For true carnivores, those of us who enjoy the sound and feel of ripping resistant meat from its bone, nothing is more satisfying than baby-back spare ribs.
Decidedly not the ‘fall-off-the-bone’ tender ribs so many place proudly advertise.
And why are they so chest-puffing proud of so thoroughly overcooking anything?
And why do they drown the ribs in an overly-sweet sauce that has one using a tree’s worth of paper napkins to wipe hands with?
And obliterates the succulence and delicacy of the pork?
As they did in Hannibal, the Lecter movie, those cooks should themselves be fed to the pigs.

Anyway, I’m not just bitching and moaning, below find THE recipe that will produce a perfect rack of ribs, tasty and rippable.

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Tagging Today
Thursday, October 25, 2018
My 198th consecutive posting.
Time is 12.01am.
Boston’s temperature will reach a sweet high of 51*
and it will be mostly sunny.

Dinner is Slow Roasted/Broiled Spareribs [recipe below] w Broccoli Rabe.

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Quiz Question of the Day:
What was the Renaissance?

Hint:

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Short Takes: Life in the City:
Walking home on Tuesday afternoon, coming across an incident.
No anger, happily.
Just people trying to extricate themselves from a sticky wicket.

I didn’t stay around for the outcome.
I should have videotaped it.
Sold it to a TV News.
Top left:
Love how city people look but don’t even slow.

Bottom second from right and Bottom right:
Could be a carefully crafted John Travolta, “Saturday Night Fever.”
Or a butt photo by a stupido iphone user.

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SLOW-ROASTED/BROILED SPARERIBS
Full rack (near 3 lbs)
2 hot Italian pork sausages
Baker’s tray w rack

Prepare a slurry of 3TB water, 2TB of baking powder and 1TB coarse-ground black pepper
Brush the slurry over both sides of the rib-rack.

Slow roast (200* oven) the rack of ribs for 30minutes per pound -- 1.5 hour for 3lb rack
Cook the sausages on the same rack for the same time
I find it more convenient to slow-roast the ribs early in the day and finish the rib-cook at dinner time.

Now choose a marinade and prepare that.

My favorite, since it doesn’t obscure the lovely pork flavor, is 2TB of Asian Oil (found on this website) or sesame oil into which I stir 2TB of an 8-spice powder: equal amounts of: cumin, salt, coarse-ground black pepper,  curry,  ginger, garlic, cayenne, and nutmeg.

If I want a moist, lick-my-fingers barbecue sauce I use this:

MARINADE:
1 ½ TB balsamic glaze
1 ½ TB tomato paste
1 TB Worcestershire sauce 
1 TB honey
1 TB tobacco
2 TB horseradish
And, 1 TB each: salt, garlic, onion, cumin, curry, ginger

When ready to finish the ribs:

On a rack in the middle of the oven, broil each side of the ribs until it is deliciously browned.
Turn oven to 500*
Brush the marinade on the ribs.
Note that the sausages, having their own flavor, don’t need the marinade.

Return ribs to hot oven for 5 minutes.

Answer to Quiz Question: What is the Renaissance?
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period.
Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in literature, philosophy, art, music, politics, science, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism and human emotion in art.

Renaissance humanists such as Poggio Bracciolini sought out in Europe's monastic libraries the Latin literary, historical, and oratorical texts of Antiquity, while the Fall of Constantinople (1453) generated a wave of émigré Greek scholars bringing precious manuscripts in ancient Greek, many of which had fallen into obscurity in the West.
It is in their new focus on literary and historical texts that Renaissance scholars differed so markedly from the medieval scholars of the Renaissance of the 12th century, who had focused on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural sciences, philosophy and mathematics, rather than on such cultural texts.

In the revival of neo-Platonism Renaissance humanists did not reject Christianity; quite the contrary, many of the Renaissance's greatest works were devoted to it, and the Church patronized many works of Renaissance art.
However, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life.
In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were brought back from Byzantium to Western Europe and engaged Western scholars for the first time since late antiquity.
This new engagement with Greek Christian works, and particularly the return to the original Greek of the New Testament promoted by humanists Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus, would help pave the way for the Protestant Reformation.

Well after the first artistic return to classicism had been exemplified in the sculpture of Nicola Pisano, Florentine painters led by Masaccio strove to portray the human form realistically, developing techniques to render perspective and light more naturally.
Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe political life as it really was, that is to understand it rationally.
A critical contribution to Italian Renaissance humanism Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote the famous text "De hominis dignitate" (Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1486), which consists of a series of theses on philosophy, natural thought, faith and magic defended against any opponent on the grounds of reason. In addition to studying classical Latin and Greek, Renaissance authors also began increasingly to use vernacular languages; combined with the introduction of printing, this would allow many more people access to books, especially the Bible.

In all, the Renaissance could be viewed as an attempt by intellectuals to study and improve the secular and worldly, both through the revival of ideas from antiquity, and through novel approaches to thought. Some scholars, such as Rodney Stark, play down the Renaissance in favor of the earlier innovations of the Italian city-states in the High Middle Ages, which married responsive government, Christianity and the birth of capitalism.
This analysis argues that, whereas the great European states (France and Spain) were absolutist monarchies, and others were under direct Church control, the independent city republics of Italy took over the principles of capitalism invented on monastic estates and set off a vast unprecedented commercial revolution that preceded and financed the Renaissance.

Many argue that the ideas characterizing the Renaissance had their origin in late 13th-century Florence, in particular with the writings of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Petrarch (1304–1374), as well as the paintings of Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337).

Some writers date the Renaissance quite precisely; one proposed starting point is 1401, when the rival geniuses Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi competed for the contract to build the bronze doors for the Baptistery of the Florence Cathedral (Ghiberti won).
Others see more general competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance.
Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, and why it began when it did. Accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins.

During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand.
Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent.
Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia and Europe.
Silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa and Venice.

Jules Michelet defined the 16th-century Renaissance in France as a period in Europe's cultural history that represented a break from the Middle Ages, creating a modern understanding of humanity and its place in the world.

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And so, Good Morning.
We’ve talked about poor conceptions of pork ribs, the Renaissance, city life with an accompanying gallery of images, and a rib recipe with a picture of my own ribs..
Time to go.

Have a good day, my friends.
See you soon.

Love

Dom