Ribs, good

Hmmmm, good, ain't they?

New York Barbecue: Ribs, via the Far East

July 7, 2004
By JULIA MOSKIN

IN New York, demand for great barbecue tends to outstrip supply. A few weekends ago, thousands of 'cue-seekers descended on Madison Square Park for the Second Annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, hoping for a shot at Mike Mills's Memphis baby backs and Ed Mitchell's North Carolina ribs.

The lines were epic. Some waited it out. Many fled to nearby Blue Smoke, figuring that New York barbecue is better than no barbecue at all. And quite a few - present company included - hopped on the subway to Chinatown and sated the craving with a huge pile of Cantonese spareribs.

New York does have its own thriving barbecue tradition, but it's more about star anise than smoke. At places like Big Wong King and Kim Tuong in Chinatown, pit masters turn out hundreds of racks of magnificently glazed ribs every day, with the moist meat, salty-sweet perfume and burnt edges so beloved of barbecue fanatics across the land. And at other Asian restaurants up and down the dining scale, from Nam and 66 to Big Wong and Pig Heaven, chefs have capitalized on New Yorkers' passion for Chinese spareribs by developing their own styles. With judicious spicing and steaming, a glaze here and a dry rub there, Asian ribs have evolved into a hybrid Asian-American-New Yorkese barbecue. They may not be authentic anything, but they might still hold their own at the Jack Daniels invitational.

"I think the ribs here are as good as any I ever had in the South," said Jason Washington, a construction worker ordering takeout ribs at Kim Tuong on Chrystie Street last week.

New York's first wave of Chinese restaurateurs came from Canton, where pigs are affectionately referred to as "long-nosed generals" and roasting pork is a respected art form. Cantonese cooking fell out of fashion in the 1970's, when New Yorkers discovered "real" Chinese regional cuisine, but the spareribs have endured. In Chinatown in Manhattan, as in market streets in China, almost every city block has at least one window full of irresistible barbecued pork, ready to eat on the spot or to take home to stir-fry with greens.

The best ribs are often the ones that came out of the oven most recently, so popular places with a high turnover, like the always mobbed Deluxe Food Market on Elizabeth Street, are good bets. The Ollie's chain of Chinese restaurants, which goes through more than a thousand pounds of barbecued ribs a day, makes sure that they are fresh by doing two large-scale roastings each day at a commissary in Flushing. Each restaurant gets fresh ribs before lunch and dinner.

The traditional method for making Chinese spareribs calls for marinating whole racks in rice wine, soy sauce and sugar (or another sweetener), then roasting them in a hot oven. The ribs are hung on hooks so that the heat can move evenly around the meat. The sugar in the marinade caramelizes during the roasting, creating a dark reddish-brown crust, shiny as fresh lacquer, that acts as a Pavlovian signal to barbecue lovers. (Red food coloring can also play a part, but good ribs should be more brown than red.)

The ribs at Pig Heaven, a Chinese restaurant on the Upper East Side, have just the right balance between sweet and meat. At Big Wong, a sugar syrup is brushed on the ribs as they hang in the window, just waiting to be ordered, hacked into small pieces and devoured with a stack of napkins at the ready.

The oven used in Chinese roasting looks very much like a modern American barbecue "pit" - a metal box with heat at the bottom. But the heat source is gas, with none of the aromatic wood smoke that defines American barbecue. In fact, smoke is the enemy of Chinese roasting; to prevent it, and keep the meat moist, cooks keep a pan of water in the bottom of the oven.

"The moisture makes the meat soft, so you don't have to cook it as long as American barbecue," said Romy Dorotan, the Filipino chef of Cendrillon, an Asian restaurant in SoHo. Mr. Dorotan's ribs are marinated in the Chinese style, then coated with an American-style dry rub and cooked in a man-size Chinese roasting oven in the restaurant's basement.

His ribs differ from those in Chinatown because the spices in the rub - ground star anise, fennel seeds, cardamom, mustard, coriander, black pepper and some Sichuan peppercorns (stockpiled before the ban against importing them began to be enforced a couple of years ago) - toast slowly at low heat and create a smoky-sweet crust. The meat falls off the big bone into soft shreds, like American ribs; Chinese ribs tend to be chewier, better for gnawing.

Ah, I'm not a massive ribs fan, but they look pretty damn good, don't they?

Since I liked the article, like the last one, sent by Leila, I run it and leave to to wax poetic on the joys of Chinese ribs. I like duck and roast pork more, actually.

posted by Steve @ 4:28:00 AM