Saturday, June 2, 2012

Gregory’s Triple-Cooked Ribs



If I ever write a cookbook it’s going to be the “start with a pound of bacon” cookbook.
In this case it’s only half a pound, fried to render bacon fat that will soften vidalia onions. 

I can see cardiologists wincing. lol 
Anyway, these pork spareribs take some effort but I know no other way to get that meltingly soft and glistening pork captured inside a crunchy, smoky, blackened crust. Three cookings.

Start a huge pot of boiling water for about 10 pounds of ribs. These ribs are from the WesternBeef, they were $1.88 a pound and were superb. Now add three one-cup bottles of good chile sauce to the onions. Chile sauce is not in the south Bronx, by the way, I looked. I brought this up from the UES.
Add ½ cup water to each of the chile sauce jars, then shake them to get all the sauce and then add the water (1 ½ cups total) on top of the sauce and stir it around.
Now 3 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce, 5 tablespoons brown sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, lots of fresh ground black pepper, a smidgen or three of Indian Red Hot pepper, three tablespoons of ground cumin or for a taste of clove, garam masala. Either one works great. Squeeze in the juice from two limes and two lemons. Six tablespoons of vinegar, I use balsamic but anything works. Turn it down and let it bubble.
Now cut up your ribs, carving off as much of the fat as you can and add them to the water to boil. This is our first cooking; it melts the fat and leaves them almost fat free.

Really let it boil until they are cooked completely through.

It’ll look like this for awhile.

When the ribs are well cooked pour off the water and rinse them in clear cold water and then set them on toweling to dry. They should be rubbery at this point.
Pack them like a suitcase into a baking dish, cover them with every drop of that sauce and then an enclosing layer of foil.
Got it? Now comes the second cooking; bake them for 2 hours covered at 325F. 

At this point they are carvable with a spoon in an onion-spicy, Indian tomato. Chill overnight if you have the time, sauces always seem to improve in the fridge.
And then just before serving, third cooking, crisp ‘em really hot on a charcoal grill until they start to blacken and get crusty. Cold beer.
Insanely good.

Friday, June 1, 2012

hanging at River Park



A waterfall in the Bronx?


Really?


Yeah, really. 
Niagara has nothing to worry about.
But with a 13 foot drop at the spillway, the River Park waterfall at 180th and Boston Road is as good as we get in Boogie down.


Created at about the same time as our ClockTower in the late 1800’s, this dam provided energy for a mill built on the banks.
The mill is gone but the falls remain, acting as a salt water barrier for the Bronx River.

The river above the falls is fresh water. 


Everything below the falls is tidal, and measurably saline for the estuarial influences.  

It’s way too dangerous to swim but there’s nothing that says you can’t hang off the fence upside down.

15% off a small number


is a very small number.


Bon Appetite!



or for that matter, a brain inside his helmet





1976 R60/6 BMW

Top speed 124 mph downhill with a tailwind :-)

Thursday, May 31, 2012

ClockTowerTenants Roof Pool


ClockTowerTenants have a new feature on the roof, a little 200 gallon pool that is ours to use and enjoy. 


I will keep it clean, Ph balanced and chlorinated so mosquito larvae and algae bloom are not an issue. And all are welcome to use it.


But please. No food, cigarette butts or metal bottle caps left in the pool, they might rip the vinyl bottom.

Feel free to top it up if the water is low, a hose is coiled up under the deck step.

Hit me up with questions or suggestions, 
I’m Gregory in 402.
And thanks, Carnegie.


and how much longer?


#3 in 1974

jump now worry later


Back in 1881 five years before our ClockTower, the New York City Parks department built the first wooden footbridge across the Harlem River between Inwood and the Bronx.
The University Heights Bridge connects west 207th street in Manhattan to WestFordham Road in the Bronx.
The first steel bridge here was actually a recycled Broadway Bridge that was floated downstream and placed on a newly constructed center pier in 1908.
Today a newer bridge completed in 1992 makes the connection, but the old ironwork designs were retained.
Sharon Reier, author of The Bridges of New York, described the University Heights Bridge:

“A walk on the University Heights span reveals the aesthetics of the 1890's, when ornament was considered beautiful.”


“Amidst wrecked cars, rotted piers and oily water, the gay steel cut-outs of cartwheels and daisies lining the walkway give evidence of the playful mind that designed it, as do the green-shingled gazebos at either end of the bridge and the peak silhouette of the span itself.”

This 267 foot long span carries 45,000 vehicles everyday.

In style.