Celebration

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of when this house officially became ours.  It's been a whole year, and much has happened.  We love living here!  So yesterday we decided to celebrate a little bit.  One of Nick's closest friends, Evan, came over to join us for beer and BBQ, which made for some pretty decent photographs!

Nick happens to be a homebrew aficionado, and Evan was interested in joining him to prep a batch of light summer wheat beer.  First they had to clean all of their buckets and tubing very thoroughly, wearing heavy-duty dishwashing gloves to protect one's hands.  Serious business, as you can see.  I asked Nick why it was that Evan was doing all of the cleaning while Nick supervised, and he replied, "So he can learn how to do it - this is important!"  And then he started chuckling.

I don't know enough about brewing beer to offer useful commentary or narration as regards the remainder of their process, so I'll just post some photos for you.

While the guys were brewing beer, I was prepping a foodstuff of a different sort: pickles! 

 Our cucumber plants are doing pretty well so far, and it appears that we mistakenly planted all pickling cucumbers instead of some pickling and some slicing.  This is not a problem, since we're willing to eat pickling cucumbers in salad and we are looking forward to opportunities to make lots of pickles.  I had five cucumbers to work with yesterday, so it seemed like a good time to start.  The recipe came from The Splendid Table.

After rinsing the cucumbers and making sure the slightly spiny bits had been removed, I sliced them thinly, ending up with six cups of sliced cucumber.  Then came one and one-half cups of thinly-sliced onion.  These were mixed in a large bowl with some Kosher salt and six cups of ice cubes, and left to sit for a few hours.  At the end of that period I drained them thoroughly and left them to sit in a colander in the sink.  In the meantime I sterilized a half dozen jars (although this recipe says it is unnecessary) and prepared the brine.  Once the jars had been sterilized it was just a matter of briefly boiling the brine, cooking the veggies in it for a minute, and then filling the jars.  It only made enough for four small jars, but seeing as how they have to be stored in the refrigerator and are only good for four months, that's fine.  I did forget to take a photo of the finished product, though.

The other major cooking event of the day was homemade barbecued ribs.  We've been using the charcoal grill fairly regularly, but Evan wanted to show Nick how to turn said grill into a smoker.  First we had to find the ribs, though.  Sadly, there weren't any at the Farmer's Market.  We were on our way to the supermarket when we drove past the local farm market and I half-jokingly suggested that we check there.  Nick decided to stop, and much to our delight he found baby back ribs from locally and humanely-raised pigs.  Huzzah!  The guys had found a recipe for a brown-sugar-and-spices dry rub that promised to be "the only BBQ rub you'll ever need", and I prepared it while they finished preparing the beer.

Turning a charcoal grill into a smoker involves piling all of the coals onto one side.  To the coals they added soaked chunks of hickory wood for flavor.  The ribs sat on the side of the grill opposite the coals so that they would cook more slowly.  Over the coals they placed a pan of water to absorb the heat, and they refilled this water pan periodically.  Throughout the course of the cooking process (about 2 hours) the ribs were also spritzed with a mixture of apple juice and vinegar to maintain moisture.

The finished product?  Absolutely delicious.  An excellent blend of sweet and spicy, with meat that was tender without being overcooked.  The guys commented that they would have preferred being able to cook the meat lower and slower to caramelize more of the brown sugar, but to do so would require an actual smoker as opposed to the way we did it.  I think they were nitpicking - these were some of the best, if not the best, baby back ribs I have ever had.  Combined with homemade coleslaw, it made for a tremendous celebratory dinner, and a is definitely a new summer favorite!  My only regret is that Evan's wife wasn't in town to join us.  The guys commented that next time we make this, when she is in town, we will need to purchase two racks instead of just one, so that we all have enough.  I remarked that we could probably get away with one rack for four people if we made enough side dishes.  This comment was met from both sides of the table by quirked eyebrows and expressions of incredulity at the notion that we might deliberately eat less of these delicious ribs.  Two racks it is!