Stick to your Country Style Ribs, A Firehouse Friend

A few weeks ago I put a recipe up here for a fireman friend. He’d been struggling a bit to feed the hungry firefighters on his team and asked for a recipe. Well, apparently it was a big success so I told him I’d put up another recipe when I was inspired.

So today we’re going to talk about country style pork ribs. These are not the pricey babybacks or spare ribs, but rather the larger, heavier ribs that usually come five to a package at the store. One person can eat two, with sides so plan accordingly. (FTR, they’re not actually ribs. They’re usually pork shoulder and the bone along the edge is the scapula).

The trick with these ribs is that if you don’t give them enough time in the oven they’ll be tough. That’s why they’re cheap. In fact, in general I find that if something is cheap it needs to cook a long time to be good. That’s the case with these. But the great thing is they don’t need any prep. Salt and pepper, foil and time. You’ll finish with your favorite barbecue sauce and then make sure you grab two for you before you put them out because they’ll disappear in a hurry. I’m also giving you my secret recipe for really good barbecue beans. (The secret is Chorizo…)

The recipe.

This works for up to 15 LBS of ribs, depending on the size of your oven. It also works for one package. So it’s a very flexible recipe.

Ingredients

• Country Pork Ribs (figure two ribs per person)

• Salt and Pepper

• Olive Oil

• Store bought barbecue sauce

For the barbecue beans

• 2 16 ounce cans Store bought barbecue beans

• 2 tubes mexican chorizo

• 2 packages grated cheddar cheese

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.

Liberally spray cooking spray on as many baking trays as you will need for your ribs to make one layer on each tray with a little airspace in between. If you don’t do this then you have to clean your own dishes because when you’ve finished cooking you’ll have a sticky mess.

Drizzle olive oil on the ribs and rub it around to create a light coating. Salt and pepper the ribs. I season them pretty liberally using about 50% salt and 50% pepper. (Pork doesn’t generally need a lot of salt).

Make one layer on each baking tray and seal tightly with foil. Place in the oven and let them cook for 2 hours. if making more than 10 lbs of ribs add 1/2 hour to the cook time.

Remove the ribs from the oven. Be careful as there will be a lot of liquid in the pans. Leave the liquid in the pans for the next step. The ribs can be left out (covered) at this point for up to four hours. So you have a lot of flexibility. One hour before you want to eat, preheat the oven to 275 degrees, baste the ribs with your favorite barbecue sauce (coating them liberally), and place them back in the oven uncovered for one hour. When you remove them from the oven they’re ready to serve.

For the Beans

Empty the two cans of barbecued beans into a large sauce pan over medium low heat. Squeeze the chorizo out of the tubes into the beans. As the beans heat the chorizo will melt into the beans. Once the chorizo is fully dissolved pour into a well greased 9X13 casserole (Pyrex) and top with cheddar cheese. This can also wait at this point. If you refrigerate (up to you) then place them in the oven covered with foil for 60 minutes when you’re finishing the ribs, removing the foil half way through. If the beans are still warm they’ll be done in 30 minutes and they don’t need the foil.

Serve with a salad with ranch dressing. If you want to kick up the salad crumple tortilla chips in it and add some hot sauce to your favorite ranch dressing.

Baked Firehouse Rigatoni

Recently a young man visited Town with his family and as we were talking he told me that he was starting to enjoy cooking at home for his lovely wife, but that when he had to cook for his mates at the fire station it was a challenge. I told him that once a month I’d put a recipe up here for him to try. Feel free to try it yourself. It makes a hearty dish so use this recipe when you have a herd stopping by or you want a lot of leftovers.

Note that this dish is also designed for a bunch of hungry, crazy, physically active people so I’m not in any way trying to make it “healthy.” I’ll post something more healthy next week.. This is GREAT for a cold night.

Baked Rigatoni with Sausage and a Surprise

Ingredients

• 1lb Italian Sausage, either without casing or casings removed

• 1 16oz can good quality petite diced tomatoes (not “italian style, just plain)

• 1 16oz can good quality tomato sauce

• 1 6oz can good quality tomato paste

• 2 shallots, diced

• 4 garlic cloves, smashed

• 1 TBS dried italian herb mix (at the grocery store)

• 2 TBS Olive Oil (Preferably NOT Extra Virgin as this tends to burn)

• 1 8oz package Ciliegine Mozzarella, surprise!, drained (little mozzarella balls in the specialty section at any grocery store)

• 8-12oz freshly grated parmesan - from a cheese grater, not from the store

• 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

• 1 LB Rigatoni Pasta

Preheat your oven to 400. (Pasta can be prepared ahead of time, held and cooked when you’re ready to eat. Handy in a firehouse…

Prepare the pasta according to the directions on the box, but remove it from the water just a bit before it’s done. We’re going to bake it with the sauce and we don’t want to kill it. Reserve two cups of the pasta water before draining. Also! SALT the water. Like a lot of salt. It should almost taste like the ocean. (Not that it’s a good idea to swallow ocean water, but I know you have….) A drizzle of olive oil in the pasta water will help the pasta avoid sticking, but if you wait until the water is at a rolling boil and then stir vigorously while you’re pouring the pasta in the water, and again about 15 seconds later you should be fine. (This works for any pasta).

Add the sausage to a large frying pan or non-stick wok over medium high heat. While it’s cooking break it up with a potato masher or slotted spoon, cook until the fat is rendered (the fat is cooked out of the sausage) and it’s slightly browned. Using a slotted spoon remove the sausage from the pan, but leave the fat.

Leaving the pan on the heat, add the olive oil to the sausage fat and then add the shallots and stir for 30 seconds. (Don’t use a measuring spoon for the olive oil and don’t use a stop watch. These are all “approximate” guidelines). Add the garlic and stir for another 15 seconds. Add the tomato paste and stir for about a minute. Add the canned tomato and tomato sauce, the herbs and the crushed red pepper, stirring together with the paste, shallots and garlic.

When the sauce comes to a boil reduce the heat to low. Add the rigatoni to the sauce and stir to combine. Add some of the pasta water if you need to expand the sauce. Remove from the heat and add the mozzarella balls. Stir once or twice to distribute, but don’t over stir. You don’t want them to melt.

Prepare a 9X13 inch casserole (Like a pyrex but I hate the noise these make so I use ceramic bakers instead, but you probably won’t have a ceramic baker so just use a pyrex, with ear plugs) with non-stick cooking spray or butter. (Don’t forget this or whoever is doing dishes will want to kill you). Pour the pasta into the dish. Top with 1/2 of the parmesan. If you want to make it taste even better you can cut up a stick of butter and “dot” the top with the butter (over the cheese).

At this point this dish can be placed in the oven uncovered for about 20 minutes, or held on the counter for up to an hour - still cooking for 20-25 minutes. If you need to refrigerate the dish increase the cooking time to about 35 minutes and cover the pasta with foil for 1/2 the cooking time.

Serve with the rest of the grated parmesan, a baguette sliced in half (length wise) drenched in butter and warmed in the oven, and a large caesar salad - just use the bag from the store.

Prepare to be appreciated.

Who's the New Bartender?

If you’ve recently been to Town that bald guy behind the bar isn’t the bald guy who used to be behind the bar. That was Dean, who told everyone he is my better-looking younger brother. (In truth he is older, which makes his better-lookingness even more unbearable). Dean pinch hits for us from time to time when we need him, but he’s just as happy to come and sit with a Peroni and watch his daughter Kathleen working hard in her duties as expo (assembling single dishes into either ‘table’ or ‘to-go’ orders) or host. The new old guy behind the bar is me.

Steve (professional bartender, great guy, guitarist, singer and music trivia mavin) has recently been engaged in a running internal battle whether he is grateful for the help or petrified that I’m actually making every cocktail just a little bit wrong. Like all things, with practice one gets better. Never mind that I still sometimes forget to add the mint to the cucumber and mint gimlet, the servers have learned to watch for gaffs like this. And Steve has no idea how bad he was when he got started, not because it was too long ago, but because he can’t remember anything that happened between his 18th birthday and his 32nd birthday. He can’t relate.

I’ve enjoyed learning at least a part of the trade and with Steve and Alyssa helping (Alyssa is a Rountree and so, was born a professional) I’ve gotten progressively better.

What’s fun about bartending? All the things that are fun about cooking. Deciphering combinations of flavors is fun. Watching people be happy with something you make, that’s fun. For me, the challenge of remembering the recipes so I don’t constantly have to grab our bar bible is always fun. I like a challenge.

 Bartending is more like baking though and this is part of what makes it hard for me. When I cook I rarely use recipes. I understand ingredients, know flavors and balance and taste my way to success. Bakers measure. If a recipe says ¼ teaspoon adding ½ can knock the earth off its axis, at least in baker world. Bartender world is almost the same. ½ ounce means ½ ounce. People who’ve been doing it for a long time can upend a bottle and pour out the right measure without measuring. People who haven’t been doing it for as long need to measure. So I measure. Most of the time anyway.

 Unexpected fun comes in heart-warming little surprises. Like seeing a drink order and knowing who the customer is even though they’re seated outside. (Like Dr. Rich’s martini/gin and tonic combination or another customer’s old fashioned in a cocktail glass (also called a martini glass), or another customer’s very specific Black Manhattan, made with Cynar (which I have learned to pronounce “chinar” which rhymes with dinner only with an “R” at the end… uhm…never mind).

 Another fun surprise is pulling an order off the printer and seeing an old friend’s name and knowing how much he would love that when someone orders our house martini they order it by asking for a Rhymer. Most folks don’t know the drink is named for Don. Some think it’s a standard cocktail and I’ve heard funny stories from people who’ve attempted to order it by name elsewhere. (Even the Four Seasons in Maui doesn’t seem to know what a Rhymer is!)

 But some people mess it up. A Rhymer, as anyone who drank gin seriously with Don would tell you, never, ever, comes with an olive. It is never dirty. Don and I actually used to argue, not seriously – although for Don this was a semi-religious subject – about whether a gin martini is better with an olive or a lemon twist. Don was adamant, a twist. I actually used to bait him by telling him I thought the brininess of the olive was a better compliment to the gin. It was fun to see his face change from friend to sort of benevolent monk looking at useless knave and wondering how on earth I had made it this far in life. So, a Rhymer is Don’s martini. It is made with a twist and shaken hard. Nowadays we would call it “bruised.”

Friends of Don’s come in together from time to time; the journalist, the anchorman, the engineer, and I know they’re at Town when I see their cocktail order. Three Rhymers, all correct, with a twist. It makes me smile again to know we all remember our friend so vividly, even after the years.

When I started Town I wanted the place to be a place where our community felt safe and special. I wanted to make sure that no matter your preference or economic background, whether you’re coming in from the cloistered heights of La Canada or the nether regions of South-Central La Crescenta, you’d be able to find something that you enjoy. I wanted to make sure our servers always made you feel welcome, not because that’s the job but because they’re actually, truly glad you’re there.

No one could have predicted the whirlwind of these last months. In the midst of it all I’ll admit there were moments when we’d look at each other and wonder how the team could pull the place through. But I think the effort of sewing that ethos into the fabric of Town worked just well enough for you and us to pull through.

 We’re almost back. Not quite. But close.

And soon enough we’ll all have a chance to hoist the drink of our choice and cheer the end of these dark times and think of the friends we’ve lost and celebrate the friendships we share and Town will be there and we’ll be there and for me, that’s good enough reason to smile.

Just don’t order your Rhymer with an Olive. That’s not a Rhymer. It’s an “add-your-name-here” martini. And the Four Seasons won’t know what that one is either.

Town’s Black Manhattan

Town’s own, “Rhymer” martini

Barrel aged old fashioneds at Town.

Reheating To-Go Dishes

Reheating instructions for Town To-Go Dishes…

The first thing we’d say is that if you aren’t planning on eating your food right at 5:30 you’re doing us a favor by changing the default order time to something closer to when you want to eat. So long as your order is in before we run out, we’ll have it ready for you.

But we also get that sometimes there’s a lot of food, or for some unforeseen reason it has to sit for a while. Then what?

Here are some easy tips for reheating food from not just Town, but anywhere you might get it…

Pastas, vegetables, dishes like Town’s barbecue shrimp, etc.

For dishes like this your microwave is your friend, in small doses. In most cases I would add a tablespoon or two of whatever liquid is in the dish. Cream? Add a tablespoon or cream or milk and give it a bit of a stir before you Microwave. Broth based dishes can usually do with a bit of water. Just a bit.

When using your microwave you can usually reheat in your to go container unless it’s foil or metallic. Use a bit of common sense. If it’s too flimsy it might not hold up.

30 seconds for a partial order. 1 minute at a time for a full order. Stir, add a minute. Two minutes from room temp or three (max) from refrigerator temp is usually enough.

Pizzas, Quesadillas, Fried Fish, Fried Chicken, Roasted Chicken, Short Rib

Use a Pyrex baking dish or baking sheet and preheat your oven to 250. Give any of these kinds of dishes about 5 minutes and they’ll be hot. If they’re coming up from refrigeration, 10. Oven doesn’t need to be hotter, but the clock starts when the temp is at 250.

For larger dishes like roasted chicken or short rib it’s best to still use the 250 oven just allow about 20 minutes to fully reheat.

FRIES

So easy it’s almost embarrassing, but a surprise to some nonetheless… Don’t put them in the microwave of in the oven. They’ll lose crispiness in these humid environments. Instead, put them in a hot, dry frying pan. Wait 15 seconds and toss, and wait and toss for about a minute. Your fries will be crispy and hot. If you want to add a touch more salt do it as they’re coming out of the pan. If they’ve been in the refrigerator start them in a 250 degree oven and finish them this way. Don’t worry about washing your pan, just wipe it out while it’s still not with a paper towel or dish rag.