A Simple Rib Recipe

Tonight I discovered something.

All those recipes for making ribs, especially BBQ'd ones, that emphasized;

- Complex spice mixtures & marinades;
- Hours of low heat to make meat tender;

It was ALL A LIE!!!

All those baroque preparations involving exotic multi-colored sauces with secret spice recipes, the debates about various types of fuel (mesquite vs. gas), the enormous smokers, none of that is necessary unless you are insistent on (to paraphrase Anthony Bourdain) forcing the meat into submission.

I made a pork ribs this evening for dinner. It was a VERY simple recipe that I threw together. But it turned out to be the most tender batch of ribs I ever made, and far quicker than all my previous attempts. The basics were as follows;

Half a rack of Niman Ranch pork spareribs
Two cloves of garlic
A handful of fresh sage
Salt & pepper to taste

I rubbed the garlic and sage all over the ribs. Sprinkled salt and pepper on them. Plopped into the broiler just long enough to brown both sides, switched onto oven mode, and roasted them at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.

BUT, I DID ONE VERY IMPORTANT THING, I wrapped the rack of ribs in tinfoil before putting them back into the oven. The meat already had the searing from the broiling, from here I wanted to wrap them in foil and sweat the meat.

A half hour later, I pulled them out of the oven. The results are below.

From Storehouse

From Storehouse

In the picture above you see a rib furthest to the right where the bone is sticking out more than the others. My hand accidently bumped into it, knocking the bone off the meat. After only at most 45 minutes of cooking the meat was falling off the bone.

It might have just been because I used high quality pork, but the ribs needed very little spicing up. Sage, garlic, salt, and pepper, was all these ribs needed. Smothering it into a reddish sweet/sour/salty/spicy mixture for several hours, or even just for the 30 minutes it was sitting in the oven, would have done nothing to improve them.

I wrote months back that Texas BBQ was overrated. After tonight I think ALL AMERICAN BBQ is over-rated. What BBQ preparations do to meat is excessive and unnecessary. It's like taking Ingrid Bergman and making her get a boob job, liposuction, and botox. If the meat is good to begin with, there is no need to smother it.

Back in the Saddle Again

Went out on the bike for the first time in two weeks this weekend. A short 20 miler in the city on Saturday, and a 40 miler in Marin the next day. I was able to squeeze three ball busting hills into the urban 20 miler -- up Arguello from the Presidio, up Lincoln Boulevard from 25th Avenue down to Crissy Field, then back up from Crissy Field up Lincoln Boulevard back to the Richmond District. For the Marin ride (for safety reasons) I didn't go down the Sausalito Lateral Road, took the zig zap access road to the left after getting off GG Bridge, and went along Conzelman Road to Sausalito. Then I headed up Camino Alto, and looped back over on part of Paradise Loop.

A couple observations.

1. My bike has actually held up despite the crash. None of the squeeking and cracking that I was warned to check up on. Just in case, after the first day, I stopped, sat both butt cheeks on my top tube, pressed the sole of my foot into the bottom bracket, no noise.

2. Despite the lay off from the injuries, and not riding consistently during the past 7 months, the hills in Marin really aren't much harder than they have ever been.

3. Even before my smackdown I was getting cautious on downhills and flats. I have lost something in terms of both aggressiveness, situational awareness, and reflexes. This reflects the fact I hadn't been out on the road for awhile. I haven't lost that much in terms of overall fitness, but cycling isn't a pure brute endurance sport. You do have to pay attention to the road, and if you ride aggressively, the need for bike handling skills and situational awareness goes up significantly.

The next few weeks won't just be an exercise in building up my endurance for the events ahead. It will be an exercise in getting a feel for the road again.

New Blog

I've started a new blog on something completely different.

subwayconfession.blogspot.com

Wow, Chinese Medicine Actually Works!

M and I discussed our mutual body aches and pains. A friend of hers referred her to an acupuncture specialist in SF J-Town. Given our mutual conditions, it seemed like a good time to go check it out.

Despite being of Chinese ethnicity, I had never gone to a Chinese medicine specialist, even when I was in Taiwan. In fact, I don't think any of my relatives have. Chinese medicine was one of those things that (even for Chinese people) seemed mystical -- great potential to help you, but also a great potential to hurt you. The emphasis was always on two things;

- Only use it for stuff that is just hanging on you, problems that linger for months if not years, that Western medicine can't handle.

- Only use a practitioner whom a good number of your friends and associates can vouch for.

Technically, the J-town practitioner fit the bill. I also added a sprained wrist the day before to my list of ailments, so I was more than ready to have someone provide some help for my aching joints.

It was, to say the least, very interesting. The Chinese Medicine Doctor had almost as many forms as a doctor at my HMO -- including all of the usual CYA forms.

After a general check of my pulse and my tongue, the practitioner asked the following;

- Your pulse shows stress & pain, is that the case? (I'm always stressed, and my joints are in much pain).
- Do you have chest congestion. (No.) OK, don't worry about.
- Your pulse shows that the stress is attacking your stomach & spleen, do you have problems there? (No.) Don't worry about it, then.

The Chinese Medicine Doctor then had me lie down on the bed, and inserted needles in my shoulder, elbows, wrist, and knees. I could feel the needles just break my skin, but they didn't hurt at all. The needles were connected to electrodes that sent a low voltage electric pulse into my muscles. Some areas (my chest and shoulders) got a bigger pulse of electricity. Others (my wrist) the electric pulse was barely noticeable.

On one level, it seems a little wacky, needles and electricity. Then I remembered what a colleague of mine told me about how professional athletes get low level electrical surges as part of their physical therapy from injuries and general muscle strain. The only difference was that my Chinese Medicine Doctor was using needles instead of whatever overprice electrode that an NFL doctor uses.

The Doctor also used an odd suction device on my back. I couldn't see it, but I could definitely feel it. I think it was the moxubustion thing I had read about, how you drop a match into a glass cup, it sucks air, creating a vacuum that is ideal for sucking large chunks of skin into the glass cup. She ran the suction glass cup up and down my back. It hurt a bit. I could feel a good hunk of my skin going into the cup, and the cup running up, down, left, and right, across my back.

The result.

It wasn't 100% recovery, but it was a definite improvement. In detail;

My Wrist;

It still hurts, but the the range of motion is much improved. Moving it up and down and left and right doesn't hurt as much as it did this morning. I'm thinking maybe the electrical therapy brought down some of the swelling on the inside of my wrist that was making it hard to move it around.

My Shoulder;

In the back of the shoulder, a lot of the fatigue had gone. Also, related to the shoulder injury, it didn't hurt nearly as much to move my head left and right. The muscle pain along my neck and spine was gone. The muscles that connect my shoulder to the center of my chest still feel a little painful and stiff. But about half of the stiffness and discomfort that I had on my left shoulder has (for now at least) gone.

Maybe the ultimate validation, the Doctor left a few bandages with short needles embedded in them planted against a few pressure points around my shoulder, and a thick gauze bandage around my wrist. She told me to keep them on for the next few days, try not to let them get loosened up by showers and bathing.

She did not recommend a follow up visit. She didn't see the need.

Overconfidence in her abilities, maybe.

Or maybe she was honest, and not out to squeeze a buck out of me.

Maybe there are a few honest quacks out there.

Bike & Body Update

Well...

One week has passed, got my bike back and did a follow up with the orthopedist.

First, my body.

According to my orthopedist my shoulder isn't that badly damaged, just soft tissue. No broken bones or anything torn. According to her, shoulder injuries tend to hurt a great deal even when there is only minor damage. She recommended some stretching exercises, avoid any kind of power workouts on the upper body (lifting, calisthenics, even swimming) for 2-3 weeks, then ease back into them slowly (do girl push ups first, then man push-ups if my shoulder doesn't hurt too much).

As for the road rash -- it heals slowly. Learning to love the Tegaderm clear bandages. Kind of cool being able to look down into my road rash and see how it changes every hour and every day.

Was warned by several people to avoid the swimming pools or open water. Horrible risk of infections due to open wounds -- and vice versa.

Thinking about it -- if any of the lifeguards at the YMCA or the city pools saw the road rash on my elbow, they'd probably freak out and tell me to get out of the pool.

Started running again as a substitute. The shoulder didn't like it at first, but I got used to the discomfort. Ran for an hour last night, shoulder didn't bother me. Other parts of my legs did, unfortunately.

Now for the bike.

To my pleasant surprise there is no frame damage. Two different bike shops did a visual inspection of the bike. They couldn't find any cracks on the exterior of the frame. The mechanics at the first shop also told me, based on the damage to the right brake hood, saddle, and right pedals, that those parts plus the handlebar seemed to have taken the brunt of the damage (as well as my front wheel of course). I was also told by the guys at the second shop that the kind of stone age carbon fiber bike I use (a 1st generation Specialized Allez Epic with aluminum lugs) fails at the lugs, not in the main body. There were no signs of lug failure or damage -- at least for now. I was told to be on the lookout for odd squeaks and cracking sounds. If I start hearing that -- then I got issues.

The wheels, however, do have issues. They did what they could with the front wheel. It has a permanent hop in it, which probably reflects the fact that the wheel is both old and damaged -- no amount of truing will help a rim that's been banged up. The rear wheel is getting old and needs to be trued up for safety reasons.

So for now at least the worst case scenarios have been avoided.

Spaghetti Bolognese is very flexible...

M and I had an itch for pasta yesterday. So we decided to make some homemade pasta and a Spaghetti Bolognese -- or in simple plain English spaghetti and meat sauce.

After reading about a Medici-era Bolognese recipe in Bill Buford's Heat, and eating the pasta ragu at Antica Trattoria at Union & Polk Street, I wanted to make a meat sauce that was different from what I ate back NJ growing up. The meat sauces I'd eaten as a kid was very meaty, but very sweet from added sugar, and very tangy from the tomatoes they used. It was also heavier than a brick. All those very strong ingredients (fatty meat, white sugar, big tangy tomatoes), created a sauce that was at times overwhelming.

The sauce at Antica Trattoria was a little more like a brown meat gravy with lots of herbs -- which made it much lighter tasting and flavorful than you would expect. The Medici-era Bolognese cited in Heat had cardammon and cinnamon in it.

Doing some research in my Saveur Cooks Italian cookbook, I noticed two different sets of meat sauce recipes. One was very simple, used with a pumpkin gnocci. The other more complex, used in a spinach lasagna. The following is a hybrid of the two.

One onion
Three stalks of celery
4 cloves of garlic
1/4 lb of ground chuck
1/4 lb of ground pork
1 can of tomato paste
14 oz can of diced tomatoes
1 cup of red wine
bay leaves
salt & pepper to taste

Fundamental to all Bolognese recipes is meat, tomatoes, and onions. From there, there is plenty of room for experimentation. In my case, the glass of red wine imparted a sweetness and richness to the sauce that took away much of the tartness of the tomatoes. It was very different from the meat sauces I grew up with back in NJ. It paired well with M's homemade pasta -- which had a kind of chewiness that mated well with the texture of the sauce.

Using this as a base recipe, I can make future versions of it with cardamon/cinammon to give it a slight sweetness (a la the Medici recipe), but also add either bacon or pancetta in the beginning (to give saltiness & smokiness).

Ouch...

Had a nasty fall this weekend on my bike. Went on a training ride on saturday with J. Wasn't paying attention, bike went out from under me, tumbled, next thing I knew, I was sitting up, scraped up, and bleeding. I checked myself, no broken bones, and I couldn't detect any sign of head injury. My bike though, was a bit beaten up. Two spokes pulled out the front rim, handlebar knocked off center.

To be on the safe side, I drove myself to the hospital, and subjected myself to almost six hours of waiting at ER. Even though I didn't break any bones, my left shoulder was killing me. I didn't have the usual signs of head trauma (dizziness, nausea, fainting, vomiting) but the left side of my head did hurt a bit. I also had road rash all over me.

After all the waiting, a CAT scan to verify that my head was OK, and a shoulder x-ray, I was let go. I came out of the crash with a sprained left shoulder, a bruise covering over half the surface of my scalp, road rash stretching from the back of my left shoulder down to my elbow, patches of road rash on my left butt cheek, both knees, and the insides of both my arms.

The last time I fell this hard, when I was 19, I ended up breaking my collarbone, destroying my front wheel, and twisting up my metal frame. This time I'm much more scratched up in terms of road rash, but have come out of it without any broken bones, and (thus far) my bike looks repairable.

So I'm sidelined for now. I'm committed to the MS Ride, so I'll have to get back on the bike again after it gets repaired. But I think I will probably slow it down a bit in terms of intensity & speed, the exception being going up hills. I essentially crashed because I wasn't paying enough attention at a moment when due to speed & road conditions I should have had both hands on the handlebar.

So for at least a few weeks after I get back on the bike, I think I'm going to take it a bit slow.