Papa's Soul Food

 
 
BBQ Ribs, Kale Salad, & Stove-Top Mac and Cheese with a simple

Mint Mojito

I want my baby back baby back baby back baby back!

Thank goodness. I FINALLY have a legitimate reason to say that... (see Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me) Let's be real, the Austin Powers movies ruled my world for a good 2-3 years. But ribs never have! Ribs have never ruled my life. I actually can't even confirm that I have ever ordered ribs. Ever. But I have always taken bites of others, and enjoyed them immensely. I seriously don't know what my deal is, because I love meat so much, but I seem to draw the line when I have to break, rip, or somehow gnaw at a piece of meat to come out, or off of a bone -sorry for the graphic image, vegetarians...

I made a southern food FEAST. It was in honor of a restaurant called Papa's Soul Food in Eugene, where I went to college. I was at Pride SF on Sunday, and my friends and I were drooling over the thought of Papa's food. We decided on the spot that we would have a pseudo-Papa's dinner night. When we were talking about our dinner, we knew off the bat this included ribs. It wasn't a true Papa's visit unless my friend Katie got the ribs.

I have read about ribs in magazines in the past, but didn't have a specific recipe I was thinking about, so of course, I checked FoodNetwork.com. Naturally, the recipe I came across that looked good happened to be Tyler Florence, who, without fail, is usually the Food Network chef I choose to go with. Here is the original recipe. It didn't require for the ribs to be boiled, marinated ahead of time, or any other extra work, so I knew it would be a good recipe to use for a day that I had work and not a lot of time to prep.

For the mac and cheese, we knew we had to use a stove top recipe, because the oven was being used. Once you make macaroni and cheese a few times, there really is no reason to look at a recipe. You can simple just melt some butter, cheese, flour and pasta together in a big pot, and it still comes out as delicious as usual. If you'd like to follow a simple recipe, please click here. Riley pretty much made the entire macaroni and cheese dish because I was busy making the kale salad, so here is his recipe, which turned out AMAZ.IN.GLY.

Riley's mother made a kale salad recently for Riley's Graduation picnic, and it was simple, fresh, and light. Pam uses a lot of kale in her cooking, which allowed me to jump on the kale train easily. The recipe is on her cooking blog, which can be found here. Her blog ranges from yummy baked treats to incredibly healthy and fresh salads, like this one.

Kale can be used in many different ways, including soup, scrambles, and even juice! It is packed with nutrients, and fairly cheap for a bundle at the grocery store. Kale is distinguished by leaf type, including green kale, dinosaur (dino) kale, premier, redbor kale, Siberian kale...the list goes on. I used green kale, which looks like this typically:

Ingredients:
Package of orecchietti
3 teaspoons butter (there are 8 in a stick, which will be marked by lines on the outside paper)
1/2 pint heavy whipping cream
2 cups grated cheddar cheese
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1/4 flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
Black pepper

Directions:
1. Cook pasta based on package directions (the pasta continues to cook while being mixed with the cheese. Al dente is good. This means you leave it slightly undercooked)
2. Melt butter in large pot, and add flour. Mix together well, and make sure all clumps are taken out

3. Mix in heavy whipping cream.  Add salt and black pepper to taste
4. Stir in cheddar and Parmesan until melted

5. Add cooked pasta and mix with cheese!

BBQ Ribs:

Ingredients:

2 slabs baby back ribs (about 3-4 pounds)
Salt and pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 bacon slices, broken in halves
12 springs fresh thyme
3 smashed garlic cloves
2 cups ketchup
1 cup peach preserves (I swear, I went to Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, AND Safeway and still couldn't find any peach preserves, so I went with apricot)
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (the original recipe calls for paprika)
Kitchen twine, or toothpicks

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees
2. Put the ribs on a baking sheet, season with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil

3. Stick them in the oven, and let the ribs bake, low and slow for 1.5 hours. Meanwhile, make the sauce
4. Wrap the bacon around the middle of the thyme sprigs and tie with kitchen twine, or use toothpicks, so you have small, nice bundles

 
5. Heat a 2 count of oil in a large saucepan over medium heat
6. Add thyme bundle and cook slowly for 3-4 minutes to render the bacon fat and give the sauce a nice smoky taste

7. Add the onion and garlic and cook slowly, without coloring, for five minutes

8. Add the rest of the ingredients, stir the sauce, and turn heat down to low. Cook for 20 minutes to meld the flavors. Put some sauce in a separate bowl for basting, reserving the remaining sauce for serving (we used a kitchen brush instead of a baster, because I don't have a baster)

9. Baste the ribs with the sauce (cover them all over, as you would a roasted turkey with its juices), and let them cook, basting twice more, for 30 more minutes (each 15 minutes at the last half hour). When the ribs are cooked, take them out

10. Preheat broiler for 5 minutes and broil ribs, basting with the sauce. They should become crisp and charred, about five minutes per side.

 
11. Pick onion and garlic out of the sauce, if you so choose

Pam's Lemon & Kale Salad

Ingredients:

1 bundle of kale
1/4  cup walnuts, chopped and toasted

1/4 cup coarsely chopped bread crumbs
1/2 garlic clove
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
Freshly squeezed juice of 1 organic lemon
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 small dried red chili, crumbled (these are the peppers where red pepper chili flakes come from)
1/4 cup finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Trim kale ends and set aside for another use (Pam uses for soups later). Align the kale leaves vertically and chop horizontally in 1/4 inch ribbons.
2. In a bowl, toss with 1 tablespoon olive oil. In the meantime, toast the walnuts and bread. Coarsely chop
3. Mash garlic using a mortar and pestle. Whisk in 1-2 tablespoons of the remaining olive oil, lemon juice, cheese, salt, and red pepper flakes.
4. Pour dressing over the kale and toss to combine. Add walnuts and bread crumbs and toss again. You can toss the cheese in at this moment.
5. Top with a few grinds of black pepper if desired

I highly suggest taking a peek at Pam's recipe, just for good measure. She has a lot of good tips about what to do with the leftovers, like adding it to a pasta the day after. There are also options to omit ingredients and/or substitute them with something healthier.