TGI Friday

So, let's start cooking, shall we?! You know when all you crave is meat and carbs, preferably with some cheesy sauce and a salad drenched in unhealthy dressing on the side? The kind of stuff you get at TGI Friday's? (Don't tell me you never get that craving and that the only carbs you eat is unsweetened rye bread with low-fat cottage cheese and grated carrots. Then this blog is not for you.)
Well, I got that craving (for the meat and carbs, not the cottage cheese and carrots), and since my town lacks a TGI Friday's (and the stuff you get there is never as good as it sounds on paper, and you pay kind of a lot for not very good food anyway) I decided to make it myself. The meat turned out very flavorful with a distinct note of ginger and cinnamon. Next time I will add some garlic and maybe up the amount of chili because it wasn't spicy at all.

Marinated spare ribs with cheddar mash

serves 2

For the ribs and marinade (adopted from Nigella Lawson's Feast):
600 grams thick spare ribs
1 yellow onion, in pieces
1 star anise
1 small cinnamon stick, in pieces
1 red chili, seeds removed, chopped
A chunk of fresh ginger (about 3 cm), chopped
1/2 lime, zest and juice
1½ tbsp mushroom soy
1 tbsp cold pressed rape seed oil
1 tbsp light syrup
4 tbsp pineapple juice (NOT the juice from canned pineapple!)

Put the meat, onion, anise, cinammon, chili and ginger in double plastic bags. Mix the lime zest and juice, soy, oil, syrup and pineapple juice and pour it over the meat. Seal the bags and rub everything around so that the marinade reaches all parts of the meat.


Ribs ready to be marinated.

Refrigerate for at least 3 hours. When you're ready to cook, get the meat out of the fridge to reach room temperature. Put your oven to 200 degrees C and pour the meat and marinade into a snug fitting pan. Cook for about 1 hour (mine could definitely have been in the oven a while longer because the middle of my piece of meat was a bit too pink for my liking when it comes to pork). Turn the meat over after 30 minutes so that it browns on both sides.

For the cheddar mash, I made mashed potatoes with a bit of butter, but no milk, and a heap of grated cheddar cheese. How much to use depends on how cheesy you want it - for me, there is no such thing as too much cheese. Season with salt, black pepper and nutmeg, and the deed is done!

I also made cole slaw to go with this, flavored with roasted caraway seeds. I also served a simple mixed green salad with blue cheese dressing (grated blue cheese and sour cream plus some freshly ground black pepper).

Seriously, don't plan to get much done after eating this (over than saying stuff like "that was so good" and "please pass the wine"). After this and desert (see next post), we happily sunk into a food coma.