Ribs

My second Alton Brown recipe is ribs... with the ingredients all wrong. For one thing the recipe calls for boneless. For another thing, these are all frozen.

I tried to break them up with my hands. They're cold and it hurts!

Aha! Use two as a platform and jam a knife in!

I got them separated, but they're still frozen solid.

Nonetheless, I'm SUPPOSED to season the ribs and stick them in the fridge for 6-12 hours. I'm too hungry to do that and these are pre-seasoned, though not with the right seasoning, so I'll skip that.

They go in an aluminum foil envelope that you pour stuff into.

The recipe called for cayenne or something. I used hot sauce since I didn't have any cayenne.

Lots of pepper.

I had chili and garlic sauce, which I used in place of chili and garlic powder.

This is where I would put it in the fridge, but I'm not going to.

The recipe called for orange juice and margarita mix. Having no margarita mix I substituted wine just because

Pouring in the wine.

It's now ready to bake for two hours. At this point I realized I wasn't eating anytime soon.

After one hour the heat goes down.

Done baking!

The liquid gets poured into a saucepan.

Honey is added.

And ketchup. This is seriously the recipe, even though it looks a little weird even for me.

Mixing and boiling. There was supposed to be instant coffee in there but I don't have any.

  

I'm supposed to boil till it turns into a glaze but that's not happening.

The glaze is supposed to be brushed onto both sides but I don't have a glaze.

So instead I just dump what I have onto one side.

And then the other.

After a few minutes of broiling. Not close to done.

More broiling, these are looking done now.

But the other side is still white-ish so it's time to broil some more.

Better.

The sides need more broiling though.

THERE! Blackened!

The other side isn't blackened but it'll do.

Ribs!

A little dry, but passable, which is incredible given how much I changed the recipe.

The next day I got barbeque sauce.

That solves most of the dryness issues.

Eggplant Parmesan

My sister got me I'm Just Here For the Food by Alton Brown.  The book gave me lots of recipes I want to follow (but not necessarily to the letter)! The first one is eggplant parmesan.

Chopped eggplant. Look familiar?

On the baking dish.

Supposedly the key to frying is to get the water out, so that's what I'm doing here.

Kosher salt.  Alton Brown says to put kosher salt on EVERYTHING. I'm running out.

Mashing the water out with a baking dish.

Eggs for the batter. Note the chocolate burn is still there.

Dry (hopefully) eggplant.

 Now I'm supposed to wash all the kosher salt off. What a waste of salt!

 Into the flour...

 And into the egg.

All my eggplant in the egg.

Time to start frying.

The batter is staying on remarkably well.

 The fried ones are supposed to stay warm in the oven while the rest get fried.

The later ones were fried a little bit better so I'm going to put the first set in again.

 More evenly fried.

 Now the slices are supposed to get stacked onto each other with cheese in between.

Um, I was supposed to use tomato sauce but I didn't have any so I tried spaghetti sauce but that had mold in it. So I'm using tartar sauce.

They're supposed to be 3-high stacks, but I don't have enough slices to do more than one. Maybe I cut the slices too thickly.

 The finished stacks, with grated cheese on top.

 Time to bake.

 The baked end product.

This was definitely the best eggplant I've made, except for one small thing: the tartar sauce clashed horribly with the eggplant and cheese. Next time I am going to use proper tomato sauce and it will be great. Maybe there is something to following recipes after all...