Two ‘blue’ themed dishes for the last day of the summer holidays.
And a link to a song that just says it all.
Blueberries have been on sale for the last couple of months so I tossed a couple of clamshells in the freezer … for later.
Well, later has come, and I started with a marinade/bbq sauce for the strip of pork ribs I found in the basement freezer. I took the lazy route and didn’t saute an onion and garlic, as I should have. Instead, I added a tablespoon of dry minced onion and a few shakes of garlic powder to a bbq recipe I found on the Blueberry Council website. It was a lot looser than I wanted even after I simmered it uncovered (and unattended) for a while. You might want to hang around the kitchen and stir it every few minutes so that it doesn’t catch on the bottom and scorch.
Pork ribs before and after marinating and baking
Dessert also featured that juicy blue fruit. Hand pies using a recipe posted on one of the FB groups I belong to.
The pastry was tender and delicious but, even baking it an additional 10 minutes, didn’t brown the whole egg glazed tops as much as I wanted. And, during that extra 10 minutes, all of the hand pies burst open and oozed their tasty filling over the baking sheet. Luckily I had lined it with parchment paper so I didn’t have a mess to clean up. I plan on upping the temperature to 400 deg F, and cut steam vents in the top. (NOTE: Just had a chance to touch base with the recipe poster and she mentions that she now does both those things.)
I had halved the filling recipe because I only had two cups of blueberries, but I had more filling than I needed for the hand pies I made, so I made a mini pie with the surplus. And the extra pastry was shaped into three mini pie shells and blind baked. Disappointingly they shrank quite a bit, even though I refrigerated them before baking. When I serve the mini blueberry pie and decide what to fill those shells with, I’ll share pics.
Labour Day Meal
Cooking is Fun ... Really!! 
It all looks delicious. I like the ‘blue’ theme.
Thank you.
The BBQ ribs look fantastic! Are they really marinated in blueberries??? This is very unusual but why not! I must try this one day.
Yep. Not that different from the peach etc bbq sauces. The marinade is cooked and cooled. I should have pureed/mashed down the blueberries a bit more but it worked. There’s cider vinegar in the sauce so that’s what helps to tenderize the pork during the overnight marinade. Then I cooked the ribs with the marinade/sauce on tightly covered for 2 hrs in a low oven (325 deg F) to make it fall off the bone tender. Finally, you pour off the liquid, brush on some fresh sauce and put it under the broiler to ‘brown’.
You can use it on a tenderloin with it as well.
The hand pies turned out nicely even though they burst open (isn’t that caramelized fruit awesome?). Good idea to line with parchment.
I almost didn’t bother to line the baking sheet because I have a Silpat pad lining it … glad I did. 🙂