Tonight, we’re grilling some pork ribs. I’ve got them in the pressure cooker right now, and we’ll coat them with sauce and crisp them up this evening. The ribs still had silverskin on, so I removed that. Then I mixed up a rub: 1/4 c maple syrup, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes, and 1/2 tsp smoked paprika.

The ribs were coated in this spice mix. I added a cup of water and 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar to the pressure cooker. The ribs were curled into the pot and pressure cooked on high pressure for 25 minutes.

Served with garlic corn and mashed potatoes. Next time, we’re going to try cooking the ribs on the grill the entire time — basted occasionally with sauce. Pressure cooking first means the ribs are well cooked before we even started grilling them. And “fall off the bone” isn’t a good state if you’re trying to place it on the grill!

Tonight, we made chicken parmigiana — two chicken breasts pounded to be flat. Looking at recipes online, it’s meant to be fried in oil. We were going to cook it on the grill, so I used the same technique that I use to make crispy fish in the oven — add a little oil to the eggs used to bread the meat.

In one bowl, I mixed two eggs with a quarter cup of olive oil and a bit of salt. In a second bowl, I mixed 1 cup of all-purpose flour with 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, and 1/2 tsp garlic. In a third bowl, I mixed together 1 cup of panko bread crumbs, 1/4 cup of parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper. The chicken was dipped in egg, dipped in the flour mixture, dipped in egg again, and coated with panko. Scott grilled the chicken and topped with parmesan and mozzarella. Served with spaghetti and a spicy tomato sauce.

I made a braised pork today — cooked at ~300 degrees for about six hours. A few days ago, I mixed up a marinade for the bone-in pork roast.

• 2 Tbsp kosher salt
• 4 Tbsp maple syrup
• 1 Tbsp ground mustard
• 1/2 cup Dijon mustard
• 2 Tbsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 Tbsp smoked sweet paprika
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil

I coated the roast in the marinade then vacuum packaged it. Six hours was too long — a more marbled roast might have been fine, but the one we had got dry. Drizzling it with maple syrup helped!

Lunch today was a salad with grilled apples and spicy peanut sauce. The peanut sauce

• 3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoons soy sauce (this was a little much)
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup
  
• 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon sriracha (could have used a little more)
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 cup coconut milk

In a small skillet, mix the peanut butter, lemon juice, rice vinegar, soy sauce, maple syrup, and sesame oil. Heat over a low heat to melt and combine. Add ground ginger. Add coconut milk to thin it into a dressing. Add sriracha to taste — Anya liked it with a teaspoon of sriracha, but Scott wanted it a little biffier (Anya’s word for spicy). I hard boiled a few fresh eggs — the yolks on the fresh eggs are awesome. Not dry at all.

Tonight, we made turkey, spinach, feta burgers with fresh rolls. The rolls were my usual dough recipe (4c flour, 1T yeast, 1T sugar, 1t salt, 1T oil/butter, 1/2c wheat gluten) with a six hour rise time in a warm oven followed by a really short rise time after shaping and an egg wash. Cooked at 375 for 15 minutes — could have used an extra minute or two.

The burgers were ~1.5 lbs ground turkey, 1/4 large red onion chopped, 1 package frozen chopped spinach (defrosted with water squeezed out), 2t salt, 1t pepper, 6 oz feta, 2 eggs (minus what was used for the egg wash on my rolls), seranno chillis, and about 1/2c panko. Grilled about 5 minutes each side at a high temp. Very good — may want to try adding mustard to burger mix next time.