How to cook Badjao lamb ribs

Ingredients for 2 portions.

• 1 kg of lamb ribs. Without breast part, just ribs.
• Ingredients and spices for stock:
  • 2-3 cinnamon sticks. It is possible to use cinnamon bark as well.
  • 3-5 stars of star anise.
  • ½ tsp of cloves.
  • 1-2 tsp of Sichuan pepper corns.
  • 1 tbsp of salt
  • 1 tbsp of shugar
  • 100 ml of soy sauce
  • 100 ml of Shaohsing wine, or sweet cookeng sake
  • 3-5 cm of ginger.
  • 5-8 garlic cloves, optional
  • Medium bunch of green onion, or one large onion bulb.
• High temperature vegetable oil for frying
• Green and red medium hot chilli for serving

Chop ribs into a 3-4 cm bits with individual rib inside the meat, Remove very large chunks of fat if any.

Place ribs into a cold water and bring them to boil. Take cooking pan of the heat, and remove ribs from the water. Do not boil them!!!!

Quickly wash ribs from any foam and set them aside. This and previous step is important to remove all dirt from the lamb ribs (butcher saw them and produce plenty of bone dust) and some leftover blood.

Place all ingredients and spices for stock, except the green onion, into a cold water and bring to boil. Check the salt and ad some if necessary. The taste should be lovely salted. Add ribs and green onion. Bring to boil and simmer.

Simmer, until the ribs turns very soft and tender, about 1-1½ hours.

Remove ribs from the stock and prepare everything for the next step.

In a large wok or other convenient pan, preheat vegetable oil to a very high temperature – 180° - 190° C.

Add few ribs to oils and quickly fry them, stirring stirring constantly, until they develops crispy crust and turns brown. Remove them from hot oil, and cook next portion of ribs, until everything will be done. Do not cook large portion of ribs at once – if the temperature goes down significantly, the crust will not be developed, but otherwise, ribs will dry out.

Place ribs into a large plate and sprinkle them with finely chopped chilli.