thai-esque spareribs

I no longer feel comfortable calling something this generic Thai, after having made several recipes out of Ricker’s Pok Pok. I just kinda feel like a dumb wife saying “oooh honey, I made Thai food tonight”, when all the dumb wife did was use ginger powder, soy sauce, and green onions. Not that that is this recipe, but you know. But considering my week, these are great.
I don’t really want to rehash, as I have way too many times in my head, but I got in a car-bike accident. Me on the bike. All I can think about is all the things I could have done differently, but I can’t let myself do that. I can’t even think about how lucky I am to have just bruises and scrapes and bumps and probably a concussion. It makes my heart pound and chest get all tight. Suffice it to say, I gotta be better about wearing my dumb helmet. And I gotta not bike like I drive, which I shouldn’t drive like to begin with. It was the driver’s fault, but ultimately I really only take away from the event that I won’t ever win against a car. Fuck.

It is amazingly nice to know that I have people that care about me. People that went completely out of their way to come to the hospital right when I got there, to visit me at home, to run errands for me, to offer to help even if I didn’t need it (oh, but I did…dishes were stacking up…I need to be more opportunistic), and to bother the crap out of me with text messages and calls. Just the previous weekend I’d been having a rough one. Feeling kinda alone, feeling like I’d made not a lot of connections with people here, but I guess I’m sometimes too hard on myself. Think too much and too hard. No one’s life is perfect.
Neither are these Thai ribs (whew, started to get a little serious there). But for lack of desire to pound my own damn curry paste in my mortar and pestle, to go to my garden to pull up the root of a cilantro plant, or to get in the car and drive (fucking clutch is hard to press with a banged up knee) to get Thai basil or Thai chiles, I’m not displeased with my efforts.

thai-esque spareribs

5 shallots
1/2 head of garlic
3-inch piece of ginger
2-3 hot chiles
4 scallions
cilantro
tamari
fish sauce
palm sugar
2 racks of pork spareribs

1. Peel the shallots, garlic, and ginger and add to a food processor. Cut off the stems of the chiles and add them, the scallions, and about 1 cup’s worth of cilantro (stems included is fine). Pour in about 1/3 cup of tamari and 2 1/2 tablespoons of fish sauce. Add in 2 tablespoons of palm sugar, or regular sugar if you’d like. Blend till pretty smooth.

2. Cover the spareribs in the marinade and let them sit in the fridge overnight.

3. Preheat the oven to 350. Put the spareribs on a rimmed baking sheet (line it, please, I’m not having a fun time cleaning mine), meat side up. Bake for 1 1/2 hours.

There, that’s it. I put too much marinade on mine. I kinda scraped some of it off. But then you can use it for something else! I save everything. It’s a problem.