PIGGIE! - Thai-Style Ribs

I made ribs for the first time! (It was very exciting.) As a ribs-lover I don't know why I have never made ribs myself, I guess I have always had my favorite ribs joints and it always seemed like something difficult to perfect. One of my favorite aspects of writing a blog is that it provokes me to try lots of new and different recipes that I might not otherwise have thought to attempt. Thus, I had a craving for ribs and ribs I set out to make! Onward!

I arrived at Safeway (I am usually a Trader Joe's devotee but this called for a super market) eager and well-prepared, list in hand. I happily trotted over to the meat section and began the search for spare-ribs. My first quandary arose when I looked at my recipe (c/o Lobel's Meat Bible) which clearly stated that I should have my butcher cut "across the bone into 2-3 inch 'racks,' each rack cut" into individual riblets. Well, if you've ever been to Safeway (no offense to Safeway) you would know that when you look around for a butcher there is nary a one to be found and unfortunately, the Local Butcher Shop is not yet open. So, I decided to make the most of it and forge forth as my own butcher with a 3-pound rack of spare ribs. 

For the marinade: Combine 1 cup sliced shallots, roughly one head of garlic (peeled and chopped), 1 cup cilantro, 2 tablespoons fish sauce, 6 tablespoons soy sauce, a 3-inch piece of ginger chopped, 2 stalks of lemongrass, 1 teaspoon each salt and pepper and 2 tablespoons brown sugar in a blender - oh and a good dollop of sriracha. The marinade is ready to go!

*Side note - I tinkered with the original recipe a bit, throwing in lemongrass and sriracha, etc.

At this point I realized I had to "butcher" the ribs. Which ended up being more like a rib massacre, but the result was fine, there were individual ribs . . . definitely not uniform in size . . . and there may have been a few pieces of meat that didn't seem close enough to any bone to truly belong to the rib so I just cut those off and made little boneless ribs. Cut to the chase - I threw the random meat bits into a ziploc bag with the marinade and stuck it in the fridge for 7 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350. Spread the ribs out on a baking sheet (I needed two). Put the ribs in the oven for an hour. Eat up! The recipe calls for a dipping sauce which I didn't make, but it sounded lovely. I served the ribs with rice that I cooked with lemongrass and a little cucumber salad (sliced persian cucumbers, a handful of chopped cilantro and mint, 1 teaspoon of fish sauce, 6 tablespoons rice wine vinegar).

7.9.10

Saratoga, CA - Visited this pleasant, small town nestled in the mountains near Palo Alto, about an hour south of San Francisco. The town boasts a few high-brow foodie establishments (Sent Sovi and The Plumed Horse, which has one Michelin star, among others). We decided to be budget friendly and ducked into the sole Thai restaurant in town, Bai Tong Thai. To keep it sweet and short - it was delicious. The restaurant is owned by a local Thai couple and they serve delicious authentic food and highlight some of the fresh local produce.
I order green papaya salad at every Thai restaurant I eat at as a gauge and Bai Tong definitely passed the test. It was a delicious specimen with toasted peanuts and a refreshing amount of cilantro. We ate a couple different main dishes family style - thai-style green shell mussels, panang curry (my favorite), and the surprise star of the night, crispy bbq pork with a housemade sweet thai chili sauce. I MAY have asked for an extra container of sweet thai chili sauce to go so I could put it on some rice later because it was just that good.
We rounded out the night with a concert at the Mountain Winery (pictured at top), on the grounds of what was once the well-known Paul Masson Winery.