as you know, i like pork. last week carrien and josh had gone to market basket to procure beef to grind it at home for burgers, and they picked up some pork ribs as well. …unfortunately, by the time that i actually had the time to cook it, it had gone slightly green and iridescent, a good sign for something, i’m sure, but not meat. luckily, i had bought extra pork ribs at star to augment the ones in the fridge, and not that many people came to dinner, so it was fine.

i’ve been a little scattered with respect to cooking, having not been in the mood to do anything all that adventurous. accordingly, i’m afraid i was a little bit neglectful of what i made on friday evening: barbecued pork ribs, cornbread with corn, corn on the cob, onions, and ham in it, peas with thyme and onions, and apple “strudel” (really, apple turnovers). most of the neglect came from not really planning it out with respect to timing – oops. luckily, it all worked out anyway. i would say that if i did it over again, i would pay more attention to the ribs. i had picked out a recipe i used some time ago (maybe last fall?) but i couldn’t remember exactly how much of the recipe i had used until after i made them the second time… it turns out that while i stuck more to the recipe this time – basically, you steam the ribs en papillote with pineapple juice for an hour, then baste them with the glaze on a grill for a short period of time – as opposed to the last time, when i had no pineapple juice and not much honey, so i just roasted them in the oven and kept basting them. luckily, it takes rather a lot to ruin pork, so i would say that the disappointment i felt was really from the fact that my expectation of the final product was not what i actually got. but in fact, both versions were good: the original version i made was crispier on the outside and benefited flavor-wise by the basting, while the second version was more punchy with the flavor and was really tender from its steaming in the foil packets. i would say that you would want to use a medium-fat pork rib if you’re going to steam them, otherwise the fat doesn’t have enough time to completely render out of the pork and they end up a little greasy. i would say that the consistency of the glaze was also a bit gloppier than i wanted because they were in the oven and not on a grill; also, i had added the pineapple puree to the glaze after i strained out the juice to steam the ribs in, which i think made the glaze slower to cook and crisp. (more…)