Pork Bob-BQ ¶

Ok. So pork ribs are fatty! But oh! So succulent. Use the leanest you can find or wait for a day of special dispensation when your weight is otherwise well controlled and you deserve a a little off-diet merriment. Then prepare this recipe and enjoy the tangy goodness of an easy, but very tasty, pork barbecue.

  • pork ribs or boneless strips enough to feed those that will be eating it
  • Bob-BQ sauce†, enough to appropriately slather* on the pork ribs

Line a baking pan with aluminum foil (to make later cleaning up easier) and put the pork in the pan. Lavishly spread on the Bob-BQ sauce. Bake in a 250° oven for 3 hours. You may cover while cooking with foil, if you wish, for a moister result. Remove from the oven and serve with extra Bob-BQ sauce on the side.

Pork and Broccoli Stir Fry §

Scholars believe that the technique the Chinese call ch’ao traces back to about the latter 1300s, but the term ““stir-fry”” was not introduced into the English language until about 1945 in a book How To Cook and Eat in Chinese by Buwei Yang Chao.

The stir-fry spread quickly thereafter from Chinese families and restaurants into general use in America. I became suddenly aware in the early 1970s that everyone I knew seemed to be buying a wok. Stir-frying was becoming very popular because it was quick, nutritious, and involved only one cooking vessel. Almost any meal could be made to fit into stir-fry form and many such preparations could take as little as only fifteen minutes.

The trick explored here is how to make a stir-fry recipe without a lot of oil, salt, and carbohydrate. I think that is fairly well done in the recipe below. We round up the usual ingredients: pork, broccoli, spices for flavor, and chile for some piquancy.
  • ¾ cup low-sodium chicken stock
  • 2 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
  • 1 tsp sriracha (or Taubasco†) sauce
  • 1 tsp toasted sesame oil
  • 1 tbsp cornstarch
  • 1 lb pork tenderloin, in 1” cubes
  • 1 tbsp cornstarch
  • vegetable oil spray
  • 2 cups broccoli florets, in 1” pieces
  • 1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
  • 1 tsp crushed garlic

Assemble the chicken stock, soy sauce, sriracha, sesame oil, and cornstarch in a small bowl and whisk until the cornstarch has been absorbed with no lumps. Set aside.

Spray the cubed pork with oil in a bowl and add the remaining cornstarch. Toss to coat the meat. Spray a wok with oil and turn on the heat. When hot, add the pork and cook until browned on all sides, about 6 minutes. Add the broccoli and continue to cook until it turns bright green, turning occasionally, about a minute.

Add the reserved chicken stock-cornstarch mixture, stir to distribute ingredients uniformly, and cook until the cornstarch has thickened and lost its taste, about 2 minutes, folding the ingredients as necessary to keep them from sticking to the wok.

Serves 2–4.