For my husband to request a meal that doesn't involve 1. cheese, 2. heavy cream, or 3. pasta, is incredible. So when we were discussing our Fourth of July meal and he said "why don't you make those ribs again?"(see saturday, june 28), I jumped at the chance. You'll remember my delight at how wonderfully the brining worked, how nicely the ribs grilled up, the interplay of the salty brine with my sweet, vinegary barbecue sauce.
Yeah, none of that happened this time.
For starters, thanks to a busy week in the E. household, we put off our grocery shopping to the holiday itself. Note to self, and to entire internet: never, never, never go to the State College Wegmans on a holiday or the day preceding or following a holiday unless you want to sloooooowly follow well-shod older couples through the parking lot in their Range Rovers (in your clanking old Honda Civic) and then through the aisles of the organic section whilst they stock their carts with free-range chicken broth and soy crisps. I just want to get to the butter!
Alas, I never did get to the butter.
We arrived at Wegmans at 12:52 p.m. to find a notice on the door saying "We will be closing at 1 p.m. on July 4th". And it was like a giant loudspeaker had been set up in the middle of the town announcing this fact, prompting everybody to toss down their hot dogs and make a frenzied dash to the grocery store. The corn bin was a madhouse; husks flying every which way, ladies elbowing each other to get to the front lines and pluck their butter-and-sugar cobs from the heaping pile.
Scott and I darted around the store like we were on an episode of Supermarket Sweet (OMG, best game show ever, bring it back bring it back!), and threw things in our basket at random. When we exited the premises 12 minutes later, blinking in the dim sunlight, our bags contained the following array of Independence Day-related goods: Nathan's hot dogs, pierogies, naan bread, watermelon ribs, white pepper, olive oil*, boneless ribs, 3 different types of potato, a single tomato, an english cucumber, and a $10.34 bag of cherries because the cherry display was too crowded for me to do my usual "dump some cherries out of the bag and put them in other ones".
Notice the lack of butter.
So we get home and I brine the ribs, increasing the salt content 'cause I'm feeling like a rebel. I make the barbecue sauce and I begin my Patriotic Potatoes. This is a recipe that cropped up in my head the other day, when I was attempting to come up with something achingly inventive to create for the holiday. Why are the patriotic, you ask? Just look at the delightfully American array of colors - red, white and purple (er, blue)! Of course, you could use this recipe with any singular type of potato, as well.
Patriotic Potatoes
6 small purple potatoes
6 small red-skin potatoes
6 small white potatoes
1/2 small red onion, cut into thin strips
2 Tbsp flat-leaf parsley
3 cloves garlic, minced
Juice of 1/4 lemon
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Dash cayenne pepper
1. Preheat oven to 400. Quarter the potatoes so they are roughly the same size and place in baking dish (I used disposable because who wants to scrub dishes on the Fourth of July?!).
2. Add the onion, garlic, parsley, salt and cayenne, and drizzle with olive oil (just eyeball it - I probably used about 1-2 Tbsp). Use your fingers to combine all ingredients and coat the potatoes with the olive oil - add more if needed.
3. Roast in oven for about 1 hour, tossing occasionally. Taste potatoes for tenderness - you may need to adjust cooking time by 15-20 minutes depending on the size of the chunks and your oven.
4. Serve topped with chopped parsley, a squeeze of lemon, and a dollop of sour cream, if desired.
So the potatoes are roasting away, the house smells of garlic and sweet barbecue sauce, and everything is going swimmingly. I heat the grill (one side to high, the other side to v. v. low), and slap the ribs on to get a sear. I turn them once, and pop! pop! My grill burners shut off. Yep. Out of propane. AAAAHHHH!!!
Improvise - stick ribs in oven with potatoes, roast for 45 minutes, baste 10 minutes out. Sure, fine. But not the same. The brine is too salty for my liking, the sauce doesn't caramelize like it does on the grill, and I come down with a stomach ache right before dinner and can't even finish the ribs.
To top it all off, as the beautiful corn that I elbowed some old lady for is boiling away, I realize that we forgot to buy butter and Scott runs out to the gas station down the street because corn without butter is like, like, hot dogs without ketchup! Like movies without popcorn! It's just NOT DONE. Alas, all they have is margarine (see quote from July 3, 3008: "margarine tastes like ass.") So I refuse to eat it, Scott kicks some boxes, I almost cry and dump the green beans on the plates unseasoned, and then we chill out and have some cookies and lattes.
Happy Independence Day!
*Olive Oil Anecdote: What to do in this situation? I remembered I needed olive oil as we were handing the credit card over, so I told Scott to wait by the door while I grabbed it and ran through the express lane. I got to the olive oil line and SO MANY CHOICES! I tend to go for the pricier olive oils, the ones with some opacity and grassiness to them, and I had plucked a perfectly lovely bottle of first cold-press off the shelf when this sweet older man tapped me on the shoulder and said "dear, may I recommend this one? it has a delightful olive oil taste and i really like olive oil. a very good choice." Now, the bottle he recommended was a cheaper, huge bottle of grocery-store variety olive oil, which I probably never would have picked. But as he proceeded to watch me while I inspected the bottle, all the while extolling the virtues of this particular olive oil, I had no other choice but to select it. So we are now the proud owners of something like a gallon of olive oil which Scott will make me use up before I can buy a pretty, $25 bottle of Spanish oil from the cheese shop. Woe is me.
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