on my quest to cook as many recipes as possible from molly steven's art of braising, a few weekends ago cavin and i decided to make this dish after i spotted pork riblets at h-mart.

what are pork riblets? essentially they are pork ribs, but sawed across the bone to make half ribs or "riblets". and because we have an abundance of patis and all other ingredients handy, it seemed like an appropriate sunday afternoon cooking adventure.

while i've never really used that much patis (fish sauce) in a recipe before, i wondered if the riblets would come out salty. but because a caramel is made as the base of the sauce, the patis melded together quite well to create an extremely savory, though thin, sauce. (if i was served this dish, i don't even think i would have been able to pick out fish sauce as an ingredient.)

molly stevens suggests serving these as an appetizer before the main course, but cavin and i thought highly enough of the riblets to eat them as our main, served over rice, of course. we'll definitely be making this again the next time we see the riblets at h-mart.

pork riblets braised in vietnamese caramel sauce
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 tbsp lime juice
1/3 cup asian fish sauce
1/3 cup sliced shallots
1 tsp pepper
~2 lbs (we used 2.66 lbs) slab baby back ribs sawed lengthwise in half (2.99 lb h-mart)

spread sugar in the bottom of a wide heavy-based skillet (12-13"). pour over 1/4 cup water and lime juice and let sit for a minute to soak in. heat over med heat until sugar begins to liquefy. you can shake or swirl the pan or stir with a wooden spoon once or twice so the sugar melts evenly, but don't stir constantly, and stop shaking or stirring once the contents of the saucepan have liquefied entirely. (if you stir too frequently you risk crystallizing the sugar.) reduce heat to med-low and let caramel boil until it turns a deep reddish-brown, but not black, ~10 min.

remove caramel from heat and standing back, add the fish sauce slowly and the remaining 1/4 cup water. (don't worry if caramel hardens.) return caramel to heat, stir and boil until you have a smooth, thick sauce, ~4 min. add shallots and black pepper and simmer for 2 min. remove from heat and set aside to cool to warm. (the caramel sauce may be made ahead up to this point and kept refrigerated for a week.)

separate the pork ribs into individual ribs by cutting down between the bones. add to caramel sauce, stir to coat, bring to simmer over low heat. cover and braise, stirring and turning every 10-15 minutes so that ribs remain evenly coated in sauce for about 1.5 to 2 hours. ribs are done when they become tender enough to pull easily away from the bone and are a deep mahogany color.

remove as much fat as possible from caramel sauce (which will be rather thin). pour some sauce over riblets to moisten. serve over white rice.

Labels: cooking, pork