It was a red-letter weekend, featuring just about everything. Friday and Saturday were sort of like old times, approaching the bacchanalia of the Super Bowl, and Friday night’s excesses morphed into the grand adventure in the District on a chilly but brilliant Saturday, and a return to the scene of the crime at the Front Page Saturday.
Sunday dawned foggy, at least inside the apartment, but I had places to go and things to do. I wanted to slow-cook a rack of ribs and put out a good spread for the Russians, since they are very good to me. I got the ribs at the Commissary on Friday, fresh enough, and went with the tried and true recipe for merriment- cheese plate, shrimp, dip, bagel chips and table water crackers with pistachios. Then, the main course, for half time:
Vic’s Foil-pouched Ribs
Ingredients:
One large rack of ribs
Adobo spices
Pepper
Pete’s Hot sauce.
Vic’s Secret BBQ
Directions:
Make a pouch from Reynold’s Wrap Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil.
Create a rub out of the spices. Remove rack from plastic wrap. Rinse, pat dry with paper towel. Pat the rub on both sides after placing the rack on the foil, bone side down. Sprinkle some Pete’s vinegar-based hot sauce on top of the rack and seal the foil pouch, transferring it to a roasting pan.
Timing: depending on time available, you can slow-cook at 180 degrees (F) for up to a day or so. In the case of Super Bowl 50, I had to improvise. I arrived at Refuge Farm shortly afternoon, and the Russians were coming just before kick-off at six-thirty. I decided 275 degrees would do nicely, and popped the pan in the electric oven (damn, I wish there was a gas line out in the country!) and went about other affairs.
One of them bemused me. A mystery beer case had appeared in the back seat of the police cruiser during my son’s visit when he had use of the car, and I presumed it had emerged from the basement of the former marital dwelling. The box was one I remembered from college. It was the old study cardboard type with two flaps on the top and flanges in the middle to nestle 24 tall long neck bottles of Schlitz.
It contained my life, 1980-1990. It was sort of weird, looking at it, and stirred all sorts of emotions. I did a quick run-through, considering that the tax filings and bank statements of that era still contained enough personal data that I couldn’t just pitch it, and I no longer have access to the industrial-grade shredders at the office to make it securely go away. So, burning seemed the only logical alternative.
I built a jolly fire, which I would have done anyway, and began slipped my life into it. What a merry light it made!
But of course there were other things to be done. The basic rib recipe is simple enough. The key is the finish. In summer, I would slow-cook and then open the pouch and throw it on the grill to blacken the sauce and get that savory sauce- which is the essence of the barbeque. Normally, I would do the purist approach and make my own. There is a certain validation of self in the creation, which I needed as I watched 1986 go up in flames.
Chef Kathleen Hapa Nom-Nom has a nice take on a sauce with a tasty bit of heat to it and enough brown sugar to give a nice crust. This makes about a cup and a half- enough for the glaze and some left over to dip in when served. Assemble these components:
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
¼ cup Sriracha
⅓ cup Kikoman’s soy sauce
⅓ cup rice vinegar
⅓ cup brown sugar
⅔ cup ketchup
2 tablespoons fresh lime-juice
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoons honey from Mattsky”s hives next door
1 teaspoons onion powder
Blend over low heat after sautéing the garlic tender and stir gently to blend thoroughly. Remove from heat after well blended.
The smell of ribs cooking away distracted me from the review of car titles to vehicles I don’t own and insurance and taxes and health records from the kids got me distracted, and I took the easy way out. I had a quarter bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s spicy sauce and the last of a squeeze bottle of Sriracha-brand hot sauce, mixed them up to a pleasant dark consistency and left it at that.
I was almost all the way through 1987 when the sun disappeared and the evening came on. The Russians came over with Jack, the amazing 85-pound German Shepherd, and we sat down to drink wine and vodka and Mattski’s home-made amazing mead, brewed from the honey of the hives on the back-slope of their property. They filled me in on all the gossip that I had missed while away doing whatever it is I do, and the company was grand in front of the fire with the strange images on the flat screen television.
The food was all quite delicious, if I do say so myself, though the commercials and the game were not as spicy as I like. I opened the oven and the foil pouch and slathered the BBQ sauce on, and changed the oven from bake to low-broil for twenty minutes.
The result was a lusciously moist rack with a nice spicy crust. The halftime show was sort of bizarre, and I think we all agreed we are getting a little old for this version of America.
They went home in the third quarter, and I was surprised to see that the Superbowl can be played virtually without offense. I tipped the last of the documents into the fireplace as it became apparent that the Broncos were going to win and mixed a celebratory cocktail.
What I was celebrating was not entirely clear, but those ribs were great.
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303