Hi there!

This is my first good idea for a blog, even though I have had this blog open for a few years. I have had many wonderful food adventures and I thought I would share some of them with you.
I always get very excited about food and cooking, so it seems like it would be a good thing to blog about. I think that some of the recipes I will post as well as food ideas will be stuff that people will really deeply enjoy.

To kick it off here, I will post a tasty recipe I recently tried.

I was the deep need to have one of those pupu platters that they have at good chinese restaurants. If you aren't familiar and the name sounds a little off-putting to you, they are these flaming appetizer plates you can get at a good chinese restaurant,(though they originally come from hawaii.)
They usually have chinese chicken wings, spareribs, silver paper chicken and a few other tasty fried treats. I was jonesing for one but at the moment it is a challenge to convince my wife to go and drop some cash on restaurant food, especially something called pupu.

So being the resourceful chap that I am, I researched a bit online and found some recipes for the various components of said platter.

I made BBQ pork chops using the Chinese spareribs marinade that I found, and they were, in a word, absolutely delicious!

The ingredients aren't difficult to get and you can find them in most supermarkets. The most exotic ingredients are chinese Five Spice Powder and Hoisin sauce. We bought both at King Soopers ( a not-exactly-ritzy Colorado supermarket) for less than $5 . You can find them in the Asian food section, usually with the Hispanic foods and Italian foods.

The taste can be described as sweet, but not too sweet, with a nice familiar BBQ flavor. It is reminiscent of a good peanut sauce for potstickers, without the nutty flavor.
The recipe is for spare ribs, but I figured it would work just as well for pork chops and my gamble paid off.
The recipe calls for red dye, in order to make it authentic, but it isn't necessary at all unless you are really going for the chinese restaurant look. The spare ribs are supposed to be cooked in an oven, but you can skip that and just BBQ it instead. It is Tasty!

Save the marinade and continue to brush it on as you BBQ it for added tasty flavor and moistness.

Here is the original recipe! Enjoy!


Chinese Barbecued Spareribs


SERVES 4

This recipe is based on one that appears in the Joyce Chen Cook Book (J. B. Lippincott, 1962) by the author of the same name. For this dish, we like to use leaner, Chinese-style spareribs, also called St. Louis style, from which the breast bones and flaps of cartilaginous meat have been removed.

1⁄3 cup hoisin sauce
1⁄4 cup soy sauce
3 tbsp. dry sherry
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tbsp. sugar
3⁄4 tsp. red food coloring
1⁄4 tsp. Chinese five spice powder
1 2-lb. slab spareribs, preferably St. Louis style,
cut into individual ribs

1. Whisk together hoisin, soy, sherry, garlic, sugar, food coloring, and spice powder in a large bowl. Add ribs; toss to coat with marinade. Set aside, covered with plastic wrap, to let marinate at room temperature for 1 hour.

2. Heat oven to 350°. Arrange a baking rack on top of a rimmed, foil-lined sheet pan. Remove ribs from marinade (reserve marinade); arrange on the rack, meat (not bone) side up. Place pan on middle rack of oven; pour in enough water that it reaches halfway up the sides of the pan, making sure the water does not touch the ribs. Bake ribs for 35 minutes. Baste ribs with reserved marinade; flip and baste again. Bake for 35 minutes more. (Add more water to pan if it dries up.) Raise heat to 450°. Flip ribs again; baste with remaining marinade. Continue baking until ribs are glazed, browned, and tender, about 20 minutes more. Serve with Chinese mustard or duck sauce, if you like.