SIGN WITH AN E

So “Nibbles” in the Guardian reports this morning on having attended a rib masterclass (!!) at the Chicago Rib Shack, which I take it is the UK’s latest capitulation to Americuisine (and the photo is theirs too). As my recent adventures with pulled pork reveal, I myself am on this curious bandwagon, looking for ways to recreate the melt-in-the-mouth meat tenderness and flavours that only real smokers and probably a century of practice delivers in authentic southern BBQ pits.

Nevertheless, I made some ribs yesterday that I would happily have paid good money for (but which I hadn’t, because this is one the great things about ribs and other varieties of pork that get treated in this way: the meat is CHEAP!).

As usual, I had to do plenty of research to figure out the best way to fake delicious ribs without smoking them, and as usual, I ended up following a combination of the best advice from various sources.

First, courtesy of Irma Rombauer and the Joy of Cooking, I parboiled the ribs for 3-4 minutes. This apparently helps to get rid of unwanted fat. Although mine were spare ribs (as opposed to baby back ribs, which have less fat), they didn’t seem excessively fatty to start with, and the parboiling didn’t obviously get rid of any of it, so I’m not sure how much this step actually contributed to the final deliciousness. But that’s how it started.

After cooling, I slathered them with a mixture of marmalade, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, salt, pepper, and chilli sauce (not quite a dry rub; not quite a liquid marinade), wrapped them up in foil and let them sit in the fridge for a good 4 hours.

About 4 hours before dinner, I added a good splash of white wine to the packet, into a low oven (150C) they went, and there they stayed for the next 3 1/2 hours or so, turning them once underway (different sources suggest cooking times from 2-4 hours at a fairly low heat, so I gave it the slow-food extreme). During this time they basically steam inside the foil, and therefore smell very delicious, but don’t get the required colour. This happens at the end, when you open them up, baste well with the juices, and grill them for 5-7 minutes on each side until they are dark, sticky and on the verge of burning. (This would obviously be a good time to finish them on live coals for a hit of smokiness; I’ll try that next time).

The result was pretty amazing. The meat just slipped right off the bone, and we were left with sticky fingers and happy mouths. Who needs a Chicago Rib Shack?

Yet another weekend, yet another honeymoon gone by. Sigh.

You’ll find this lovely painting by H. Muttisse on the wall of the Moondog Cafe (and Book Corner), the official watering hole of Mfuwe International Airport (they sometimes get a plane from Malawi). It is a wonderfully efficient establishment, catering both to tourists who arrive in need of a cold beer before climbing into a landrover and heading for the bush (note, no quotation marks: bush is what safari is about), and also to tourists who get stuck in the hapless situation of a delayed plane. This happened to us on our way out, so we went to hang out at the Moondog, which isn’t strictly a part of the airport; rather, it’s outside next to the carpark, its own little oasis of cold coca-cola and Mosi beer in the African (winter) heat. Given that the airport is about the size of the dairy section in a Wal-Mart, and only on one level so we could comfortably see the arrival of the plane we were expecting to depart in shortly, we didn’t imagine there would be any ambiguity about when we needed to go back into the official waiting area. Nevertheless, as we were chilling in the garden, we were approached by a friendly barman, who informed us that if we were flying on Zambian Airways, we were needed in the airport as there was an “emergency”. Naturally we hurried off, and naturally expecting the worst (ie. never getting out), but naturally the emergency was what we were hoping for: the plane was on its way.

Life goes on in this merry, and not at all unpleasant, rhythm of avoiding disaster in the region of Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park, where we spent three days thriving on expected (when you’re a tourist) serendipities, not to mention gin and tonic:

Still, I learned an unvariable, and invaluable, thing or two:

1. Wild animals stink

2. Hyenas really stink.

3. Baboons are perverts:

(yes, that is a very small child sliding off mommy’s back as daddy does his thing. And no, there is no certainty that that is, in fact, daddy).

4. When you go on safari you should expect no rest (up at 5.30 every day), nor should you expect to be exempted from crossing a crocodile-infested river on a very small boat. Protests go unobserved. Here’s an attempt at one:

5. All of the above combine to make all of the above a seriously unforgettable experience which you curiously miss as soon as you have been thrown back into the “real” world. (Note the quotation marks).

Home again, with a (mostly) hot and red flavoured loot, as all the good ones are. From left to right: Peychaud’s Bitters, native to New Orleans, and indispensable in the equally native Sazerac, apparently the oldest known cocktail. The Sazerac company tells us that ‘Antoine Peychaud, a Creole immigrant, operated a pharmacy on the French Quarter’s Royal Street in the 1830s. With his background as an apothecary, he was a natural mixologist. His friends would gather for late-night revelry at his pharmacy. Peychaud would mix brandy, absinthe and a dash of his secret bitters for his guests. Later this quaff would come to be known as the Sazerac‘. We tried the Sazerac one night and it was fine, though the hotel bar’s version included muddling a maraschino cherry with the bitters, before adding rye whisky (ergo the bottle of Canadian Club, this one all the way from Dubai Duty Free).

Behind the bitters is a packet of space food: freeze-dried ice-cream saucer, they call it; apparently two cookies surrounding an ice-cream filling. Dried ice-cream sounds freaky, and that’s why we got it (from the Spy Museum, DC).

Then, lots of Old Bay seasoning, for crabcakes, crabcakes, and all the things we’ll have to make intsead because of a lack (alas) of fresh crab in these parts.

Next to the Canadian Club, perhaps the crowning glory of our bounty: Absolut Peppar (that’s Scandiwegian for pepper, of course). We were told many moons ago that this is THE best vodka for bloody marys, but have been unable to find it ANYWHERE (even via Danish travellers, so close to the source). But we found this baby lurking on a shelf in a dodgy booze shop (they call themselves the “Unique Grocery”, on Royal Street in New Orleans).

Then, not tabasco per se, but a bottle filled with hot cinammon candy. The real tabasco features in the cool miniature right at the front (how perfect is that for a picnic mary-kit?), and in the bigger bottle mid-left: the new smoky chipotle flavour. This will have to make up for not getting to taste KFC’s new smoked chipotle flavoured chicken (and, I imagine, will rock with pulled pork).

And because you can’t leave New Orleans without buying some kitchy touristy “authentic” (convenience) food, a jambalaya kit, beignet mix (not that I’m aching for another beignet: these pieces of fried dough are huge, heavy, and taste like fried chicken, despite being drowned in icing sugar), and a can of Slap-Ya-Mama cajun seasoning.

Who wants to come for dinner?

New Orleans rocks. You can drink in public (think walking down hot muggy streets with a big ole margarita in hand). Deep frying here is serriaas (think popcorn shrimp). People talk to you on the street and seem to mean it. It’s jazzin’. Fire hydrants double as pavement tables. Tarot readers ply their voodoo business by candlelight all night long. Red bull and cigarettes are cheap. More on the casino scene in due course, but so far, I’m lovin’ it.

So I have made it back from my first boating trip in Chesapeake Bay, and our skipper declared me a sailor when we hit shore because I managed not to get seasick, despite some potentially noxious bobbing as we sped home to avoid impending bad weather.

Beyond this welcome new appellation, I made several great discoveries along the way. Like a more authentic version of the pulled pork I tried my hand at in my own kitchen not so long ago, and which was good, but nothing like what we had for lunch on the first day. We had stopped to pick up the sandwiches before setting off, and 15 or 20 minutes from harbour, found a quiet little cove where we dropped anchor, cracked open some cold Coronas, and feasted on pulled pork and leftover Famous Dave’s (cole)slaw. Given my greater interest in the meat than a tired soggy bun, I skipped the bread and focussed on the pork, which was incredibly tender – mostly a mass of meat fibres in a delicious barbecue sauce, though I also got lucky and found a nice chunky piece which made my fellow sailors jealous.

That evening we docked in Annapolis (in so-called Ego Alley: our boat was the smallest, but we were fabulous anyway) and started our quest to find the best crabcakes in the area. We started with a pretty measly (size-wise) $13 cake from Phillips, which was in fact damn fine because it was basically a mouthful of pure, chunky crabmeat. In that night’s competition was a crab cake sandwich from a dodgy looking Chinese/Japanese joint called the Ninja Cafe (fairness and economic principles dictated that the Ninja be given an equal chance to compete in Chesapeake tradition). This was more tasty in terms of spicing (perhaps the famous Old Bay seasoning? My palate is still too untrained to separate it from the rest), though in texture and size more like a fish burger pattie. It was good, but we had to give Phillips the medal.

For dessert that night I had ice-cream in the flavour of Moose Tracks (vanilla, chocolate swirls, peanut butter cups, duh!).

Lunch the next day hailed from an Annapolis food market, which had a $9.95 for 5 baby crabcakes special. These were somewhere in between Phillips and the Ninja, that is, still plenty of chunky meat, but obviously more filler (breadcrumbs, presumably). They did come with a very good dipping mayonnaise, which my fellow sailors declared definitely spiced with Old Bay.

The cake-cup finally went to the Edgewater restaurant, where we couldn’t have lunch before we set off because they were closed, but which we found on our return. Skipper had waxed lyrical about their lunch special, which incudes a crabcake, fries, free salad and bread for a fine price of $9.95. This cake was kind of monstrous (think partly squashed tennis ball), but it had a righteous golden crust, and the inside was a lovely mass of meat with little filler (the fries weren’t worth writing about). While the Phillips number was good in terms of “purity” of meat, I guess I’d rather eat pure crab if it came to that. When I think cake, crust is paramount, and I’ll be looking forward to reproducing some version of the Edgewater special – sans sides, and in ping pong ball size, naturally – when I crank up our deep fryer on our return. The Old Bay spice is in the bag.