Ribs and Noodle Soup

This is what we had for lunch today. It's kind of Japanese-y: a miso broth with bean curd, spinach and udon noodles, flavoured with ginger and garlic and served with a pile of pork ribs in a black bean sauce.

I've been cooking my ribs like this for a while now and basically it's a good way of getting lots of the marinade's flavour into the ribs and also making sure they don't dry out. It can be adapted with different seasoning depending on what style of rib you're after. Usually we just have it as a basic BBQ rib with rice, coleslaw and beans in which case we season them with tomato ketchup, soya sauce, pepper, garlic, something hot and a bit of honey/whatever's in the cupboard.

Cooking the Ribs:
I like to get the ribs from the butcher rather than the supermarket because you can buy them in a whole rack rather than separated ones. I cut them into sets of four or so - mostly it depends on what size of baking tray or dish you've get - and then season them and leave them for as long or little time as you've got. For this recipe I used a rack of ribs that was about 2 or 3 pounds in weight seasoned with a large desertspoon of black bean sauce, a splash of soya sauce, some white pepper and a dollop of ketchup and then left it in the fridge overnight.

When you're ready to cook them put the oven on at 200C and let it warm up. What you do is brown the ribs in a little oil, tighly cover the pan and put it in the over. If you have a pot with a tightly fitting lid you can do it all in the one pot. If not fry them in a large frying pan or wok and then transfer the whole lot to a warmed roasting dish and cover with tin foil. Cook for 40 minues, have a look - the ribs should be almost cooked, if there's too much juice leave uncovered in the oven for 5 or 10 minutes, otherwise recover and leave for 10 minutes or so.

The soup was a big pan of boiling water with a few cloves of finely choped garlic, a large chunk of ginger, a dollup of miso paste and a teaspoon of good soya sauce (Japanese is good, Chinese is barely satisfactory. The important thing is that it's brewed rather than chemically produced) all simmered for 10 minutes. Then add some cubed bean curd and chopped spinach and cover for a few minutes. The udon noodles are soft ones in a packet that need to be boiled for 2 minutes, drained and then served with the broth.

We had the broth and noodles in a soup bowl with the ribs on the side and it was delicious.

- Paul