Oven-Roasted Pork Ribs
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I was reared a good Texas boy. You can tell because I say "reared," not "raised." Children are reared; rolls, raised.
In the tradition of Texas boys who get reared and itch for something else, I moved to New York City to get as concentrated a dose of the whole liberal, complicated, moiling mess as I could swallow.
So I got a Jewish boyfriend.
Jews were to my Southern upbringing mildly exotic, like France. For one thing, they inhabit way more than half the Bible. (All of it, truth be told.) As a child, I had sat in church and heard those sermons about how Jesus couldn't come back until the Jews "were gathered together in their homeland." I pictured Rhoda Morgenstern's apartment.
Anyway, I had chosen the chosen. And chosen someone who, from a long line of kosher butchers, could eroticize pork ribs like no Texan I've ever met. So last night, we had Bruce's all-time favorite dinner.
First, he steamed the ribs on a rack in a big, covered pot over about two inches of simmering water for 30 minutes. That way, some of the fat renders off, making the ribs (very) mildly healthier; the cartilage also gets a head start on softening in the oven.
They came out ghostly pale, like Yankees in February.
He smeared them with a gorgeous, dry-spice rub: 2 teaspoons light brown sugar, 2 teaspoons mild smoked paprika, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, 1 teaspoon ground cumin, 1 teaspoon onion powder, 1/2 teaspoon celery seeds, 1/2 teaspoon ground chipotle chiles, and 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder. He shoved the whole thing in a preheated 325F oven on a rack in a lipped baking sheet for about 1 1/2 hours--until they were waggly at the joints to assure they were tender.
Wow. Bruce is nothing if not over-the-top. A sort of moiling mess of exuberance--like ribs on a weeknight. And so for me, the real New York experience.
It's been that way ever since the beginning. When we first moved in together, we used to have dinner with his grandmother, a woman who'd made the trek from Russia almost a half a century earlier. She was very old, very modern (her gay grandson, after all), quite enfeebled, and almost deaf. The conversation would inevitably turn to me, the Gentile in the room. And it always ran something like this:
SHE: "Are you two managing?"
HE: "We're managing."
SHE: "What?"
HE: "We're managing."
SHE: "What?"
HE: "We're managing."
SHE: "You're managing?"
HE: "We're managing."
SHE: "Oh."
It was the whole New York experience in one conversation, as far as I could tell.
Reader Comments (1)
Those photos look delish!