Fancy Feast

Heck I have really outdone myself this evening. I prepared marinated pork ribs, begun bhaja, zucchini and a sweet potatoe & pumpkin pie. Yummo.

Ribs:

The ribs were of the big chunky meaty variety, not those skinny-assed things you gnaw on to amuse yourself for half an hour or so. Here's what you need:

a few cups of chinese rice wine & a good sluice of hon mirin (japanese rice wine)
tamari or soy sauce, enough to darken the color
korean bbq sauce of your choice, or shrimp paste - a generous tablespoon (the spoon of doom)
sliced garlic, a good amount - 3 big cloves
allspice - not the cake makin kind - the asian cookin kind
sesame oil - sluice away
a strap of ribs from a chinese butcher - as I mentioned these are the chunky substantial ones cut across the bone, not along the bone with crap-all meat. You want to marinate big luvverly hunks of satan-meat. (lapsed jew at the keyboard, folks)

Ok. Mix up all the marinade ingredients in a baking dish. Cut the pork into reasonable chunks for cooking. Try to keep it large enough to look like a portion of meat - if you cut it too small it may dry out during the cooking process.

Let this sit for a few hours in the fridge. You will need to turn them over after a while to ensure both sides are allowed soaking times. (if you bought the right kind of ribs there's no way you'll submerge with the quantities I've specified)

When you're ready to bake, preheat oven to 200 centigrade. Pour off the marinade into a container and reserve in the fridge. Throw those mothers in the oven and leave them for maybe 50 minutes or so, just until they are caramelised and looking super-mega-tasty.

Begun Bhaja & Zucchini:

Once you have the meat cooking, you have time to frolic in eggplant-land. This is a basic classy way to do eggplants in Indian cuisine. Recipe courtesy of a stunning Indian model whooping it up in Europe :) I added the zucchini because it's a nice contrast and provides a quick side to the meal of a 'green vegetable' nature.

You just need to grab a bunch of eggplants, zucchinis, tumeric, salt and mustard seed oil. If you're feeling adventurous get some black mustard seeds too.

Pls note there are mild and spicy versions of mustard seed oil. You will have to experiment with this - I use the mild stuff and jazz it up by pre-sauteeing some mustard seed so it's got a bit of zing as well as texture and aroma.

I also prefer to use the long skinny aubergine rather than the big fat ones. I think they come out very sweet and are a fave for me to cook (and grow - by the truckload, along with thai eggplants which are killer bee in stews).

The eggplant needs to be cut into thin strips lengthwise. Don't cut your fingers off trying. If you don't keep sharp decent knives in the house, you will have issues with this. Go to the local place with dangerous looking knives of decent quality and take a step in the right direction before doing this little side dish.

In any case - don't cut them too thin - or they'll be hard to manouvre about in the pan when cooking.

You need to combine tumeric and salt pretty much fifty fifty. And you'll go through a reasonable amount of both, so be prepared for that, depending on how many eggplants you're going to cook up. You place the cut eggplant in your little puddle of spice, and the idea here is not to really coat the eggplant, but dip it on both sides and rub it into the eggplant gently for a moment. Just do them all and pile them up, and then these need to sit for half an hour.

Cut your zucchini in the same manner. You can rub them in the spice too if you like, it's not really important.

So you're going to fry this up when the rest of the meal is ready to go, because it's very fast to cook.

Get a nice big frying pan onto a high heat. Get some mustard seed oil in the pan, and mustard seeds too if you're feeling adventurous. If you're cooking with mustard seeds, you want to let these fizzle and sizzle in the oil until they start popping before you add the eggplant. Otherwise, just let the oil hit smoke point, and reduce the temperature so you can fry the eggplant without setting your kitchen ablaze.

Load up the pan with eggplant. Make sure there is enough oil to generously fry the eggplant, it should not be dry. When it is browned, turn and fry on the other side. Place on papertowel to absorb oil, and keep going till you run out of eggplant. Take the lovely oil in the pan and fry up the zucchinis in the same manner.

Sweet Potatoe & Pumpkin Pie:

Ok this one is a little weird for some of you. It's actually a gluten free/dairy free recipe that could easily be made vegan. I make it because my son has a very strict diet. You'll need a food processor and a mixer too.

Here are the ingredients:

Silken tofu or egg tofu - a few handfuls
2 free range humane eggs
some soy milk (I use vitasoy so mily light, it's a great product and gluten free)
2 cups diced pumpkin, steamed
2 cups diced sweet potatoe, steamed
a handful of gluten free ginger-nut cookies
a handful of gluten free crackers
some nuttelex (dairy-free margarine)
cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice (the cake kind), vanilla essence or paste to taste
3/4 cup gluten free self-raising flour
sluice of apple cider vinegar

Preheat oven to 180 celcius.

First you make the crumb base. It's kind of like the sort of thing that goes on the ass of a cheesecake, but we're not making cheesecake. Combine the crackers and cookies and a spoon of margarine in a food processor and pulverize. Grease a cake tin or souffle dish, and press the mixture into the bottom.

You will then be pulverising other ingredients and combining.

Do the cold stuff first.

Place the tofu and eggs together in the food processor and turn it into slimy goop. Put this into a mixing bowl for beating.

Place the pumpkin and sweet potatoe in the food processor with a little soy milk and turn into sludge. Yes, sounds nice doesn't it? Do it anyways.

Make sure you're ready to mix the second the hot stuff hits the bowl, or you could make it in advance and piss fart about for a few hours. I'm not one to dawdle. So let's prepare to mix this up..

Into the soycurd mess that's already in the mixing bowl, put in the spices & vanilla essence, flour and vinegar. Whizz it up. Add the veggie slime, mixing as you add it. If it gets too thick, you may want to add a little soy milk. It should not be runnier than pancake mix, but not quite as thick as a cake batter. It's hard to mess this up though.

I am going to also note here that you might want to sweeten this. I don't because my son goes apeshit if he has sweet stuff. If you want to, you could use sugar, maple syrup, a little brown sugar, or even some finely cut pineapple would be nice.

Ok - pour this into the dish and put it into the oven. It should take at least half an hour to cook, and will rise and brown on the surface. Make sure it has risen all over - not just around the edges. If it's still wet in the middle you just need to let it keep baking for a while.

Ok all of these foods are of different origin, but because they are all warm flavors they work well together.

The reserved marinade can be boiled in a saucepan if needed for reserve sauce, although there should be a great dripping sauce from the pork baking dish. If you want to make everything look like a sliced up eat-a-thon, thinly slice the pork, drizzle with the drippings, lay out with the begun bhaja and zucchini and serve pie on the side. Another possible use of the marinade would be to immediately use for some chicken - but if you don't have any on hand, best not to hold onto marinade, even if it's tasty. Dump it down the drain if you have no immediate use for it.

Have fun, make a big mess, have a glass of wine!