Pork Ribs So Good Even I Will Eat Them

I mentioned these in the previous post. Lexi and her significant other made them for spouse's birthday during a recent beach house trip. They involved much brining and soaking and prepping with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, and there was fire involved at the end... it was dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria!

And they were so good that even I - an inveterate rib-hater - ate them and thought they were delicious. Spouse loved 'em.

Lexi did the cornbread (sweet and moist, with niblets of corn in it) and I made the red jacket mash (with plenty of butter and whole milk). No recipe for this one, just a few images to make you drool.

Beach + Debauchery = Debeachery?

My family is fortunate enough to have the use of a wonderful beach house located on one of the myriad salty inlets in the region. Owned by my grandmother (venerable matriarch of the clan, and a majorly bitchin' gourmet cook in her own right), the house boasts spectacular views of the local terrain, not to mention a kickass kitchen that was remodeled a scant few years ago after a disastrous water leak. We've hosted many a family get-together there, not to mention quite a few parties of a rather more... adventurous nature.

It's one of my favorite places to cook, eat, and drink. The location right on the beach makes gathering shellfish easy: we can walk right out the door and collect mussels, oysters and clams, and have them shelled and cooking in a half an hour (longer for mussels, since they have to be cleaned and de-bearded). In good seasons we can also put the crab pot out and have fresh Dungeness, steamed in an old industrial-sized pot on the bulkhead two steps from the beach. A cold plunge in the salt sound after lunch and a bonfire after the sun goes down, and you've got a recipe for heaven.

Birthdays have been a favorite reason to celebrate. My family has hosted birthdays at the beach house for as long as I can remember, and the tradition continues, with friends old and new. There's always plenty of fun and games, but I have to admit that a big part of my visits there have to do with food - creating menus, cooking special dishes, mixing drinks, and just playing freely in the kitchen. One weekend we had a Kung Fu moviefest, and Lexi churned out a 12-course Chinese meal to die for. Other weekends have been one long surf-and-turf grillgasm from start to finish. Not long ago Lexi's significant other brought down a luscious, dark, homebrewed mocha stout for spouse's birthday, to go with ribs so delicious even I enjoyed them... and the list goes on.

These shots are from my 35th birthday (I won't tell you when that happened). They're an introductory sampling of the sort of fare in which we indulge at beach house parties. Trust me, there'll be more of these to come.

I'm a huge fan of Lexi's Angels on Horseback. She usually makes them with oysters, but here she did a variation: big, fat scallops wrapped in bacon, sprinkled with brown sugar and broiled. Yum!

More scallops (I think these ones were steamed with Old Bay seasoning, but I don't recall), along with steamed crayfish.

I think Lexi (and perhaps the spouse) invented this drink. It's called a Mertini. I don't remember what all exactly was in it, other than fruit and ice and some liqueur or other, plus a plastic mermaid. I don't think the recipe really had much to do with an actual martini, the name just worked out that way.

And We'll All Have Chicken & Dumplings When She Comes...

Spouse is as much a foodie as we are, plus he's got designs on going to culinary school. Every so often he tries out some new recipe or other, and most of the time whatever he's cooking turns out pretty well - even the weird stuff he makes up on the fly with ingredients you'd never think of putting together. (An early success was braised chicken breast and pears in white wine sauce... mmmmmm.)

Recently we had a fun evening when he tried chicken soup with dumplings. Behold the dumpling goodness.















I'll admit, he cheated a bit and used a commercial biscuit mix for the base. But he rolled them with wheat flour and it added a slightly nutty flavor, which turned out to be a little extra yum.

He also added garlic, salt and pepper to the dough. Dumplings can be rather flavorless but the garlic gave these ones a delicious savory flavor.














The soup base was a basic chicken soup recipe: mirepoix made of chopped carrots, onion, and celery cooked in butter until the onion is clear ("because everything's better with butter, especially dumplings!" quoth spouse).

Add diced chicken and cook until the chicken is browned.

Then add commercial chicken stock and bring to a slow boil. As I recall we used sage and rosemary from our herb garden for the seasonings, plus salt and pepper. You can see the fresh cut herbs simmering on top of the broth here.













When the stock comes to a boil, lay the dumplings on the surface of the liquid and turn the heat down to a simmer. It's worth adding a little more liquid at this point, as the dumplings need to steam in the pot, and they can soak up some liquid as they do.

Cover and cook until the dumplings are done, about 20 minutes or so for dumplings about the size of a golf ball. Don't take the lid off while they're cooking or you'll lose steam.














Behold the dumpling goodness in all its steamy fluffy chickeny glory!

Something about chicken, sage, garlic, and fluffy dumplings made for a perfect early autumn dinner. Just remember that you have to eat the dumplings when they're fresh, because if you try to save them for later they dissolve into a soupy porridge-like mess. Still tastes pretty good, but at that point it isn't really dumplings anymore, it's more like a savory bread pudding.