Erica De Mane

Recipe: Pork Spare Ribs Braised with White Wine, Rosemary, Cinnamon, and Pine Nuts

There are many things I don’t understand about myself, but one thing I do know is that I will always find fulfillment cooking with the flavors of Southern Italy, the flavors of my heritage.

New York is not Southern Italy, despite the many Italian immigrants who have chosen to live here. New Yorkers have a completely different temperament from the people I’ve met in Sicily, with their sternness, their secrecy, or from many of the people of Naples, who seem bold and funny in contrast. These are clichés, but you know they must hold truth since you can see the reflection of them in those people’s cooking. I must have snippets of the Puglian and Sicilian temperaments, but I’m not sure what the hell they are. Growing up in New York you get hammered from every angle, so you wind up acting quite unlike your parents. Every conceivable attitude walks these streets. Knowing this about where I live, you’d think we’d always serve up insanity on a plate, and you can get that in some restaurants, but the reality is that most New York cooking is fairly orderly, with discernible roots. I know Italian-Americans who just continue to cook a handful of old family dishes over and over again, always exactly the same. Their food is wonderful to eat, but that’s not how I ever wanted to cook. That’s real Italian. What I turn out is purely Italian-American.

Here’s a hybrid creation for you to ponder: spare ribs with Sicilian flavors. In all my travels throughout Sicily, I’ve never once encountered spare ribs. I don’t know why, exactly. Possibly they consider them uncouth, since you’re so tempted to pick them up and eat them with your fingers (Sicilians use a knife and fork to eat an apple). The texture and taste of slow-cooked pork spare ribs is fabulous, so rich, so juicy, but I have never been crazy about the sticky, dark red New York–style barbecue sauce they come covered with around here. I put that clunky dish out of my mind, and instead I borrowed flavors from a Sicilian lamb dish I first tasted near Trapani, a Sicilian city  steeped in Arab culture. The Trapanese make a gentle use of sweet spices, nuts, and even couscous. The dish I tasted there was lamb shoulder braised in white wine, tomato, cinnamon, bay leaf, nutmeg I think, mild garlic, and a whiff of rosemary. It was wonderful and has stayed firmly planted in my culinary head for years. I am very happy to discover that it works really well with tough, fatty supermarket spare ribs.

I thought the perfect thing to serve with these ribs would be polenta, but I didn’t have any in the house, so I cooked up some barley and tossed it with a little olive oil and Grana Padano. Not bad. Polenta would have been better, though. I also made a side of chili-spiked broccoli rabe. It was a good meal for a snowy New York evening.

Pork Spare Ribs Braised with White Wine, Rosemary, Cinnamon, and Pine Nuts

(Serves 4)

½ teaspoon each of ground allspice, ground cinnamon, sugar, salt, black pepper, and Aleppo pepper
4 pounds pork spare ribs
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 round slice pancetta, ¼ inch thick, chopped
1 large shallot, diced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 bay leaf
½ a cinnamon stick
4 sprigs rosemary, the leaves chopped
1 large wine glass of dry white wine
1 15-ounce can San Marzano plum tomatoes, chopped, with the juice
½ cup chicken broth
A handful of lightly toasted pine nuts

Mix all the spices together in a large bowl. Add the spare ribs, and toss them around with your hands until they’re well coated with the spices.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Set out a rectangular baking dish that will hold the ribs in one layer.

Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, brown the spare ribs on both sides (do it in batches if necessary). Place the browned ribs in the baking dish.

Pour most of the oil out of the skillet (if it has become too burned, you’ll need to wipe it out). Add the pancetta, and let it get crisp. Add the shallot, and sauté until softened. Add the garlic, and let it sauté a minute, just to release its aroma. Add the bay leaf, cinnamon stick, and rosemary, and sauté a minute. Add the white wine, and let it bubble for a minute or so. Add the tomatoes and the chicken broth, and let bubble for about 3 or 4 minutes. Season with salt and black pepper. Pour the liquid over the ribs. The liquid should just about cover them (if it doesn’t, add a little more chicken broth or water).

Cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil, and place it in the oven until the ribs are very tender, about 2½ to 3 hours.

Take the ribs from the baking dish, and arrange them in a large, shallow serving bowl. Degrease the cooking liquid. Reheat the sauce briefly, and pour it over the ribs. Garnish with the pine nuts. Serve hot.