Year of the Pig

Ravi invited us over to his place in Hoboken cause he wanted to watch the Univeristy of Virginia play in the ACC Tournament. I was more interested in Ribs than basketball, so I agreed to come over and cook while the game was on. I looked for a Rib recipe that I wanted to try and picked this one from Kat’s “Silver Spoon Cookbook.” Here it is:


I went over to Hoboken and went to a local butcher at Park and 10th Street called Truglios. That was a great place. I walked in and the Butcher dude greeted me pleasantly and asked if it was warming up outside. I said it was cold, but hey, it’s winter. I asked about Spare Ribs, and he pulled out a nice slab, big and meaty. He cleaved it into hefty 2 rib segments on a well worn block and wrapped it up. For $2.99/lb these Ribs were far superior to the supermarket selection. I was excited.

At Ravi’s, I unpacked the ribs, and admired them.

Diverging from the recipe, I used about 3 lbs of Ribs, and 3 chopped cloves of garlic. I browned the onions and added the Ribs and wine. I let this simmer and the Ribs took on a great purple color.

I let them simmer on what I thought was a very low setting, but I have never really braised ribs like this before. I simmered them for probably 45 min and the wine was not really evaporating like the recipe said, so I went ahead and added the rest of the ingredients. I simmered for another hour. By this time the game was over (Virginia, unfortunately lost) and the ribs were cooked. OVER cooked.

The sauce was delicious, but the ribs were shrunken and tough–I guess I cooked them on too high of a heat. I was not happy about ruining such gorgeous ribs, but was prepared to write this mistake off to the Year of the Pig until Ravi had the brilliant idea of whipping out the pressure cooker. And so he did!

We gave the ribs and all the sauce about 25 minutes in the Pressure Cooker and Rav showed me how it worked, as I have never used one. The good news is that the trick worked like a charm and averted disaster. The ribs turned out falling off the bone and delicious, just like I have hoped for.

The bones were even tender. You could bite the end right off and suck the marrow right out. I thank Ravi for his most excellent save, even if his team lost. We dished them up and I enjoyed them thoroughly.

Here are some pictures of the master rib saver in action. Thanks a ton Ravi, and great job.

PS–It was late. We skipped the Polenta, but for future reference, that would have been great with the sauce.