The Viking Roasts - Sirloin on the Bone with Onion Crisps

So.  You spend the better part of an hour slicing and dicing vegetables, lovingly running a sharp knife through a succulent cut of beef, gently simmering a stock on the stove and getting your hands tacky making a dumpling dough.  You recklessly toss half a bottle of London Pride in to your stock, the beery, hoppy smell racing in to your nostrils, firing memory synapses which light pictures of long, lazy Sunday afternoons behind your eyes.  Your smile widens as you place your chopped leek, swede, onion, potato, carrot and thyme in to the bottom of your slow cooker.  A twinkle enters your eyes, your hands laying beef on to a bed of vegetables before wrapping it all in a blanket of stock, steam rising lazily from its surface.  You add pepper, and salt, a couple of chilis and some cayenne pepper before covering with a lid, setting to ‘high’ and retiring to the lounge for the next six hours to watch the football.  It is, you reflect as you drain the bottle of beer, a perfect Sunday.

Six hours later, you return to the slow cooker.  Your team has lost, and all you have to look forward to now is a nice, thick, fulfilling stew and dumplings.  You plunge your fork in to the vegetables, expecting them to yield softly to your touch and…  they’re still hard.  Solid, in fact.  And, in one fell swoop, you entire weekend has been ruined.  The stew itself gets chucked unceremoniously in to a saucepan to be brought to the boil and simmered for a couple of hours (the way you’d originally intended before you got all high-and-mighty and decided to use the slow cooker), but that’s going to make dinner too late so you’re reduced to an omelette that you eat in front of Top Gear with a strong sense of disappointment. 

That’s what happened to me this weekend.  I ate that omelette with thinly-veiled disgust.  I was Not Happy.  But anyway, that stew will keep for tea for tonight (Monday), and now I must think of something else to write about this week.  Thankfully, I do have a little something else up my sleeve.  And so this week, after three paragraphs of moaning and some unnecessarily flowery language, I present to you my version of a recipe I picked up on Market Kitchen a couple of weeks ago.  It’s another roast – sorry about that – but I’m limited with resources at the moment and it’s all I’ve got ready to write about.

And so: The Viking Roasts – Sirloin on the Bone!

Yes, it’s another roast, but this time I’m using beef and there will also be Yorkshires and everything, so I think it’s sufficiently different from the last roast that I did.  Let’s get cracking, shall we?  You are going to need to get some STUFF.  Firstly, you’re going to need Sirloin, on the bone.  I was feeding two, and was rewarded (in exchange for around £10) with the following joint of beef or, for my American readers, a steak.

I forgot to take a picture of the meat before I covered it in garlic.  So you'll need to imagine it
looking pristine and pure...

You’ll probably have a tough time actually getting Sirloin on the bone in a supermarket (depending on how good their butcher is – no doubt Richard Hammond will pop up on the TV soon enough telling me that a popular supermarket chain does do this thereby making me look stupid, but that’s a risk I’m going to have to take), so take yourself down to your local butcher.  I won’t tell you how much beef you need – just tell your ruddy-faced, big forearmed butcher how many people you’re feeding and lo, he will provide.

You know, this guy.

You’re also going to need:

Potatoes – enough to sink the Poseidon.  I used Maris Pipers this week, but a good, fluffy potato will do just as well.

Garlic, and lots of it.

Pepper

Thyme

Carrots

Parsnips

2 Onions

Olive Oil

Eggs

Plain Flour

Milk

A pan of oil for frying

Quite a list, isn’t it?  We’d best get started before one of us dies of hunger, and I really don’t want that on my conscience.  Firstly, finely slice the onion using a sharp knife, or if you’re all la-di-da a mandolin.  One you’ve sliced the onions, place in a sieve over a bowl and leave them for about half an hour.

Next, take your garlic and crush.  You can either use the flat of a blade or a garlic crusher for this, but I find that the back-of-a-blade-and-then-hit-it method works best here – but that might be because my garlic crusher is from the Neolithic period and half the garlic gets stuck in the little holes.  Whatever your method, once you’ve done you should add the leaves (but not stalks) of a some thyme.  Give it a good pinch, and then using a rocking motion with a sharp knife cut the garlic and thyme together.  Add a tiny bit of olive oil and repeat, so you should end up with a garlicky, thymey paste that you will eventually rub on to the meat:

The next stage in your prep should be making the Yorkshire pudding batter.  This is a recipe that makes enough for four puds, and doesn’t require scales or precise measurements.  In to a bowl, add 2-3 heaped tablespoons of plain flour, 2 eggs and a splash of milk.  Add a good pinch of thyme leaves and beat together, adding very cold water bit by bit until you have a smooth batter, like this:

Once that’s done, set aside in the fridge as you won’t need it until later on.  Now, peel all your other veg, putting potatoes in water on their own and setting aside the carrots and parsnips.

Phew.  What a lot of prep, eh?  I suppose that we should get cooking.  Grab your sirloin, and rub that garlic paste all over it with your fingers.  Revel in that gorgeous smell for a moment, then take a large frying pan and (with no oil) put it over a high heat.  When the pan is shimmering hot, seal the joint on each side for about 30 seconds:

Done that?  Good.  Now, place the joint in to a roasting tin with a cup of water in the bottom of it, and put in to an oven, uncovered, that has been preheated to 200c/Gas 6.  In the original recipe, the meat only needs around 45 minutes to cook – but that was using a much smaller cut of meat from a different cow (a Dexter, I believe) so, depending on the size of your joint you need to adjust your cooking time accordingly.  The meat I cooked was in the oven for an hour and a half, and came out cooked through.  In honesty, that’s a bit too much for me, I’d say if you want it with some pink in, then an hour would do just as well.

At the same time, put another roasting tin in the oven with some oil in it for your roast veggies.  We’ve covered this before, so I won’t go over that again.  On the bottom shelf, place a Yorkshire pudding tin that has a good slug of oil in each of the depressions in which you’re going to make puds.  That oil needs to be really, really hot before you even think about putting the puds on.

As usual, par boil your potatoes for 5 minutes, beat them up a bit in the pan and, after 15 minutes, remove the vegetable tray from the oven and chuck your spuds in there, making sure they each get a good coating of oil as they start to brown in the pan.  You can do this over heat on the hob if you have a lot of potato to get through.  In the gaps between spuds, put in your carrots and parsnips, season to taste, and then put back in the oven for the remaining time. 

With 40 minutes to go, remove the Yorkshire pudding tin.  Careful, the oil will be super hot at this bit can be dangerous if you trip or spill the oil.  Rest the tray on a solid surface and then, using a ladle, fill the individual pudding houses.  I don’t know what they’re called.  A depression of Yorkshire puddings?  Something like that.  Three quarter fill your depressions with your lovely batter, and put back in the oven.  Here’s a Viking Top Tip: don’t open the door of the oven if you can at all avoid it between now and then end of cooking, otherwise your puds will collapse.

And now, go and have a sit.  Open a bottle of Longue Dog Grenache Shiraz (around a fiver from Sainsbury’s), fill a glass and let those nice, berryish aromas fill your nostrils.  Imagine drinking that peppery, dark red wine with your succulent meat.  Dribble a bit.  Go on, you’ve deserved it.

Soon enough, your timer will go off.  Quickly, not letting too much air in to the oven, remove your meat and let it rest.  Put the roasting tin with the juices in it on the hob, add some water, some bisto and some red wine, and cook down over a low heat for 5 minutes, being careful not to boil it.  Turn up the heat in the oven to 220c/Gas 7 to crisp off the Yorkshires and the roasties (sadly, all ovens are different, you will have to use your own judgement here…)

Things are getting a little hectic now…  Half fill a small saucepan with vegetable oil, and heat.  You’ll know it’s hot enough if you can drop a piece of bread in and it goes golden in 30 seconds.  Meanwhile, place your onion slices in a clean tea towel and squeeze the moisture from them.  Coat in flour:

And then fry in the oil until golden.  Don’t – just don’t – leave the oil.  There’s no need to risk burning your house down, is there.  Once cooked, remove using a colander spoon and drain on a piece of kitchen paper. 

Slice the meat in to thick pieces, and remove vegetables and Yorkshires from the oven.  Arrange on a plate, cover in thick, winey gravy, and eat until you’re fat and happy. 

So, I changed Matt’s recipe a little (I substituted onion puree for roasties and veg), and this is a little more fiddly than a normal roast, but the end result is more than worth it.  That bone on the meat helps it retain its shape, and I’m not sure if this is psychosomatic or not but it seems to give an extra level of flavour.  It’s something that I very much enjoyed cooking, and I hope you will too.

And so ends another entry.  Despite the trials and tribulations of failed stews and interviews, the sun is out and there’s a definite feeling in the air that spring is about to, er, spring; and that means Lamb, and lots of it.  In the meantime, any ideas for things I should cook?  Always happy to try something new, for that is the Viking way!

Until next week I am, and remain to be, the Food Viking! 

Cow and Prawn - The Viking Cooks

Cows are great aren’t they?  I mean, really great.  A half-ton of walking buffet with a brain.  And yet, so deliciously stupid that you can walk right up to one, kill it TO DEATH and then drag it away and the others won’t get suspicious when you return later on with a bolt gun and a wicked gleam in your eye.

I suppose I should mention at this point that I have never killed a cow.  But I would punch a Dolphin.  There’s something in their eyes, they’re not to be trusted.

Moving on (probably sensible), then, and the gorgeous bovine beast has been slaughtered, butchered, hung and purchased, and it’s time for it to get in my belly.  I’ve got two lovely pieces of fillet but – shock of shocks – tonight, a steak pan fried just ain’t going to be enough.  It’s a mad notion, and probably one that’s offensive to the cow that was until recently chewing the cud in a Herefordshire field (and if I should ever find myself in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe I’m sure the main course would regard me with baleful eyes before recommending a different cut of itself, trying to forget the faux pas I’d just made), but sometimes, some-bloody-times I want something to take my steak dinner and elevate it to a thing of ethereal beauty. 

I want colour.  I want sweet, crisp freshness.  I want something salty.  I want something that looks impressive but is actually damned easy.  I want to feel, at once, like a culinary god and an ordinary Joe.  And if you’ve ever wanted to feel like that, then I have three words for you:

Surf and Turf.

I know, I know what you’re thinking – you’re thinking “Now come on, Viking old boy, you’ve been banging on in your first few blogs about big tasty food and this, frankly, is a Beefeater special.”  To which I say, yes, you have a point but – as with anything else – with the right ingredients this can be one hell of a tasty, rewarding and inspiring dish.  I have a great affinity for it anyway (must be something to do with those Viking roots) – the combination of meat and shellfish is, for me, simply outstanding.  The sharp sweetness of the prawn cuts right through the meatiness of the beef.  The garlic (as they must be cooked in garlic, these prawns) adds another extra dimension of flavour – we have earthy beef and sweet prawn while marrying the two is a beautiful, rich and buttery garlic sauce.  Throw in a big-arsed chunky chip and I swear your Friday nights will never be the same again.

Enough of the titillation then, let’s get cooking.  You are going to need STUFF.  This week’s stuff is:

Fillet Steak - the turf part, if for some reason you though cows were marine animals.  Cut from the tenderloin, which runs along both sides of the spine just under the sirloin, the fillet is the tenderest cut of beef.  As a muscle, it isn’t weight bearing, so you get less contractive tissue and therefore the meat is tenderer (thanks, Wikipedia!) While I love a rib-eye or a sirloin, fillet is just melt-in-the-mouth beautiful.  It may be a tad more expensive but it’s so, so worth it.  Then you'll need:

Prawns – the surf!  For this recipe, I used tiger prawns.  I wandered up to Borough market and found a fishmonger who charged me £15 for 4.  That was a real swallowing of my pride moment, I can tell you.   There was a real fight on the fishmonger’s hands to remove the notes from my clenched fist – but he won the day and in the end I’m sort of glad he did.  Still, if your budget doesn’t stretch to silly proportions (trust me, mine didn’t), then replace tiger prawns with king prawns and that’ll be a-ok.  Again, choose how many you want depending on how many mouths you’re feeding and how hungry you are.

You’ll also need butter.  Proper butter, that is.  Not margarine, butter.  Nice, yellow, artery clogging butter.  Yes, fine, if you eat butter in large amounts every day you will have a heart attack.  That said, a little once in a while isn’t going to kill you, so get some butter.  I chose Lurpak because I’m half Danish and I insist on patriotism when buying dairy produce.  Add to your grocery bag 3 cloves of garlic (more or less depending on how garlicky you like things), parsley and as many good, white fluffy potatoes as you need - for these chunky chips, one potato will make four chips.

You’ll also need a pan of water, a griddle pan, a roasting tray, oil, sea salt and cling film.

Firstly, cut a good lump of butter and place in to a bowl.  Crush the garlic in there, and throw in a pinch of parsley.  Using the backside of a spoon, whip the butter, garlic and parsley together until you have a malleable ball of buttery garlicky goodness.  Take most of the mixture and place on to some cling film.  Cover, and then using your hands roll the butter in to a sausage shape and put in the fridge.  Save the remaining mixture for later on.

For the chips, I basically made roast potatoes.  Cut your potatoes in to chunky chips, put them in a pan of water and rinse.  Cover with water again and put over a high heat and bring them to the boil.  Pre-heat your oven to gas mark 7 (220c), making sure you’ve got a roasting tin in there with a good slug of olive oil to get nice and hot.  Once the potatoes have been boiling for five minutes, drain them and sling them around gently in the pan to beat them up a bit.  Remove the roasting tin from the oven, add the potatoes (they’ll give good sizzle – give them a good turn so they get a covering of oil) and a generous pinch of sea salt, and then put them back in the oven for 45 minutes, turning once.

Now, prepare the prawns.  Release your inner beast and grip the head of the prawn between your thumb and forefinger.  It’s a bit gross, but twist the head all the way off.  Turn the prawn on to its back and using your thumbs break the shell off, removing the legs and the outer shell.  If you like, you can leave the tail on for decoration.  Now, turn the prawn right side up again, and you’ll see a little black line running the length of the back.  That’s the intestinal tract.  It is edible – but it’ll taste gritty and let’s not forget that it’s prawn poo in there.  So, using the tip of a small sharp knife, pull it free.  The next bit is down to personal preference, but I like to butterfly my prawns.  Using a sharp pair of kitchen scissors, cut half way down the prawn from top to tail and then press out using your fingers.


I actually cut the body of the prawn in to two.  This is a) because I like the way the two sides curl outwards when they cook and b) because I got carried away and accidentally cut the first prawn in half so, in the interests of continuity, I had to carry on with my ‘vision’.  Once you’re done, rinse the prawns in cold water and pat dry with a tea towel.  Arrange on a grill pan (I wrapped mine in foil to strop drippage), and then get the remainder of your butter mixture.  Spoon on to the prawns, and then set aside – don’t start cooking them yet!

Now, time for the steaks.  We all have our little steak secrets, but here’s mine.  If you’re using a pan, get it hot.  Really hot.  Shimmering hot.  Don’t put oil in it.  In the meantime, give your steak a good grind of pepper (beef loves pepper), and then put the oil on the meat.  If you want salt, add at this point – if you put it on the meat directly it will dry it out and that’s not what you want.  Then, add the steaks to the pan, and cook at high heat for one minute on each side.  Then, turn the heat right down to medium, and cook for a further minute on each side for rare, two for medium rare, three for medium and four for well done.  You can check how your steak is cooking without cutting it open by doing the hand test.

This time, however, I used a heavy cast iron griddle.  Instead of cooking over a high heat, I started and stayed on medium.  For that reason, it takes a little longer to cook the steaks, but also, I find, keeps them lovely, tender and juicy despite not sealing the outside in a hot pan.  Also, the griddle gives your meat wonderful steak house lines, which I think look great.

Resting is the key for steak.  Rare steaks should be rested for 6-8 minutes, medium-rare for 5, medium for 4 and well done for 1.

Depending on the cooking and resting time of your steak, you need to time when to put your prawns on.  So, turn on your grill and be ready.  Prawns will take a maximum (if using tiger prawn like I did) of 6-8 minutes.  So, if you’re having a rare steak, don’t put your prawns on until you’ve removed your steaks from  the pan.  You’re intelligent people, you can work it out, I’m sure!  A prawn is cooked when the flesh is white and the outside has turned a nice pink colour.

You’ll know when they’re cooked – they look like you expect them to look, if you see what I mean – and they’re entirely different from how they look when they’re raw.

To serve:

Get your butter sausage and cut off enough rounds to have one per steak. 

Then, on a heated plate, arrange your chips in a stack of six, two by two.  Place the steak to one side and garnish with your lovely pink prawns.  Top your steak with the round of garlic butter, and serve.  You don’t need any other condiments with this, unless you want to add a garlic mayonnaise to dip your chips in.  And why not, eh?

It’s amazing how just adding a couple of prawns to such a simple thing as steak n’ chips can elevate it to being something very special indeed.  Eat with a long, cold lager in front of your favourite movie with the people that you love.  If there’s anything that is as soulful, replenishing and fun as eating non fussy food with friends, then I don’t know what it is.

So get on the phone, get your friends over, and make them a Surf and Turf as prescribed by The Viking.  Let me know how you get on!

Oh, before I go: this week’s technical directors on Food Viking were Mrs. Viking (for putting up with the herculean level of swearing coming from our kitchen when I realised I had never cooked prawns before) and Victoria King ) who heroically saved me from throwing away some perfectly good tiger prawns while I was having a fit about whether they were good to eat or not.  Cheers, Victoria.

Right, I’m definitely going this time.  I’ll be back next week, and until then, happy eating!

The Viking Cooks: Sweet and Hot Sticky Ribs

Hands up if you don’t like eating with your fingers.

Why not?  It’s quite an experience.  I don’t mean just grabbing hold of a cheese sandwich here, either.  That doesn’t count (although I wouldn’t wish to say bad things about a cheese sandwich – sometimes, nothing else will do) – think instead of all the great things that you can (and should) eat with your hands.  Big, juicy burgers.  Hot dogs.  Sizzling chicken fajitas.  Pizza.  Imagine: you clutch a chicken drumstick as big as your head in your fist, and then ripping great chunks of flesh from it with your teeth before dispatching the bone over your shoulder to be fought over by the dogs.  Tell me that doesn’t make you happy.

Alright, so maybe eating with your fingers needn’t be such a medieval affair after all – but it can be a lot of fun and there’s one food that is suited particularly well to the art of finger eating, and that’s the humble rib.

I remember that, as a child, I was the pickiest eater.  I must have been a constant nightmare for my parents.  Peas?  No.  Batter Pudding?  No (although I would eat a Yorkshire Pudding, so my Mother won that little battle, I suppose).  Fish?  Nuh-uh.  Eating out was an entirely new horror and often led to panic attacks – but there was one place that I truly loved to go to eat.  A place where I loved all the food, and the atmosphere, and the cool way the bar people used to make you highly coloured (and highly sugared, no doubt) cocktails for kids.  The restaurant was (and still is) called Back Inn Time, an American themed diner in Chelmsford Essex – if you ever find yourself there I highly recommend you drop in and check them out.  You’ll not be disappointed.

So there I would be sat, colourful cocktail alongside me, waiting for the feast.  Others would have burgers (loaded with all the accompaniments under the sun), or great big juicy steaks with piles of perfectly fried French Fries (oh, I didn’t like French Fries either, but if you told me they were ‘Thin Chips’ then I was fine with that) – but me?   I went for the ribs each and every time.  I’ve been visiting this restaurant for 20 years and I still always order ribs.  It’s the best – you get a rack of wonderfully sticky ribs, a pile of napkins and, best of all, a dog bowl to out your bones in.  As a child, I would feel like Fred Flintstone as these frankly gigantic (to my small eyes) racks were laid in front of me, and off I would go.  And that’s how my love affair with ribs started, and has endured to this day.  I think most rib lovers would tend to find their own rib shack that they like the best (in London – as I can’t always get to Essex – there’s a fabulous rib house called Bodeans in Soho), a place with the right stickiness to the sauce, the right smokiness to the meat, the right atmosphere to eat in.  But what I never realised until recently is you can achieve something similar at home for very little cost – it’s so very easy, and today I’m going to share with you my recipe for a sweet, hot and sticky rib sauce that you can make in near enough 5 minutes.

Now, before I get started I must say that sometimes it’s perfectly acceptable to not want to mess around – especially if you want ribs after work.  If you’re after quick, easy and tasty ribs, then I’d recommend using the Paul Newman range of sauces.  The best thing about them is that you’re doing something good for charity.  However, if you make your own sauce it’s something to be really proud of, and this is how you do it.

As usual, you’re going to need STUFF.  So, in order for you to get your stuff, here’s a shopping list (this lot feeds two):

Meat:

- One rack of baby back ribs.  You can use spare ribs if you like (and why not) – but I find the babyback is easier to eat.  If you go to Waitrose, these can be anything from £2.50 to £4, depending on weight.  Your local butcher may be cheaper.

For the sauce:

- 2 red onions, chopped

- 3 cloves of garlic, chopped

- 2 nice hot chillies, deseeded and chopped

- 200ml of ketchup

- A spoon of honey

- A tablespoon of dark soy sauce

- A tablespoon of dark drown sugar

- A pinch of fennel seeds, crushed

So.  Got your stuff?  Well done.  Grab a saucepan, stick it on the heat, and then (with a little oil) fry off the garlic, onions and chillies.  When they’ve started to cook down a bit, add in the sugar and briskly stir everything together.  You’re looking for the sugar to start caramelising, giving the rest of the ingredients a brownish colour. 

Then, add the ketchup, soy sauce and honey, and bring to the boil.  Simmer for 5 minutes to thicken the sauce down and bang, you’re done!  How easy is that?  If you’re feeling cheeky, add a good slug of Jack Daniels – I was, so I did.

The best things come to those who wait, eh?

"One shot for the ribs, and one for me..."

The level of heat/sweetness you put in is up to you – I have used two spoons of sugar before and my teeth nearly fell out.  For me, I really like the heat to come piling through the sweetness in the aftertaste, so maybe if you like a bit of heat don’t deseed the chilli.  I know that the ketchup is a bit of a cheat, but it really works and using that and the honey is going to give you a really sticky rib.

Now that the sauce is done, get your rack of ribs.  Using a shap knife, score along the top of the ribs in diagonal lines in opposing directions – this will help the marinade get right in to the meat transferring all that lovely flavour.

Spoon your rib sauce out on to the ribs and use a brush to spread it all over the meat, ensuring you get in to all the nooks and crannies.  If you’ve used a rib sauce before, it might look a bit weird but that’s only because you can see the lumps and bumps from the onion you made the sauce with.  You could strain the sauce if you like, but I like the extra bite those onions give.  If you have the time, let the ribs sit in the marinade for about 6 hours.  If not, you can get going straight away, you’re still going to get a good result.

Top tip time!  Wrap your baking tray in foil.  Your ribs and sauce will leak and it’s impossible to get off once it’s dried on.  Also, this creates less washing up and that’s always good for me!

Anyway.  Get your ribs in a hot oven, gas mark 7 (220 C) should do the trick.  Set a timer for half an hour.  Once that’s done, don’t even look at the ribs, just turn the oven down to gas 4 (180 C) for another hour and a half.  Even better, if you’re not pushed for time you could go down to gas 2 (150 C) for about 3 hours.  You can turn the ribs half way through cooking if you like, but it’s not essential.  Just make sure to have some extra sauce on the side so you can keep basting your ribs during the cooking process.

Afterwards, pierce between the ribs with a sharp knife.  If the juices run clear then you’re all cooked.  An even better way to tell is pulling the meat from the bone.  If the meat pulls cleanly away (and it should, you’ve cooked it good and slowly), you’re set to get eating!

It might look messy, but it really is a thing of beauty...

Please ignore the next picture.  Good ribs should, I think, be served with a pile of coleslaw and a crisp jacket potato.  I lost control of myself though and cooked some potato slices.  I’m sorry to let you down so.  It’s only just now I realise how much colour I could have added.

Eating with your fingers is fun, sociable and just a little decadent.  I highly recommend you have a go at this one – just make sure you have a small bowl of soapy water nearby to wash your fingers with.  The ideal drink to go with this would be an ice cold lager and I guarantee you and your guests will end the meal happy.

Next week, picture quality will return to normal now that I have actually managed to find the charger cable for my camera, and I think we'll be looking at a Great British Classic, the Toad in the Hole.  Until then, folks, and let's eat!

The Viking Cooks: Sweet and Hot Sticky Ribs

Hands up if you don’t like eating with your fingers.

Why not?  It’s quite an experience.  I don’t mean just grabbing hold of a cheese sandwich here, either.  That doesn’t count (although I wouldn’t wish to say bad things about a cheese sandwich – sometimes, nothing else will do) – think instead of all the great things that you can (and should) eat with your hands.  Big, juicy burgers.  Hot dogs.  Sizzling chicken fajitas.  Pizza.  Imagine: you clutch a chicken drumstick as big as your head in your fist, and then ripping great chunks of flesh from it with your teeth before dispatching the bone over your shoulder to be fought over by the dogs.  Tell me that doesn’t make you happy.

Alright, so maybe eating with your fingers needn’t be such a medieval affair after all – but it can be a lot of fun and there’s one food that is suited particularly well to the art of finger eating, and that’s the humble rib.

I remember that, as a child, I was the pickiest eater.  I must have been a constant nightmare for my parents.  Peas?  No.  Batter Pudding?  No (although I would eat a Yorkshire Pudding, so my Mother won that little battle, I suppose).  Fish?  Nuh-uh.  Eating out was an entirely new horror and often led to panic attacks – but there was one place that I truly loved to go to eat.  A place where I loved all the food, and the atmosphere, and the cool way the bar people used to make you highly coloured (and highly sugared, no doubt) cocktails for kids.  The restaurant was (and still is) called Back Inn Time, an American themed diner in Chelmsford Essex – if you ever find yourself there I highly recommend you drop in and check them out.  You’ll not be disappointed.

So there I would be sat, colourful cocktail alongside me, waiting for the feast.  Others would have burgers (loaded with all the accompaniments under the sun), or great big juicy steaks with piles of perfectly fried French Fries (oh, I didn’t like French Fries either, but if you told me they were ‘Thin Chips’ then I was fine with that) – but me?   I went for the ribs each and every time.  I’ve been visiting this restaurant for 20 years and I still always order ribs.  It’s the best – you get a rack of wonderfully sticky ribs, a pile of napkins and, best of all, a dog bowl to out your bones in.  As a child, I would feel like Fred Flintstone as these frankly gigantic (to my small eyes) racks were laid in front of me, and off I would go.  And that’s how my love affair with ribs started, and has endured to this day.  I think most rib lovers would tend to find their own rib shack that they like the best (in London – as I can’t always get to Essex – there’s a fabulous rib house called Bodeans in Soho), a place with the right stickiness to the sauce, the right smokiness to the meat, the right atmosphere to eat in.  But what I never realised until recently is you can achieve something similar at home for very little cost – it’s so very easy, and today I’m going to share with you my recipe for a sweet, hot and sticky rib sauce that you can make in near enough 5 minutes.

Now, before I get started I must say that sometimes it’s perfectly acceptable to not want to mess around – especially if you want ribs after work.  If you’re after quick, easy and tasty ribs, then I’d recommend using the Paul Newman range of sauces.  The best thing about them is that you’re doing something good for charity.  However, if you make your own sauce it’s something to be really proud of, and this is how you do it.

As usual, you’re going to need STUFF.  So, in order for you to get your stuff, here’s a shopping list (this lot feeds two):

Meat:

- One rack of baby back ribs.  You can use spare ribs if you like (and why not) – but I find the babyback is easier to eat.  If you go to Waitrose, these can be anything from £2.50 to £4, depending on weight.  Your local butcher may be cheaper.

For the sauce:

- 2 red onions, chopped

- 3 cloves of garlic, chopped

- 2 nice hot chillies, deseeded and chopped

- 200ml of ketchup

- A spoon of honey

- A tablespoon of dark soy sauce

- A tablespoon of dark drown sugar

- A pinch of fennel seeds, crushed

So.  Got your stuff?  Well done.  Grab a saucepan, stick it on the heat, and then (with a little oil) fry off the garlic, onions and chillies.  When they’ve started to cook down a bit, add in the sugar and briskly stir everything together.  You’re looking for the sugar to start caramelising, giving the rest of the ingredients a brownish colour. 

Then, add the ketchup, soy sauce and honey, and bring to the boil.  Simmer for 5 minutes to thicken the sauce down and bang, you’re done!  How easy is that?  If you’re feeling cheeky, add a good slug of Jack Daniels – I was, so I did.

The best things come to those who wait, eh?

"One shot for the ribs, and one for me..."

The level of heat/sweetness you put in is up to you – I have used two spoons of sugar before and my teeth nearly fell out.  For me, I really like the heat to come piling through the sweetness in the aftertaste, so maybe if you like a bit of heat don’t deseed the chilli.  I know that the ketchup is a bit of a cheat, but it really works and using that and the honey is going to give you a really sticky rib.

Now that the sauce is done, get your rack of ribs.  Using a shap knife, score along the top of the ribs in diagonal lines in opposing directions – this will help the marinade get right in to the meat transferring all that lovely flavour.

Spoon your rib sauce out on to the ribs and use a brush to spread it all over the meat, ensuring you get in to all the nooks and crannies.  If you’ve used a rib sauce before, it might look a bit weird but that’s only because you can see the lumps and bumps from the onion you made the sauce with.  You could strain the sauce if you like, but I like the extra bite those onions give.  If you have the time, let the ribs sit in the marinade for about 6 hours.  If not, you can get going straight away, you’re still going to get a good result.

Top tip time!  Wrap your baking tray in foil.  Your ribs and sauce will leak and it’s impossible to get off once it’s dried on.  Also, this creates less washing up and that’s always good for me!

Anyway.  Get your ribs in a hot oven, gas mark 7 (220 C) should do the trick.  Set a timer for half an hour.  Once that’s done, don’t even look at the ribs, just turn the oven down to gas 4 (180 C) for another hour and a half.  Even better, if you’re not pushed for time you could go down to gas 2 (150 C) for about 3 hours.  You can turn the ribs half way through cooking if you like, but it’s not essential.  Just make sure to have some extra sauce on the side so you can keep basting your ribs during the cooking process.

Afterwards, pierce between the ribs with a sharp knife.  If the juices run clear then you’re all cooked.  An even better way to tell is pulling the meat from the bone.  If the meat pulls cleanly away (and it should, you’ve cooked it good and slowly), you’re set to get eating!

It might look messy, but it really is a thing of beauty...

Please ignore the next picture.  Good ribs should, I think, be served with a pile of coleslaw and a crisp jacket potato.  I lost control of myself though and cooked some potato slices.  I’m sorry to let you down so.  It’s only just now I realise how much colour I could have added.

Eating with your fingers is fun, sociable and just a little decadent.  I highly recommend you have a go at this one – just make sure you have a small bowl of soapy water nearby to wash your fingers with.  The ideal drink to go with this would be an ice cold lager and I guarantee you and your guests will end the meal happy.

Next week, picture quality will return to normal now that I have actually managed to find the charger cable for my camera, and I think we'll be looking at a Great British Classic, the Toad in the Hole.  Until then, folks, and let's eat!