Thai Sweet Chile Ribs

Rib date: Feb. 11, 2012
Ribsters: My fantasy football friends: Ed Bryant, David Crum, Myles Davis, George McCuen, Andy Szmidt and Rick Wells. And the Stults family (Gill, Eilidh, Riain and me)

Last night I hosted the annual Rules Meeting for our fantasy football league. The league is pretty awesome if I do say so myself. In 1995, when the Oakland Raiders returned to NoCal from LA, I had the good fortune of being executive producer of their radio pre and post game shows. I spent a lot of time in my little Mazda Miata ( no, I am not gay, not that there is anything wrong with that) driving between Napa and SF. I put that time on the road to good use, trying to create the ultimate, reality-based fantasy football league. With some fine tuning and improvements from Andy and Tony, the ship set sail in 1996 and it is the greatest fantasy league ever. We have 16 dudes, all good guys, and many have been in the entire time. Our waiting list to get in the league is long. One of the reasons the league is so strong is we all get together after the season to review the rules and vote on changes. And eat good food and drink good wine.

We got through the rules pretty quickly and painlessly and turned our attention to talking sports, catching up in general, and Thai Sweet Chile Ribs. The ribs spent the day marinating in a cilantro wet rub, went on the smoker at 3, came off several hours later, and were pretty friggen good. Near the end of their time on the smoker, I basted them with a Thai Sweet Chile sauce. It's important to note it is the milder and sweeter Thai chile sauce and not the Sirancha, which is good but will light you up. The ribs came off tender, with a nice smoke ring, a light cilantro flavor and the tangy sweetness of the sauce at the end. If I had 3 thumbs, I'd give these ribs three thumbs up. But I only have two. They went well with the guilt-free cucumber salad my wife made, as well as her yellow-eyed peas (I think that is what she said) and some Pinot David brought. You can always count on David to bring good pinot. If you want his contact info to invite him to your parties, let me know. The only problem was we had way too much ribs. The culprit there was Jim Van Winden, who popped by just long enough to finagle the rules so he gets to keep Patriots TE Rob Gronkowski next year for next to nothing. Then he bolted. Being about 12 feet tall, I think I added a rack just for Jim. Oh well, we are about to turn those leftovers into Thai Chile Rib quesadillas. I wonder what David is doing for dinner? For more on the Thai Chile Ribs, see page 85 of Steven Raichlen's rib bible, Ribs, Ribs, Ribs. Congrats to Andy on his third consecutive fantasy football championship. The devil just posted a message on our league message board indicating he plans to collect soon.