Super Simple Oven-Baked Ribs

This isn't so much a recipe as it is a technique. I've made ribs this way a couple of times now for my family and we love them. I bake them covered in foil initially, which keeps them moist. Then I remove the foil about halfway through so the ribs get good and caramelized. So, so good!

Super Simple Oven-Baked Ribs

What you'll need:

1 rack of pork spareribs (the rack I used here was about 5 1/2 lb.)

your favorite rub

your favorite bbq sauce

What you do:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place ribs on a large rimmed baking sheet. Liberally apply your favorite rub and massage into the ribs. Cover the pan with foil and bake for 1 1/2 hours.

2. Remove the foil from the ribs and continue to bake another 1 1/2 hours. Ribs should be tender and  deeply caramelized by this time. 

3. Remove pan from the oven and carefully transfer the ribs, meaty side down, to a clean baking sheet. Brush the top of the ribs (back of the rack) with bbq sauce. Return to the oven and bake for 10 minutes, or until the sauce begins to caramelize on top of the ribs. Remove from the oven, carefully flip ribs, and brush the top (meaty) side of the ribs with the bbq sauce. Return the ribs to the oven and bake another 10 minutes, or until the bbq sauce is caramelized. Remove from the oven and cut into desired portions.

Pinto Beans and "Hot Sauce"

This meal right here is the reason I made homemade flour tortillas yesterday.

These beans and "hot sauce" is another recipe from my childhood. It is a recipe that came from my maternal Grandmother and my mom started making it for us when I was little. It's funny because the original recipe from my Grandma was titled "Chile Verde". I kind of wonder if somewhere along the line someone misread tomatoes for tomatillos because this recipe is basically chile verde with tomatoes instead of tomatillos.

Despite the discrepancy, we grew up just calling it hot sauce.

I changed the recipe a little from the one my mom makes. Mainly the chiles. My mom uses canned diced chiles and I opted to buy fresh Anaheim chiles and roast them under the broiler before adding them to the stew. Canned chiles are okay, but the depth of flavor and additional sweetness from using fresh is definitely worth going to the extra little bit of trouble.

Pinto Beans and "Hot Sauce"

~serves about 8~

Note* You can pretty much use any cut of pork you want for this recipe. Typical choices would be pork shoulder or butt. I have even used lean pork chops with good results. I used pork shoulder steaks here.

Note** To cut up the tomatoes, use a pair of kitchen shears and snip them up right in the can before adding them to the pan.

Ingredients:

For the Pinto Beans

1 lb. pinto beans, rinsed, picked over and soaked overnight

2 large onions, peeled and chopped coarse

2 med. or 3 small hamhocks

6 c. water

For the Hot Sauce

1 1/2 lb. Anaheim chilies

2-6 t. vegetable oil

2 1/2 - 3 lb. pork, cut into 3/4 - 1 inch cubes

8 garlic cloves, minced

2-3 serrano chilies, seeds and ribs removed, minced fine

3 T. flour

2 (28 oz.) cans whole tomatoes, roughly cut up

1c. water 

1/2 t. salt

Chopped fresh cilantro, for garnish (optional)

pickled jalepenos, chopped, for garnish (optional)

Instructions:

1. For the beans: Add all the ingredients for the beans in a large pot. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally until the beans are very tender and breaking down, about 2 1/2 hours. (You'll need to stir the pot more often the thicker the beans become, to prevent them from sticking to the bottom of the pan.) Remove the hamhocks and let them cool enough to handle. Remove the meat, shred and add back to the beans (there might not be very much meat at all).

2. Make the roasted Anaheim chilies: Adjust oven rack to upper middle position and heat the broiler. Line a baking sheet with foil, lay the Anaheims in a single layer. Roast until the skins blister all over and blacken in spots, turning occasionally with tongs, about 20 minutes total. Remove to a heat safe bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Let sit 10-15 minutes or until cool enough to handle. Peel and remove seeds from the chilies and coarsely chop. Set aside.

3. For the hot sauce: Heat 2 t. oil in a large stockpot or dutch oven over medium-high heat until just beginning to smoke. Add 1/3 of the pork and brown well on first side, 3-5 minutes. Stir pan and cook another minute or two. Remove pork to a plate. Repeat this process twice more, using an additional 2 t. oil per batch (if necessary). (If the bottom of the pan starts to become too brown, between batches you can add a little bit of water and scrape up the fond in the pan and add to the pork on the plate, Then proceed to the next batch.)

4. Reduce heat to medium. To the drippings left in the pan add garlic and serrano chile, cook stirring constantly until fragrant, about 15 seconds. Add flour and cook for 1 minute. Add roasted Anaheims and tomatoes (undrained), pork, water and salt. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer for 1 hour. Uncover and simmer for another hour, until the pork is fork tender and the sauce thickens and darkens slightly. Serve in bowls, with beans, garnishing with chopped cilantro and pickled jalepenos. 

Cuban Panini

Ok so.... I am posting another sandwich. I think ever since it hit me that April is National Grilled Cheese Month I have had hot and cheesy sandwiches on the brain. This time it's a cuban panini. I often say that my panini press is my favorite of all my non-essential cookware. I love how you can cram so much stuff into a roll, grill it in the panini press and it comes out all neat and compact, and the bread is nice and crispy. You can really put almost anything in a panini and it comes out alright. My hubby and I were just discussing what the weirdest thing we ever put in our panini, I think his putting leftover chicken teriyaki (leftover steamed broccoli included) might be the strangest one ever done in our house.

Anyway, I purposely picked up an extra-large roast the other day when I made pork roast so I could make these sandwiches. If you've never had a cuban sandwich before you should really give one a try.

Cuban Panini

~serves 4~

Note* You'll have to forgive me, I forgot to weigh the sliced pork so I could tell you how much you need for this recipe, but if I had to make a guess, I'd probably estimate 1/2 - 3/4 lb. leftover cooked pork should be enough.

Note** If you don't own a panini press, you can get a similar effect by grilling the sandwiches in a skillet with a tiny bit of oil or butter and placing a second skillet or a dutch oven on top of the sandwich to weigh it down as it cooks. 

Ingredients:

1/2 c. mayonnaise

2 T. yellow mustard

4 sub rolls, split in half

3 large pickles sliced, excess moisture blotted away with paper towel

leftover cooked pork, thinly sliced

4 slices of deli ham (I prefer black forest)

6 deli slices of swiss cheese

Instructions:

1. Mix together mayonnaise and mustard in a small bowl, set aside. Preheat your panini grill while assembling the sandwiches.

2. Spread about 1 T. mayo-mustard mixture on each half of the split rolls. Layer the pickles, roasted pork, ham and swiss cheese evenly between each roll. 

3. Grill each panini 5-7 miuntes until hot all the way through. Let sit for 2 or 3 minutes before serving.

Old Fashioned Pork Roast and Gravy ~ My Mama's Recipe

I am so excited about this post because not only am I posting another one of my Mom's great recipes, she was actually in the kitchen to share in the experience of cooking it with me.

My mom was such a great cook that when I was growing up, all our friends from the neighborhood would clamor at the opportunity to eat dinner at our house. It was great and let me tell you, my mom earned a certain level of respect from the neighborhood kids, especially from all my brother's friends, that lent credulity to the old saying that "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach". I learned from a young age, that statement is most definitely true.

I have cooked all sorts of ways through the years and I even had times of rebellion against my mom's cooking. Believing that my mom's cooking was overly-simplistic and therefor a more fussy and complicated recipe, with a longer ingredient list must be the superior one. And as I've grown older (and hopefully wiser), I know that this just isn't always the truth.  Plus I think that anybody who was lucky enough to have mother who could cook knows, there are just certain dishes that no other recipe can hold a candle to the way that Mom made it.

I love this particular recipe because not only is it delicious, it's extremely affordable (I paid only $1.49 a pound for this roast), and it's the kind of "Sunday dinner" style comforting fare that is worthy of even a holiday meal (I have served this as Easter dinner). Also it makes great leftovers (especially sandwiches).

I was glad, in particular to have my mom in the kitchen with me on this one because she was there to coach me on the gravy. When I was growing up my Mom always made gravy using water. For some reason, I cannot help myself wanting to use canned chicken broth when I am making gravy. I don't always love it, but I just can't help it for some reason, I am afraid there won't be enough flavor even though I know my Mom's method works.... So glad I did it her way, it is the best.

As I get older, I cherish the opportunity to learn all I can about the food I grew up with.

Old Fashioned Pork Roast and Gravy ~ My Mama's Recipe

Note* You can use any pork roast you want for this recipe. I prefer to use a more inexpensive cut of pork (I used pork shoulder here). It is good if the roast has at least a thin layer of fat on top so you will be sure to get enough drippings to make the gravy. I used a pretty large roast here (6 1/2 lbs.) because I wanted to have leftovers to use in other dishes but you could go as small as 3 lb. and use the same method, the cooking time will just vary.

**I like to serve this with boiled potatoes and either steamed green beans or roasted brussel sprouts, like I did here. I made the brussel sprouts by taking halved, trimmed brussel sprouts, tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread them out on a baking sheet and roast at 375 degrees until browned and tender, about 30 minutes.

Ingredients:

Pork Roast (see note above)

garlic powder

salt and pepper

4 T. flour

2 c. water

Instructions:

1. With the oven rack in the middle position, preheat oven to 325 degrees. Pat pork roast dry with paper towel and sprinkle liberally with garlic powder, salt and pepper. Place in a 13x9 inch baking dish (or you could us a roasting pan).

2. Roast pork until the internal temperature registers 145 degrees, when checked with a thermometer in several places (for my 6 1/2 lb. roast, this took around 3 hours). Transfer the roast to a serving platter and cover loosely with foil, set aside while making the gravy.

3. To make the gravy: Add the water to the baking dish, being sure to scrape the browned bits form the bottom of the pan. Remove the liquid to a fat separator. Separate the fat from the liquid. Alternately, if you don't have a fat separator you can poor the fat out of the pan first then poor the water into the pan and scrape up the bits.

4. In a medium saucepan add 4 T. fat and whisk in the flour. Cook over medium heat for a couple minutes to cook out the raw flour flavor. Slowly whisk in the liquid and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil for 1 minute to thicken. Season with salt and pepper if needed.