January 4, 2013 Dinner – BBQ’d Country Style Pork Ribs, Roasted Potatoes and Mac’s House Salad

January 4, 2013 Dinner – BBQ’d Country Style Pork Ribs, Roasted Potatoes and Mac’s House Salad

On Wednesday Susan Palmer called and invited us to view the Cotton Bowl on their big screen TV on Friday evening.  I immediately changed my plan to cook the ribs I had bought at Pro’s Ranch Market from Thursday evening to Friday evening and I asked if they would like to eat BBQ’d pork ribs during the game. 

When Susan said yes, I checked with Suzette and she said that she would like baked potatoes with the ribs.  Susan and I did not have a clear idea of what vegetable to serve but on Friday when I checked in with her, she said she was going to boil some string beans she had and that sounded great to me also.

I had bought a head of ice burg lettuce at Pro’s Ranch Market before Christmas that I wanted to use, so I suggested to Susan that I would also make a salad.  On Thursday, as I was lying in bed a déjà vu thought from my distant pass came to me of sitting at Mac’s House of Mole in Fort Worth at the corner of Park Hill and Forest Park Blvd. eating a wonderful salad dressed with the restaurant’s unique blue cheese dressing.

So I got up at 1:30 a.m. and went to my computer and began googling Mac’s House and found it immediately among an assortment of historical anecdotes about the restaurant scene in Fort Worth in the 50’s by an assortment of folks with rather bad memories, until I saw one entry by someone who said their father had worked for Mac in 1944 and 1945 when he was the store manager at the old Safeway store at Park Hill and University Dr.  (I got another déjà vu though of that corner and its later incarnation in the 70’s as Nick’s Place, after the furniture store move out and then the corner of Forest Park Blvd. and Park Hill just over the hill from it.)  and the blog went on to say that Mac had later opened the Mac’s House Restaurant at the corner of Park Hill Dr. and Forest Park Blvd. 

I could now taste the salad, so I took a chance and googled Mac’s House Salad Dressing and got an immediate hit at Cooks.com recipe search.  Here is what I found.

MAC'S HOUSE SALAD DRESSING Printed from COOKS.COM 1/4 c. wine vinegar 1/8 - 1/4 tsp. pepper 1 pkg. blue cheese 2 tsp. garlic powder 4 tbsp. toasted sesame seeds 3/4 c. salad oil Mix all ingredients (except salad oil) in blender or food processor. Add oil slowly while machine is running. Pour over lettuce and sprinkle with shredded Romano cheese.

Eureka!  This was it, just as I had remembered it.  God bless the internet.

Suzette had used up all but one cup of our BBQ sauce on Thursday evening to coat the ham loaf (January 3, 2013).  So Susan was kind enough to bring by a fresh bottle of Quarter’s BBQ sauce on Friday morning.   

At 12:30 p.m. I started cooking the pork ribs by praying Pam in a roasting pan and laying the ribs in in one layer and pouring the 1 cup of BBQ Sauce on the ribs an covering them with aluminum foil and placing them in a 300˚ oven.  When I checked them at 4:30 p.m. they were incredibly tender and the meat was falling off the bones, so I removed most of the larger bones and turned the ribs so the previously uncovered pieces would be submerged in the sauce and re-covered them with the foil and returned them to the oven.

Our potatoes were not lovely or large, so I decided that I wanted to roast potatoes instead of baking them, so I peeled and cubed 6 potatoes and then peeled about 6 shallots and four or five cloves of last year’s garlic from our garden and tossed them all in the ceramic baking dish with 2 Tbsp. of olive oil and the last 1 Tbsp. of Italian Seasoning from Costco.  I covered the potatoes with aluminum foil and put them into the 300˚ oven with the pork ribs at 5:15 p.m.

Shortly thereafter Suzette arrived home.  After she checked the pork ribs and uncovered the potatoes, she agreed to help me make the salad dressing.  I showed her the recipe.  We only not about 1 ounce of Blue cheese, so we decided to use 1 ounce of dilled Danish Tilsit and about 2 ounces of crumbled French Feta.  We also did not have sesame seeds so I used some toasted canola seeds I had and they worked fine.  They are of a similar size as sesame seeds and have a good toasted flavor although less distinctively sesame-like.  I used my new small mixing bowl with the immersion blender head to make the salad dressing and the 200 watt motor whipped it to a smooth dressing in less than a minute.  

I cut up the head of ice burg lettuce and Suzette got out the large salad bowl and we put ¾ of the head of lettuce into it.   Then Suzette fetched a bottle and I put the 8 to 10 ounces of dressing into the bottle and screwed on the lid so we could shake it up when we were ready to serve the salad.

I then asked Suzette whether she wanted to drink wine or beer.  When she said wine, I suggested a bottle of rosé and when she agreed, I fetched a bottle of French Ferme Julien rosé from the basement fridge and we walked the ribs and salad over to the Palmers.  Suzette did the heavy lifting and went back for the potatoes while I requested Susan to turn on the PBS New Hour so we could watch David Brooks and Mark Shields do their weekly commentary while Charlie made me a gin and tonic and Suzette drank her first glass of rosé.  Susan brought out a tray with Frito Lay bean dip, a bowl of salsa and a bowl of guacamole and a large bowl of Fritos to dip with.  I got another déjà vu feeling of Cotton Bowls past eating the same snack foods.  How great to be with Texans for a great Texas Classic Bowl game from Cowboy Stadium in Arlington, Texas being played by two old Southwest Conference teams, Oklahoma and Texas A&M and a table full of Texas foods (Fritos were made in Dallas when I was young and ate them during most of my youth and through college).

After the commentary Charlie switched the TV to the Cotton Bowl and we watched it on TIVO so Charlie could fast forward through all of the ads.  Charlie paused the TV several times to allow us to get food and drink, although Susan was serving us, so we were able to sit in front of the TV without interruption for most of the game.  After plates of pork ribs and roasted potatoes I ate a salad bowl full of Mac’s salad (the ice burg lettuce and shredded Pecorino Romano coated with a liberal amount of dressing).

Finally, after we had eaten our fill, Susan made red bush tea and brought a platter of assorted chocolate chip, oatmeal coconut (Charlies’ Mother’s recipe) and sugar cookies and we dug in to them as Texas A&M’s amazing freshman quarterback, who won the Heisman Trophy this year, Johnny Manziel, ripped through the Oklahoma defense time and time again taking 9^th ranked Texas A&M to a seemingly easy 42-13 victory over 11^th ranked Oklahoma.

Finally after a great Cotton Bowl and a great dinner we said good night.  As I walked home I had trouble imagining how many déjà vu memories had been turned up out of my memory in the last 48 hours.

Bon Appètit