Posts Tagged ‘Dining Companion’

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Good to the Bone Country-Style Ribs


2010
03.03

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Posted in Recipes | 1 Comment »

Here at Shoestring Austin, we are nothing if not cheap gourmands. Except for one other thing: sometimes, we are pretty darn lazy. Cooking occasionally takes a back seat when you’re going about your daily business, get swamped with work, or have a family member in the hospital in another state whom you’re concerned about. (Hi, Mom! Hope you’re feeling better!)

In any case, we’ve come up with a completely fool-proof recipe, for fools like us who can’t concentrate on cooking all the time.

In honor of the motto on the BBQ sauce we elected to use in this recipe, we’ve named it Good to the Bone Country-Style Ribs. Here’s what you need:

  • 2 lbs. country-style pork ribs
  • 1 jar Texas-Texas BBQ sauce
  • 1 large shallot (that’s a fancy onion; you can substitute a red onion as you see fit)

That’s it, that’s all! We told you this was easy, right?

Here’s the entire set of directions: Cook for 5 hours on high in your slow-cooker. Seriously, what could be simpler?

Okay, here’s a couple of notes for y’all: layer onions, ribs, and more onions on top so you can soak up the tasty goodness. Trim off the fat a bit, cus gnawing through the gristle isn’t very nice (but a little fat is pretty tasty). And then just let ‘er rip!

Here’s a photo of our results:

Delicious Good to the Bone Country-Style Ribs

Final bit of advice: check around at your local grocery store, as sometimes the packages are mislabelled and you can score, like, 5 lbs of ribs for something crazy like 30 cents. Um… not that we did that. At a store that shall remain nameless. (Tip: Be calm at the cash. Don’t give yourself away. Channel Bart Simpson. You didn’t see me do it. Nobody saw anything…)

Wine recommendation: pair it with a nice Chardonnay or Pinot Gris. Superb! Or drink beer if you must. This is Texas, after all.

The Dining Companion (DC) and I will be fighting over the leftovers tomorrow!

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Thai Kitchen


2010
02.11

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Posted in Restaurants | No Comments »

Despite my craving for Thai food recently, I have only just managed to sample some of the Austin area’s wares. This afternoon I was jonesing hardcore for the Pad Thai, and my Dining Companion (DC) and I were on our way home from the UT Fine Arts Library after a hard day of studying plundering their CD collection for AC/DC. We were within easy reach of Thai Kitchen‘s 3009 Guadalupe location and had heard good things, so we pulled into the parking lot and took the plunge.

Our first impressions of the place were good. The service was super-friendly, and our waiter even offered us ice-water! (We’ve found it’s strangely rare for people to offer water in restaurants, and sometimes even harder to get them to actually bring you any, much less refill the glass. Happily, this was not the case at Thai Kitchen.) We gratefully accepted, and pondered the lunch menu, which was still in service at 3 PM even though it was clearly stated that lunch service ended at 2:30—score!

We knew we wanted Pad Thai, so we ordered 12A right away, then decided to add another dish so we could share #25, Green Curry with Chicken and Coconut (Hot-Hot). DC and I both enjoy a good green curry, so we were jazzed by the idea of one that was being billed as “hot-hot.” Along with our mains, we were also visiting on the right day for the soup du jour to be Hot & Sour (our fave), so we each got a bowl. DC thought the Hot & Sour soup could’ve been more hot (and sour, presumably), but I thought it was pleasantly understated. Hot & Sour soup is a great dish for warming you up on a cold, rainy day, and since Austin’s been experiencing a lot of these lately (including today), I was pleased with this dish.

Shortly after we’d slurped down the last of our soup, the waiter re-appeared with our mains. Super-fast service! We thanked him and got down to business, munching our egg rolls, and then digging into the Pad Thai and the Green Curry.

Now, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the Green Curry, even though it made my nose run. It wasn’t über-hot, but it definitely had a nice kick to it, and the accompanying veggies (bamboo strips, zucchini and the odd green pepper) were quite tasty. We avoided the rice (evil carbs!), but devoured the rest. DC even sucked the excess green curry sauce straight off the plate. That’s how tasty it was.

Delicious-looking Pad Thai (photo via Closet Cooking)

Sadly, this was not the Pad Thai of our dreams. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the deliciously savory Pad Thai we had been lusting after for weeks. Instead of a mildly spicy dish stuffed with rice noodles, chicken, egg, peanuts, shrimp and bean sprouts, we got a more sweet, peanutty-flavored dish that mainly consisted of rice noodles, a bit of egg and bean sprouts, and some chicken. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t what we were expecting. And since the Green Curry was so delicious, we were kind of disappointed. I mean, you look at the photo of the homemade Pad Thai that we featured on our previous post, Where can you get good Thai food in Austin? (and shown above for emphasis), and you salivate. Thai Kitchen’s Pad Thai, unfortunately, looked nothing quite as sexy as all that.

Still, we ate it all and were reasonably satisfied with the affair. So while I would definitely return to Thai Kitchen for inexpensive Thai food (our total came to about $17, before tip), I am still searching for the elusive Pad Thai that haunts my dreams.

Any suggestions?