Good Eats

Four in the morning and I awoke, needing to pee, I had gotten the little shop-vac out, last night, to remind myself that I needed to address the various dust-bunnies and especially the fallen tobacco around the chair where I write. So I vacuumed for a while. Nothing like the present. Rolled a smoke and got just a smidgen of Irish whiskey, mostly to displace the taste of sleep. I'd been assembling the ingredients for a rub I'd use on various meats during the summer, and decided to go ahead and mix that up, stash it in a canning jar in the fridge. Assorted dried chilies, kosher salt, black and white pepper, cumin, garlic powder, onion flakes, granulated cane sugar, dried ginger, and a few leaves of a plant a friend sent me from Central America that promise to get me in touch with my ancestors. A little bit can't hurt. I'm mixing this all together, at the island, listening to The Grateful Dead, "Ripple", and I'm grinding up the leaves in my stone mortar with my stone pestle. Maybe, because of my history, I'm susceptible, or maybe just suggestible, but when I was grinding up those last leaves, and I was breathing the dust, I never wear a mask when I'm cooking, something happened. I'm pretty sure it's a strain of Datura. I'm humming along, occasionally actually singing a lyric, and I remember, vividly, the smell of my grandfather's hat. It's not a fabrication, it's the actual smell. And I see him, the most successful mule trader in western Tennessee, in something like a Grant Wood pose, with grandma scowling in the background. This could be a good rub. I don't mind being reminded of my failures. How else are you going to learn? A quick run to town with the revised shopping list. I spent so much time looking at the ribs that a butcher came out and chatted with me about what I wanted. I explained that I wanted baby-backs, but that I wanted some meat on them. He took me back to the cooler and I was able to select a slab from a stack of about fifty. A perfect rack. Back home, I work on the sauce for a while. I'd picked up a pretty good Ravenwood Old Vines Zin, and I added some of that, part of a dark beer (an oatmeal stout), some cranberry juice (in which I cooked some onion and garlic, then strained), some tamarind syrup, brought all that to a boil, then let it simmer, with no lid, to let it reduce a bit. Started a mesquite fire, cut the rack in half, rubbed it down, let it come to room temp; the fire was all up against one side of my Weber grill, and I seared the half-slabs on both sides, then wrapped in several layers of heavy duty foil, in a kind of boat shape that I have learned allows me the best chance of saving all the liquid without burning myself. The liquid goes into the sauce, which adds great flavor and the layer of fat that will protect the product until the next use. Cool system. So, the seared ribs are in their boat, and I spin them 180 degrees, off the fire but with the draft on their side of the lid (opened about half way) every 15 minutes for the next two hours. I serve the sauce on the side. I used to have a timer, but the magnet wasn't strong enough and it self-destructed. Now I just sit at my desk, where the one clock in the house sits behind a pile of manuscript pages that is almost six inches high, and try to write a sentence every fifteen minutes. The ribs are prefect, I mean, they're extremely good. There is a fair amount of meat, though not Country Ribs by any measure, and it is falling off the bone. The sauce is fantastic. We've been through eight years of severely restricted funding, and it feels good to be able to buy her some nice things. I'm just grazing right now, the first and smallest rib, but I'm just about ready to go away for a while and get terribly messy. Instead of slaw I made a wonderful cold macaroni salad, with lots of finely minced shallots and celery, a great dressing I don't remember making. The Texas Toast serves its function, soaking up the juices. Wish you were here, I feel almost guilty, eating this alone.