Braised Country-Style Ribs
This was a recipe adapted from Susanna Foo’s cookbook.
It’s quite surprising, the use of thyme and tomato — ingredients you don’t usually see in Chinese cuisine. However, curiosity got the better of me and I tried it anyway. While this is a dish that’s easy enough to tackle on a hot summer evening, I would much rather have tried the soy sauce-rice wine-black vinegar of which Ms. Foo speaks in her notes. This one was just too much an amalgam of stuff that none of the individual elements stood out in the end, unlike Chinese dishes where certain things pop out at you: SWEETNESS! HEAT! Nothing like that happens here. This may be a good introductory recipe, though, for someone just beginning to cook/eat Asian food.
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 pounds country-style ribs
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 cinnamon stick
2 tablespoons grated orange zest
1 teaspoon anise seed
1/2 cup Madeira
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar (I used black instead)
1 tomato, peeled and cubed
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 cup pork or chicken stock
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Heat oil in a large saucepan/casserole over medium-high heat. Add ribs through anise seed. Cook a few minutes, turning, until ribs are seared. Add remaining ingredients up to thyme, plus 1/4 cup of the stock. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, 45 minutes to an hour, or until pork is tender. Remove ribs from pan and deglaze with remaining stock, scraping up any brown bits. Boil down sauce until thick and syrupy. Strain sauce through a sieve before serving, sprinkle on salt and pepper to taste.
