with the wine", more wine being added each time the last sprinkle has been absorbed/evaporated.
Essentially this is a risotto but with meat instead of rice.
And, erm, that's it! The ribs are cooked and ready to be demolished.
The eating: My main concern when I realised this wasn't an oven-based dish was that the ribs would end up being overcooked or not particularly tender - I expect rib meat to basically fall off the bone, whereas here I was anticipating something chewier.
I was wrong, though: the braising process (since that's essentially what it is) still leaves the meat moist and tender, and if anything the fatty parts of the ribs are less gloopy and awkward in terms of mouthfeel than they can be when you've gradually introduced them to the idea of heat for five days solid and you only have to look at them for them to disintegrate into their constituent parts.
That robustness means they pair well with actual side dishes on an actual dinner plate, thus ably demonstrating that spare ribs can be more than just an accompaniment to televised sports and "light" "beer".
The problem (and there is one) lies with the flavour: all that butter, sage and wine actually produces very little in the way of an end result. The ribs taste of pork, sure, and perfectly nice pork at that, but considering this approach demands near-constant attention lest the ribs stick to the bottom of the pan and risk burning and/or falling apart, all that effort seems a little excessive when you could just leave them to get on with it in the oven for what I assume would be a decidedly similar outcome.
Plus you do feel a bit daft eating "posh" ribs - since they're obviously aiming to be a bit classier than your standard face-smeared-with-BBQ-sauce affair - like this when there's so relatively little to recommend them over their country bumpkin cousin.
Still, it's a damn sight quicker than slow-cooking if you do need a rib fix of an evening, so I suppose there's that. Otherwise: not really feeling it.
One-word verdict: Ribbed.
No comments:
Post a Comment