Ribs'n'slaw

It's been a long time,
I shouldn't have left you,
without a strong recipe to... oh well, that's not going to work.* Let's get onto the recipe.

Meat! Love it. I mean, I know that it's not the healthiest option and to save the planet we all need to go raw vegan, but it tastes so good. Especially pork ribs.

I remember them from my Mother's delicious home cooking: split into individual ribs; seasoned well; served with a delightfully volatile hot pepper sauce. After leaving home however I hardly ate them until requesting ribs at a vaguely pretentious gastropub back in the noughties. I was rather shocked at what they served: a whole rack of ribs that would normally feed a whole family. And chips. And a pint. Shock, then an insane delight passed through me as I went to work...

That said, I hardly ate them again until I was taken for a wonderful birthday meal last year at the W Hotel in Austin, Texas. Delicious ribs, slathered in an unctuous sauce: I was hooked. Since then, I've ordered ribs in a variety of restaurants, from high end to budget. Then I thought, "can't I make this at home? Mum certainly did."

I scoured the 'Net for recipes, coming across suggestions for slow cooking (for up to eight hours!) and barbecuing, but none grabbed me. However, a recipe by Jamie Oliver showed promise, even though it entailed putting the ribs on a hot barbecue for the last stage. I couldn't be bothered with that, and as you'll see, I wasn't so fussed about following the recipe to the letter: just as long as I had ribs and coleslaw on my plate, I would be happy.

I started with the coleslaw. This is from the how to make perfect coleslaw page in the Guardian newspaper: as you'll see, there are a variety of suggestions on what achieves perfection. I took:

Vegetables...

some sweetheart cabbage leaves
a portion of a savoy cabbage
one carrot
three spring onions
one teaspoon of salt
one teaspoon of caster sugar
one tablespoon of white wine vinegar
four tablespoons of mayonnaise
one tablespoon of horseradish sauce

I sliced and diced the cabbages and shredded the carrot with a peeler before placing them in a colander, which I then placed in a bowl. Adding the salt, sugar and vinegar to the sliced vegetables, I tossed them all for a few moments before leaving the lot to drain into a bowl (you can use the sink), undisturbed for an hour.

For the ribs, I took:

a rack of pork ribs
olive oil
salt and pepper
two green chillies
150ml apple juice
100ml white wine vinegar
two tablespoons of tomato sauce
one tablespoon of dijon mustard
100ml soy sauce
100g soft brown sugar

MEAT!

The oven turned onto 200 degrees centigrade, I drizzled olive oil on the ribs then sprinkled salt and pepper over that before rubbing it all into the ribs. I then put the rest of the ingredients into a pan and turned on the heat, stirring until the sugar had melted then simmered for ten minutes. I poured the resulting marinade over the ribs, before covering the cooking dish in foil and placing in the oven for an hour and a half. I basted the ribs every half hour.

I squeezed the rest of the liquid out of the vegetables after an hour then put the whole lot in a bowl, adding the chopped spring onions, mayonnaise and horseradish sauce. I then mixed them around like a maniac. I let the ribs cook uncovered for the last half hour then brought them out to meet their accompaniment.

Getting there...

As for the marinade, I wasn't too sure. It had come into contact with raw meat (boo! Throw it away) but it had been cooking for over an hour (hooray! Serve it with the ribs). The first time, I did cook the remnants on the hob for five minutes, which made an amazing sauce, but this second time I couldn't be bothered and threw the lot away. The sauce that stuck to the ribs was good enough.

Yum!

The result? A fabulous rack of ribs with coleslaw as back up. A rack could normally manage three servings, so one can work out how many to cook for a certain amount of people. It certainly lasted me a few days, happily.

(* respect to Eric B. and Rakim's I Know You Got Soul ['Cos I'll be in the kitchen if you ain't controlling' it: drop the colander, you shouldn't be holding it... oh, I give up.])

The original Awesomesauce!

This is one of the most basic recipes in my culinary repertoire, but it's also one of the most beloved. It's very easy (and cheap!) to make, there's plenty of wiggle-room, and it freezes very well. One batch generally makes about six to eight portions - depending on how hungry you are!

One of my fall-backs when there's nothing in the house is pasta, because there's always usually the basic ingredients for some kind of sauce: a tin of tomatoes, an onion, some cheese. And if those things aren't at hand, then the shops are only five minutes away. I also find that home-made pasta sauces, even when extremely basic, often taste nicer than pre-made sauces from jars. Maybe it's the whole getting-to-lick-the-spoon part.

Awesomesauce was thusly named because it is totally awesome. Sadly I've already made my latest batch a few weeks ago so there are no photos at present - the frozen lumps of sauce in tupperware containers don't look that appealing! - but I've at least taken a snap of the raw ingredients, which are waiting around for when the next batch is made.




Yep, that's pretty much it.


1 tub of Dairylea cheese spread (at least the 300g one, but larger also works)
1 or 2 tins of tinned tomatoes or you can use tomato passata if you want it smoother (or even one of each)
1 or 2 onions (depends how onion-y you like it)
A few spring onions


Chop up the onions. The pieces don't need to be too small; you can leave them in large rings if you like. The size of my onion pieces is directly related to how much I can chop before my eyes begin to sting. (NB. At least the up-side to deadly onion fumes is being able to reenact the "why are you crying?" scene from Mad About You.)

Put the onions in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to the boil and then let them simmer until they're soft. (NB. You can also start by frying the onions instead.)

When the onions are done, drain the water and then add in one tin of tomatoes. Put the saucepan back on the heat and mix this together, chopping up the tomatoes as you go if you've used whole ones. Or you can just leave them whole if you prefer.

After a few minutes of this, add in the tub of cheese spread. Continually stir this in until there are no unmelted lumps of cheese left and your sauce is looking rather, well, saucy. It should be a rather bizarre pale pink colour. Keep the heat fairly low, you don't want it to boil. Once the cheese and tomato have mixed together thoroughly, have a taste. You might find that you want to add in a second tin of tomatoes - in general, I add the entire first tin and then only the tomatoes from the second. It all depends on how cheesey/tomato-y you like things, and how big your tub of cheese was to begin with.

The last step is to add in the spring onions, which of course you have already chopped up into little discs. Toss them in, stir them through, and you're done. If your pasta is ready, then dinner is served! If not, cover the saucepan and just let it sit. It can easily be reheated - I tend to make it around lunchtime and then just leave it in the pan until my other half is home to do the pasta. It also, as I've mentioned, freezes very well.


And there you have it, the original, no-frills Awesomesauce! You can of course add or change ingredients; several of my bastardisations include:

Using Philadelphia cream cheese instead of Dairylea - which then necessitated putting in a lot of pepper because Philly tastes less cheesey. (There are of course other cheese spreads you can use, I just used Dairylea first time because it was the cheapest!) This variety is wittily known as Philly-pepper-awesomesauce.

Adding in some chopped peppers, or sugar peas - these tend to go in just before the spring onions, because I like them to be still be mostly crunchy.

Frying up some diced chicken and putting that in as well.

Or bacon! Bacon makes the world go round.

Crushed garlic, or garlic powder, also makes for a wonderful addition.

If you have some cherry tomatoes hanging around, put them - whole - into the boiling water when you're doing the pasta. When the pasta's done, carefully take out the tomatoes and then pop a few on top of each serving of sauce. Of course I assume this also works for raw cherry tomatoes, but I like the trick of boiling them through.

I don't think I've tried anything else, but really, the sky's the limit with a base as basic as this one!


Oh yeah - as for the type of pasta to use? We originally started with shells because they hold the sauce very nicely, but spaghetti also works wonderfully. The sauce isn't terribly thick, but it is nice and clingy.