French Fridays with Dorie: Cola and jam ribs!

I figured, since I'm basically cooking my way through Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table, I might as well join a 'Cook your way through Around My French Table with Dorie' group. So I joined on Thursday and prepared the first recipe in plenty of time to post before midnight CST on Friday...

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have bookmarked Cola and Jam Spareribs on my own, so I'm very glad Dorie decided on this recipe and got me out of my comfort zone. This was my first time to prepare ribs ever. It was so easy, although I ran into typical novice home cook stumbling blocks at each turn - heated some ingredients in the microwave, as suggested, but added another minute, not as suggested, and the ingredients exploded; got more dry rub on my fingers than on the ribs; didn't know whether to cook the ribs convex or concave (Mr Leaven insists that they should be concave and everyone knows that, but he didn't feel it was important to inform Ms Leaven) so did one of each. Silly stuff, really.

baste #1 (this is the concave version)

and the convex. yes, i can see that it looks silly this way. what was i thinking??

before baste #2. no more pictures of silly convex ribs.

The long and the short (rib - hee!) of it was that we found these guys really, really moist and tasty. I think Chinese five spice is our new favorite thing. I used Coke Zero for the cola and used back ribs instead of spareribs (I honestly still don't know the difference and I don't know whether what I used were really baby back ribs. I could do research but I'd rather research the latest gossip about the Real Housewives - I occasionally Google search things like 'is kelly actually crazy' or 'luann is a mean girl') and they turned out great.

not the best photos, but still OMG look at that color. so delish.

For French Fridays with Dorie (FFWD) they ask that you don't post the recipes, as one of the goals of the group is to encourage everyone in the whole wide world to purchase this fantastic cookbook for him or herself. I'll just say that I've listed almost every ingredient already. You put a dry rub on the ribs, baste with an orange-apricot sauce, then baste with cola. The Coke caramelizes beautifully and makes the ribs just gorgeous.

heck, yes, we ate them with our hands. eating ribs with a knife and fork is actually a class 2 misdemeanor in Texas. true story.

We had a lovely Around My French Table zucchini tagliatelle salad alongside the ribs. I probably should have researched what tagliatelle was (instead of 'housewives bankrupt') and our zucchini were way too wide but it was still a nice, light salad dressed with lemon and oil.

there's raw onion in there, y'all. don't worry, i was able to navigate around it. phew.

I will definitely make these ribs again. Thanks, Dorie, for letting me join y'all's club!!

And now, just before 11:30pm, I will be posting and linking...