Mid-Autumn Meat Feast at The House of the Hungry Mouse

The other night, The Angry Chef and I had a good old friend over for dinner. We hadn’t seen him in quite a while, and it was so lovely to catch up.

He brought a great bottle of sweet white wine and some fantastic port. We made dinner, which I’m realizing now turned into a sort of Meat Feast.

I was feeling a little under the weather, so The Angry Chef did most of the heavy lifting. Here are some snapshots from our night.

A cheese platter is always undoubtedly my favorite way to start off any dinner. We had some nice gooey brie, a piece of Wisconsin cheddar, and a wedge of Danish blue.

Dinner itself started out with Candied Maple Pork Ribs, a variation of the beef ribs I made a little while ago. I used pork spare ribs instead of beef for this. Here’s what they looked like when they went into the oven:

And when they came out:

The recipe was (happily) really good with pork, though I think I prefer the flavors more on beef.

Piles of lemon zest and chopped garlic eventually found their way into The Angry Chef’s famous Lemon-Pepper Chicken. This is the same chicken we brought up to Salem last weekend.

He also grilled a few Teriyaki Steaks. That foil packet at the back of the grill is an aluminum-foil smoke bomb with hickory chips and a little water.

The meat was charred and smokey and oh-so-very delicious.

I conceded that we might need some type of vegetable, so I whipped up a little brown-sugar cranberry sauce topped with fresh thyme.

I also used the rest of the dough from this week’s Daring Bakers’ pizza challenge to make a thin-crust garlic bread with a generous amount of butter and Parmesan cheese.

The Angry Chef also put together some Hot and Spicy Demon Saffron Rice in honor of Halloween. I’ll post about this soon if I can persuade him to share the exact recipe. He’s been making it for me for years, but the precise combination of spices is still�somehow�a mystery.

We finished up with glasses of the excellent port that our friend brought, and dishes of Gooey Double Chocolate Brownies topped with rich vanilla ice cream.

Cheers!

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Copyright 2008 The Hungry Mouse�/Jessica B. Konopa. All rights reserved.