Transcribed from a stone tablet found in the sub-sub-basement of a zoo monkey-house in Minto New Brunswick (known as Bedrock City in pre-historic times). I’ve substituted some of the extinct ingredients for foodstuffs that are more readily available in our current time period. Depending on when you are planning to prepare this dish, you may have to do so as well.

This recipe is extremely easy. In fact, when the stone tablet was found below the monkey-house at the Minto Zoo, a pair of howler monkeys, drunk on prison wine, were preparing their own version of it, which involved mashed bananas and their own feces. We suggest sticking to our suggested ingredients – clean up should be quick and overall it involved a mere quarter hour of labour (or chopping).

Time: Total time to completion is estimated at 40 minutes, depending on your chopping abilities and paranoia about world politics.

Serves 4 howler monkeys and possibly homo sapiens as well.

The Rib part of the recipe

• 1 large-assed pot of boiling water that can be salted if you wish. If your local grocery does not have boiling water in supply, you can substitute with water at room temperature that has been heated to one hundred degrees centigrade. You can also whip a bottle of beer in there for good measure and then drink one while you watch it boil.
• 1 or 2 sides of pork ribs (depending on how hungry you are and/or the size of your large-ass pot) cut into portions of 2 or 3 rib-bone hunks. Get the long ones, that look like the brontosaurus ribs that Fred Flintstone likes. If you have never seen the Flintstones, what the hell is wrong with you? Even Martians have seen the freaking Flintstones.

The Freaking Sauce

• 2 cups water (non-boiling, at least at first)
• 0.5 (½) cup dark soy sauce (it’s thick but less salty, which in this case is a good thing. If you need to substitute with light soy (the kind most non-Asian grocery stores sell, I suggest using half the soy and twice the molasses noted below.)
• 1 cup golden yellow sugar
• 1 Tablespoon of molasses
• 1 cup bleached white sugar (the kind that hippies hate)
• 2 mountainous Tablespoons starch (this may be a wee bit of overkill on the thickness, we’ll see) I recommend using tapioca starch, but that is because I am allergic to corn and not for some cretinous “political” reason. Food and politics are an ugly mix, IMO.
• 2 Tablespoons white or fuchsia vinegar (possibly taupe if you have it)
• 4 to 6 Tablespoons of crushed fresh garlic (you could get fruity and substitute with roasted garlic but it has a much more mellow flavour and that’s not what we are after here, is it? Also, though I loathe to suggest it, you could get all bachelor on this and use the 5 year-old garlic flakes you have in the cupboard — but you should note that this is a recipe for “garlic” ribs, not “catpiss-wet cardboard” ribs. Do you want to enjoy this meal or not?)
• Tablespoon of Lime Juice (shaddup)
• 1 Shallot minced
• 1 wee lump of the crushed fresh garlic
• The white part of a bunch of green onions, thinly sliced. Save the green parts for later… like a couple paragraphs down.
• 2 Tablespoons canola oil

The stuff to make the ribs look less lonely on your plate (rice)

Start with 2 cups of uncooked long-grain rice (basmati is my favorite but that’s just me) which will end up as 4 cups cooked long grain rice (basmati, if you are me and there is basmati in the house). I’d tell you how to cook it but you wouldn’t believe me. Just use the unsatisfying method you have been using since forever. Should I mention basmati again? No? Basmati!

Garnish

• 2 Tablespoons white sesame seeds, lightly toasted in a dry pan if you know how to do that without singeing your eyebrows.
• The green part of the bunch of green onions chopped into little ringolo-shaped bits

The Deed

1. Wash your ribs, remove any yucky bits or bone-chips that could stab you in the mouth. Use a sharp knife to trim away any clear and sticky membrane (unless you enjoy chewing until your jaw feels swollen to the size of a grapefruit) and remove any excess fat. Some people enjoy the fat, but I find it reminiscent of putrid slimy things that slither beneath rocks in the garden — especially after being boiled in viscous liquid for an hour.
2. You could toss the entire rack into the pot, but we’re using a large-assed pot for this and not a fucking-huge pot. So, cut the ribs into pieces of 2 – 3 bone sections and throw em in. Boil the crap out of it for 30 or so minutes – then remove from heat. Did I mention to throw a bottle of beer in with it? Some molasses doesn’t hurt either, but there is plenty more of that in the next part.
3. Drain the ribs and set aside. If you want to, cut them into singles. Otherwise just leave as is.
4. Then, without warning – suddenly mix together, with frightening intensity, (in a bowl, not in your mouth – that comes later): the soy sauce, Professor brown sugar, the white sugar, the two cups of water (unboiling variety, otherwise OUCH!).
5. In an even smaller, yet entirely separate, bowl, mix the starch with a dribble of water and tell it to wait patiently until called upon. Starch can be very antsy to get right down to biznass, but tell it to hold tight.
6. Get thyself a saucepan that shall be large enough to contain a litre of sauce and the rib hunks thenceforth be introduced into the sauce in due time. Begin heating said saucepan, initially to a medium-high temperature.
7. Slog a couple tablespoons of canola oil into the pan and allow it to heat up. Then whip your minced bits of garlic, optional minced shallots and the white ends of the green onions (sliced molecule thin). Stir fry these preliminary ingredients for approximately 15-20 seconds or until they begin to release delightful aromatics. Be careful not to scorch the garlic/shallots, as this tends to suck out loud.
8. Then toss in your initial sauce ingredients minus the vinegar, lime juice, mega-garlic and let them heat up to a bubbling fury. With your non-stirring hand grasp the previously mentioned trinity of delicousness: Vinegar, lime juice and garlic (the massive pile), and fling these ingredients with reckless abandon into the roiling, sticky mess (of course, take care not to splash yourself with this searing goo, otherwise ye shall burst into flames and run screaming from the kitchen like the lucky henchman in any 80s action film starring Jean-Claude VanDammit or Stephen Livingston Seagall) Give it the ol’ stir-a-roo.
9. This is the point in the recipe where you get tired of reading these lengthy and completely irrelevant instructions. You throw up your hands, wondering why you ate them in the first place without even bothering to sever them from your wrists. You may want to quit now, but I tell you – you must not! You have a vat of boiling sugars on the stove top, threatening to burst into a thermonuclear fireball at any given moment, that needs tending to. Plus, it is time to add the starch.
10. Once the starch is stirred in, turn the heat back to medium-medium-low, so that the mixture begins to thicken nicely but continues to bubble in a manner much akin to a tar pond. With the help of two cavemen-like hirelings, slowly lower the brontosaurus pork ribs into the tar pond, er I mean sauce. Let it do its thing for another 30 minutes, then remove them from the heat and serve them to your undeserving guests over a platter of rice, spooning some additional sauce over them and sprinkling a metric fuckload of your toasted sesame seeds and the green onion ringolos on top. It looks right wicked that way, eh.
11. Eat them all, even if it means visiting the vomitorium halfway through.