On Saturdays, I go to the Ardmore Farmer’s Market to shop with my buddy, Barbecue Bob. I typically pick up some pork product at Stoltzfus Meats because they have the freshest pork around. This weekend I picked up some Country Style ribs that were described to me as “big pork chops that have been cut in half so they look like ribs.” They were meaty, about 1 pound each.

I noticed from the cover of my June/July edition of Fine Cooking they were talking about a new way of grilling called “Sear, Braise & Glaze”. I’ve been reading about this technique lately in some other cooking articles. Basically you sear the meat on the grill, braise it in a Dutch oven or heavy bottomed pot and finish it on the grill as a barbecue.

There are many advantages to this somewhat new cooking technique and a couple of disadvantages but I’ll write about all of them another time. For now I want to tell you how I used their recipe to braise the country style ribs in my outdoor wood burning oven for some pretty good ribs and show you how you can braise them in your oven.

Country Style Ribs - What Are They?

These ribs are really not ribs at all but pork chops cut from the blade (think shoulder) end of the loin that are then butterflied so they look like a big, meaty ribs. There is enough fat on them so they can be braised or slow cooked barbecue style on the grill. Cuts with less fat would just get tough during a braise and are better suited to shorter, higher heat dry cooking methods.

These aren’t your pick up with your fingers type of ribs that you may be used to. You more or less need a knife and fork, and if you braise them, be sure to have your spoon ready. The sauce from the braising liquids is incredible.

Did I mention they are not that expensive? I think I paid under $5.00 per pound.

Dry Rub & Braising Liquid

Basically I followed Fine Cooking’s recipe for the rub, and it was very tasty. I encourage you, however, to come up with your own brand of rubs by experimenting with different ingredients. If you look at 100 cookbooks that have rib rub recipes, you are going to find many with similar ingredients, but they will all be a little differently. I typically go with what I like and what I have on hand.

One of the key ingredients for the braise is beer. You may remember my post called Bert’s Barbecue Baby Back Ribs. This is one of my favorite and quickest ways to make barbecued ribs in a hurry by starting them in the oven and finishing them on the grill. Bert’s recipe also calls for a bottle of beer.

Braised Country Style Ribs with Orzo & Sauteed Broccoli Rabe

Dry Rub Ingredients

1 1/2 tablespoons sweet paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 1/2 teaspoons dry sage
Salt & Pepper, to taste

Braising Liquid Ingredients

4 strips of bacon, cut into pieces
2 medium yellow onions, cut into thin slices
4 medium cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 carrots, chopped
3 cups chicken stock
1 bottle of beer, stout or dark lager if possible
1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon caraway seeds

I also added a few drops of Asian hot sauce to give it a little kick.

Meat
6 Country Style Ribs

How to Prepare

Start by preparing the rub for the ribs. You’ll want to cover the ribs with the rub and let sit for a minimum of a couple of hours up to overnight. I used a large stainless steel utility bowl to mix all the rub ingredients and one at a time added a rib to cover. Be sure to knock off any excess rub off the rib before starting the next. After each one was covered, I placed them into a large Ziploc bag and stuck the bag in the refrigerator.

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Parmesan Crusted Wild Sea Bass

Every once in a while I come across a recipe that I consider "as good as it gets" and this recipe for Parmesan Crusted Wild Sea Bass is one of them. I adapted this recipe from one of my favorite cooking magazines Cuisine at Home. Their recipe calls for halibut but when I went to one of my favorite seafood stores, Bywood Seafood Market, I was told fresh halibut was out of season so I opted for wild sea bass which worked perfectly fine.

This recipe is so good I’m sure any meaty white fish would work. In fact, there was some left over "crazy water" (read on) leftovers so I duplicated the dish with chicken thighs the next night and served it with the broth and it too was delicious. I think it would have been better with boneless chicken breasts but I had boneless thighs on hand from the local Farmer’s Market.

The "crazy water" I mentioned above is a simple broth that traditionally the fish is poached in. It consists of vegetables, water, wine, herbs and a few special ingredients to give the broth an incredibly flavorful taste that you then cook orzo pasta in to give the broth some extra body.

In this recipe, we don’t poach the fish but instead roast it so the parmesan crust can firm up and get crisp. It doesn’t take long at all to prepare this dish, only 15 minutes to roast the fish and prepare the broth. It takes more time to prep the ingredients and I highly recommend you practice "mise en place" before you start cooking. That is get all your ingredients prepped before you start. As you can see from the list below, there are a lot of ingredients but I found I had most of them in my pantry already.

The original recipe is for 2 people and calls for two 4 oz. halibut fillets but I purchased 2 pounds of wild sea bass and cut 6 individual steaks for four adults and 2 kids and there was enough for everyone.

I highly recommend you try this recipe and would love to hear your comments about you’ve tried it. I think there are lots of variations you could make to this recipe and I’d like to hear what you come up with.

Parmesan Crusted Wild Sea Bass
serves 4 adults and 2 kids

Ingredients

For the Wild Sea Bass

1/2 cup panko crumbs (these are Japanese bread crumbs but regular bread crumbs work fine too)
4 teaspoons grated Parmesan cheese ( buy a chunk of Parmesan and grate it yourself - much better)
zest of 1 lemon, finely minced
12 oz. purchased or homemade pesto
2 pounds wild sea bass, cut into 6 steaks
spray olive oil

For the Broth (Crazy Water)

1/2 large red onion, minced
2 tablespoons minced garlic
4 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup dry white wine
4 cups water
1 cup halved grape tomatoes
1/2 cup dry orzo pasta
2 teaspoons sugar
4 sprigs fresh thyme
1/2 cup coarsely chopped zucchini
1 - 7.5 ounce jar of roasted red peppers, cut into thin strips (learn how to roast your own peppers)
1/2 cup of kalamata olives, halved and pitted
4 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
juice from the zested lemon above
Salt & Pepper, to taste

How to Make at Home

As I said at the start of this post, this recipe doesn’t take long to cook, but you’ll want to have all your ingredients prepped (mise en place) before you start. The recipe also suggests preparing the bread crumbs, adding them to the fish and refrigerating ahead of time (up to 4 hours) but make the broth just before serving. This is a great idea especially if you are having a dinner party and want to hang out with your friends.

As always, preheat the oven to 450º F.

Combine the panko (bread crumbs) with Parmesan cheese, lemon zest and season with salt and pepper. Apply a spoonful of pesto on the non-skin side of each sea bass steak and then top with the bread crumb mixture. Press the bread crumbs into the pesto with the back of your spoon. Spray each steak with a little spray oil, transfer to a baking sheet that has been coated with some spray oil and refrigerate until you are going to prepare the broth.

To Make the Broth

Start by heating up a saute pan over medium-high heat, adding oil, and sauteing the onions and garlic. Saute for 3 - 4 minutes until the onions are translucent. Remove the pan from the heat and add wine to deglaze the pan. Return the pan to the heat and simmer until the wine is reduced to an essence. Add the water and stir in the tomatoes, orzo, sugar and fresh thyme. Simmer for about 10 minutes until the orzo is cooked. While the orzo is simmering, it’s time to roast the sea bass.

Roasting Wild Sea Bass

Remove the baking sheet with the sea bass from the refrigerator and roast in your preheated oven for 12 minutes. The panko bread crumbs should be golden and the fish white and flaky.

Finish & Serving

When the orzo is done, add the roasted pepper strips, zucchini and kalamata olives to the broth and simmer until heated through. Remove the pan from the heat and add the fresh parsley and fresh lemon juice. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.

When it’s time to serve, add some of the broth (crazy water) with vegetables to shallow bowls and place a sea bass steak into each. Serve.

Hope you get to try this and let us know what you think. This dish is outrageous!

I needed a quick meal the other night and I wanted to use up some left over roasted chicken from the night before. I was thinking risotto but I didn’t have any in the pantry but I did find a box of San Giorgio orzo and thought this might work.

What is Orzo?

Orzo is rice shaped pasta slightly smaller than a pine nut and is great in soups and pasta salads. See my seafood orzo salad recipe.

Find Recipes In All the Right Places

I love finding recipes and adapting them with ingredients I have on hand. Keep your eyes open and you can find interesting recipes everywhere; on product packages, the supermarket shelves, ads in magazines, newspaper articles, mail flyers. Most of these recipes are trying to sell you their products but they are still good starting points for creating your own recipe.

The orzo box was no exception. They had a recipe for Mediterranean Orzo Pilaf. Some of the ingredients were processed products like dried Italian seasoning, bouillon cubes, and garlic powder. It’s my opinion you can really change the quality of mediocre recipe just by using higher end products that really don’t cost you that much more money in the end.

For example, using homemade or quality chicken stock instead of bouillon can make all the difference in the world. Try using fresh garlic instead of garlic powder or fresh basil and parsley rather than dried Italian seasonings.

Dried herbs are great in some dishes, but with a pilaf recipe like this, why not go fresh if you can. If you don’t have fresh herbs in your refrigerator, by all means go with the dried ones but make sure they have not been sitting in the cabinet too long. I don’t date my dried spice bottles, but I should because I’m sure some of them have been around longer than my daughters. Chef Ricco forgive me.

I made the chicken stock the night before when we had roasted chicken. I’ll be honest.  I didn’t roast the chicken. It was a rotisserie chicken from our local market and a pretty good one at that. After I stripped the meat off, I stuck the carcass in a pot, covered it in water and made a quick stock in about an hour. Not classic chicken stock but good enough for what I wanted to use it for and a heck of a lot better than anything canned and lets not even talk about a bouillon cube.

You can make this dish one hundred different ways by substituting various ingredients. Don’t like chicken, add shrimp. Don’t like parsley, try cilantro.  Try different types of cheeses, olives, nuts; whatever works for you or you happen to have in your pantry.

Experiment and have some fun. There are some recipes you must follow a precise technique using specified ingredients. This is not one of them.

Quick Orzo Pilaf

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter
8 ounces uncooked Orzo
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 small onion, chopped fine
2 ½ cups chicken stock
12 or more grape tomatoes, cut in half
1 cooked boneless chicken breast, meat shredded or cut into pieces
Salt & pepper, to taste
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

How to Make Orzo Pilaf at Home

Heat a large sauce pot or fry pan over medium high heat. Add the butter and melt. Add the onions and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the orzo and cook with the onions & garlic for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring frequently so the orzo doesn’t burn. If the pan seems too hot, turn down the heat to medium.

While this is going on, I like to heat up the chicken stock so I’m not adding cold stock to the hot pan with the orzo. No reason to slow down the cooking process by cooling down a hot pan.

Add the chicken stock to the pan and bring it to a boil. Lower heat and simmer uncovered for about 10 minutes while the orzo absorbs the stock. Be sure to stir every so often.

Add the grape tomatoes, chicken and parsley. Season with salt and pepper and then cover and cook for a few more minutes until all the stock has been absorbed into the orzo. Be sure to stir so the orzo doesn’t stick to the pan.

I like stir in the grated Parmesan cheese at the end just before serving. You can add a sprig of fresh parsley to the plate to make it look nice. I always forget.