An evening of pork ribs and risotto

Last night I cooked up quite a meal for Hannah and her friend Ian. The dinner consisted of pork spareribs, risotto, and cesar salad, none of which I had cooked before. 

The cesar salad was real cesar salad, i.e., the dressing was made up from anchovies and a raw egg yolk. Here's the recipe. I should mention that the raw egg that I used was laid just earlier that afternoon in my backyard. The homeowners where I rent a room, John and Dorothy, raise two hens and a rabbit in the backyard, and the hens, Meatball and Charou, just started laying a few weeks ago. I believe Charou (the hen pictured in the banner above) was responsible for our dinner. It is pretty cool knowing that the egg in our dinner had traveled not 20 feet and was handled by only a single person. And the salad turned out to be delicious.

The risotto was a simple Bittman recipe. Since I had never made it before, I wanted to get the technique down.

And the pork ribs...the pork ribs!! Oh my. They turned out pretty rich and intense, in a wonderful way. I've been wanting to learn to cook pork ribs ever since I went to that Oaxacan restaurant in DC with Scott and Fre and had their pork ribs in green mole. I think I've decided that pork ribs are my favorite cut of pig. The combination of really flavorful, fatty and moist meat and eating off of/gnawing on the bones is my idea of food heaven.