Birthday Dinner

My kids can eat. And they don't eat just kid style crap. They like real food. Grownup food. And when it came time for my youngest son's 11th birthday dinner, he knew what he wanted.

He presented me with the menu that I was to make:

Ceaser salad
Lentil Soup (with brown lentils, NOT red lentils)
Fresh bread
BBQ Pork baby back ribs with my father's secret recipe
Broccoli
Baked potatoes
and "something chocolatey and ooey gooey" for dessert.

What did I tell you. The kid knows how to eat and eat well.

To find organic pork baby back ribs is not easy. I called my butcher, and luckily, he had 3 racks which he set aside for me. However, 3 racks is nowhere near enough to feed 7 people. Well, 6, because Alan can't eat pork. Ha! Ha!
So I picked up a whole chicken and some wings and legs too, so that everybody (except Alan) would get to taste the ribs and have some chicken (which I made with the same BBQ sauce). I'm not going to give you the recipe here for my Dad's super secret BBQ sauce. I'm saving that for the Cookbook I'm writing; but I will show you a picture of it.

Trust me, it will be worth it for you to buy my cookbook just for that recipe alone. Shameless plug, I know. I took a picture of the barbeque with all the meat on it, but it didn't come out so great. It was dark, and I suck as a photographer. (Definitely NOT a shameless plug. My photography skills really suck).

But trust me. It was delicious.

So the soup was easy and tasty. No measurements (much like everything I do), but general guidelines.

Chop up some onion, carrots and celery. Sautee in a soup pot with a little EVOO on a medium heat.

You can add zucchini or any other veggie you think might be nice. Once the onions (etc) are sweated out a bit and soft, throw in a bay leaf, some chopped garlic (the more the merrier as far as I am concerned) and stir a bit. Now comes the wine. I love pouring wine into a hot pan. It sizzles something fierce. I added about 3/4 of a cup.

Once the wine is in, you can add all the other ingredients. I added a handful or two of rice (I use brown), a whackload of brown lentils and a healthy tablespoon of cumin. The cumin gives it a lovely earthy flavour. Very middle Eastern. You could use red lentils here too, which personally I prefer, but since I wasn't the one who set the menu, I had to comply.

Cover with water and bring to a boil. Cover the pot and lower the temperature to medium low, just enough to keep a light boil on. Cook for about half an hour, but stir often. The lentils like to sink and glue themselves to the bottom of the pan. Once they are soft, I use a handy dandy hand blender, which I refer to as the whippersnapper. I try and avoid whippering up the carrots too much, but if they do get blended in, so what? I use a really old Braun one. Alan had it when I first met him, and it is still the one we use today. Its over 20 years old and it still works. If we ever divorce its coming with me, along with his testicles. But I digress.

It is not the most gorgeous looking soup, but it is tasty. I garnish it with lemon and cilantro. Alan prefers it without the lemon, but I like it with. Makes it zesty.

As for the rest of it... I had a very happy boy.

Extremely happy, actually, because he got two birthday dinners. Which meant two birthday desserts.

Happiness CAN come in chocolate flavor!