Spare Ribs with Black Beans & Chili

Click to Enlarge	Spare Ribs with Black Beans & Chili China - Hunan - dou chi la jiao zheng pai gu
	Serves Effort: Sched: DoAhead:	2 main ** 1 hr Reheat		A bit of a different take on spare ribs, and with enough sauce to be considered a main dish with rice rather than an appetizer. In hard working Hunan a half tablespoon of lard would be added to the topping but that's a bit excessive for our information processing culture.

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Pork Spare Ribs (1)
Soy Sauce, light
Rice Wine
Ginger root
Black Beans (2)
Chili flake (3)

Separate PORK RIBS and cut into lengths of about 2 inches. A sharp Chinese cleaver knife is perfect for this. Remove all excess fat.
Bring plenty of Water to a high boil, add the ribs and let blanch for around 3 minutes. Rinse and drain well.
Slice GINGER very thin crosswise and chop fine.
Rinse the BLACK BEANS and very lightly crush them.
Mix Ribs with Soy Sauce, Rice Wine and Ginger. Place in a shallow heatproof bowl that fits in your steamer (see photo page) and top with Black Beans and Chili Flakes. You should be fairly liberal with the chili flakes, particularly if using Korean which are pretty mild.
Bring water to a boil in your steamer. Place the Bowl in the steamer, cover the steamer and steam over fairly rapidly boiling water for about 45 minutes, making sure you don't run out of water.
Mix contents of the bowl well (it will have gathered a fair amount of water) and serve hot with rice.

NOTES:

Spare Ribs: Weight is after removing all excess fat, but with bone and cartilage in.
Black Beans: These are salty fermented black soybeans sold in bags and cylindrical paper boxes in Chinese groceries.
Chili Flake: Easily available Korean chili flake works well enough though a bit mild.
U.S. measure: t=teaspoon, T=Tablespoon, c=cup, qt=quart, oz=ounce, #=pound, cl=clove in=inch