One of my more fun cooking styles is clean out the refrigerator. The dish is usually an amalgamation of pieces of this-and-that that are hanging around the ‘fridge. Things that are too small for an actual meal and too big or too good to toss – things that just accumulate over time. It’s the type of meal that is almost always stellar – and will never be replicated because the odds of having these same items in the ‘fridge at the same time are between slim and none.

Tonight’s meal started with 2 meaty country pork ribs, a single cooked Italian sausage, a bit of leftover flank steak, a green pepper, an onion, half a basket of mini heirloom tomatoes, and a single ear of corn. Oh. And three pieces of bacon.

I started with the bacon. I chopped it up and let it start to brown. Into the pan went the onion – the smell of bacon and onion cooking together is almost olfactory overload – and after browning everything nicely, I added the ribs.

After went the tomatoes, the green pepper, the corn, the sausage and the flank steak – and then a cup of white wine, salt, pepper, and a great spice blend my friend, Tyler, brought back from Florida – Old St Augustine Minorcan Spice. It’s a blend of Datil peppers, Seville oranges, garlic, onion… Not too spicy and with a nice hint of orange.

Good stuff.

I covered the pot and placed it in a 300° oven for a couple of hours. It’s cold and damp outside – it was nice having the oven on…

I pulled it out of the oven, shredded the pork and tossed the bones, and then added about a cup of beef broth and a half-cup of rice, mixed it all together, and put it back in the oven for another hour. Covered.

The end result was a rich, meaty rice dish with tons of flavor.

Nonna asked if she could have it for lunch, tomorrow. It was definitely a hit!

And there’s more Strawberry Pie for dessert.

Life is good!