Pork Ribs With Sticky, Sweet and Spicy Plum Sauce

So, as you can see from the lead photo, I made ribs. They are pork ribs with a sweet, tangy, sticky and spicy sauce over them and they were delicious with a beer. The best part is, I made the sauce without a recipe*. How did I do this, you ask? Well, curious reader, let me tell you.
It started during my trip home from work on Friday, trying to think up something to cook for our Saturday night in. I also thought it might be fun to do something inspired by Chinese cooking since it is nearly Chinese (or Lunar) New Year. I had also made an internal promise with myself to try and make at least one dish with each of the stone fruits that are in season (cherries, peaches: tick!) this summer, so it was going to be a choice between nectarines, plums or mango. Plums won this time. While I was deliberating on this I also decided that I was going to make ribs. Yes, my brain was working very hard for a Friday afternoon. 
After many years of reading cooking magazines, watching cooking shows, and reading cooking blogs, I decided to pool all that knowledge that was lurking in my brain and just wing it. 

So, I thought, if I were to make a sauce for my ribs, surely it can't be more difficult than making some sort of a compote using sugar, water and chopped plums? Then to give it a Chinese flavour, just add in some wonderful spices like star anise, chilli flakes and cinnamon, certainly not forgetting the flavour twins: ginger and garlic. Some of the plums were almost over-ripe and some were this side of under-ripe, and I was hoping the under-ripe ones would lend some sourness to the sauce.  

After cooking it down for around half an hour, the colour changed from those beiges and browns you see above to a bright red! It reminded me of that sweet and sour sauce that you dip your spring rolls in at your local Chinese takeaway joint. I loved that stuff as a kid. Now my palate is a little more mature and I prefer other sauces for my springers, but that red sure made me happy.

After a while I just started prodding at the plums with my wooden spoon to help to break them up. After this, I passed the sauce through a wire sieve to get out all the spices and lumps of garlic and ginger. The result is what you see in the white bowl in the lead photo. I don't think it could have become any more red. And let me just say that the taste was nothing like the sweet and sour sauce of my childhood; there was sweetness from the plums but the combination of all those other flavours took this sauce to another level. 
Next I took about a quarter of the sauce and added it along with the ribs to a ziplock bag to marinate in the fridge over night. 
The next day I put my ribs on a wire rack in a baking dish and baked them until they were burnished and brown, all the while basting them with the plum sauce. I served them up with a stack of steamed greens drizzled with a little sesame oil and jasmine rice.
These ribs were pretty spicy but if you don't want the spice, you could just leave the chilli flakes out. However it is going to be the year of the dragon, so a little fire in the mouth is pretty apt if you ask me. Kung Hei Fat Choy everyone!

Pork Ribs With Sticky, Sweet and Spicy Plum Sauce
Makes 2 standard racks of ribs - for 2 you will have leftovers, will serve 4 comfortably
* I said there was no recipe, so I wrote what I did for you!
2 racks of American-style pork ribs
8 blood plums - I only used 7 as one was not so healthy but go with 8
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1 cup of water
3 star anise
2 cinnamon quills, broken in half
2 tsp chilli flakes - or more if you please
3 cloves of garlic, cut in half
1 knob of ginger the size of a thumb (note: I have a small thumb), roughly chopped
1 tsp of corn flour mixed with a little water to form a slurry
Soy sauce to taste

1. In a heavy based pan, bring all the ingredients except for the soy sauce to the boil for about 10 minutes, always stirring.
2. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer for about 20 minutes, always stirring.
3. Marvel at the red sauce you have created.
4. Taste the sauce, add some soy, taste again and add more soy to reach your desired level of saltiness.
5. Add the corn flour slurry and stir in - this will thicken the sauce. An idea I must have picked up from watching chef Martin Yan on Yan Can Cook as a child, I loved that show.
6. Break up any lumps of plum with your spoon and simmer for another 5 minutes.
7. Take the pan off the heat and set it aside to cool a bit.
8. Pass the sauce through a metal sieve into another bowl. Press down on the lumps to extract all the flavour.
9. Take your ribs and put them in a zip lock bag and pour about a quarter of the sauce in, rub the sauce all over the ribs through the bag and marinate over night, but if you don't have time, at least for 1 hour.
10. The next day, preheat the oven to 180C and place the ribs on a rack in a large baking tray.
11. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, turning the ribs every 15 minutes or so and brushing them with the sauce.
12. When they are ready, cut the ribs into pieces and serve with steamed greens tossed in a little sesame oil, rice and your favourite Chinese beer.