Soup of failure

Perhaps I was overly cavalier, having just come off my great success with kalbi on the grill last weekend... I decided to try this recipe from "The Crepes of Wrath" blog, for crock pot Korean-style ribs. Pride do cometh before the fall.... um, -eth...

The recipe was easy. My hamster could have done it. I dumped the ingredients in before work, turned that puppy on low and headed out, dreaming of glorious ribs for dinner. When I came home, I had a charred yet gooey and oddly - even disturbingly - delicious-smelling pile of gunk in a pot.

I will not lie to you. I tried to eat it. I was sad and I was hungry. I had had a long day.

<-- NOT what they looked like.

But I stopped after two noms. This is what I think I did wrong: I cut the recipe down because I wanted only one or two servings. This is not a good idea when you have a big-ass crock pot. All the ingredients spread out and there was not enough liquid for the meat to stew in. (Hmph. I need either a smaller crock pot... or a family, I suppose.)

Anyway, meanwhile, in a fit of grouchy petulance, I had decided to make some soup using whatever I had around. This amounted to:

- a few cups of organic vegetable stock
- a shallot, sliced
- a few cloves of garlic, minced
- a nugget of fresh ginger the size of, hm... my pinky toe, I'd say
- some dried white beans
- oyster sauce
- soy sauce
- yellow baby carrots, sliced
- a tin of water chestnuts
- some fresh chives
- some fresh basil
- a scallion, sliced

I sauteed the garlic and ginger in a bit of olive oil, then added the shallot and the whites of the scallion. Then, I added the carrots and water chestnuts and very quickly sauteed everything.

Then, still very grumpy, I added everything to a pot of boiling vegetable stock plus a couple cups of water. I added the dried white beans (about 1 cup) and a couple tablespoons of oyster sauce and soy sauce. I brought it all to a boil for a few minutes, then covered it and let it simmer.

A couple hours passed. These were mostly taken up by laundry and, humiliatingly, scrubbing the charred stuff out of my crock pot. I went back to my soup after a bit and felt sad ("IS NOT RIBS!")... I tasted it and... the broth was delicious! But, it was still lacking. A little bland. A little not-rib-like.

And then I had an idea - which was to shred whatever good meat I had retrieved from the failed ribs (still sitting, spurned, on a plate of sadness on the table) into the soup! Cue the music! I even added a not-too-charred-looking bone for flavor -- the result was.....

NOMMmmm nom nom nom nom!

The take-away here? --- If at first you don't succeed, fail, fail again (and then combine your failures!)