Brentani’s Cycling Blog

So, at the risk of turning this modest site – designed to keep track of Providence area hills, and some other general cycling stuff – into that most insidious of websites, the personal blog, I will write a bit about the dinner I made Sunday night. I just need to brag a bit, and, to help my own memory, write down the recipe. (Any time I write this kind of thing down in a book, or anywhere else, I always immediately forget about it and never use it again. I figure if it’s in the midst of all this stuff, I might find it again and at least remember that this is where I put it.) So, I made some baby back ribs. I haven’t made ribs very often, and the 2 or 3 times I have, I’ve made the big spare ribs. Those are pretty easy to get right–you just cook the hell out of them until the meat is super tender (my method is to grill them (after 12 hours or so in a dry rub, move them to a low oven and braise them in wine or beer for 4 or 5 hours, then grill them again, and add sauce.) Baby back ribs were a little bit scarier, since I’ve been to many, many restaurants that can’t seem to get them right. They’re usually too tough, but I wasn’t sure if that was due to too little cooking, too much cooking, or cooking at the wrong intensity. Since I got it perfect on the first try, here is what I did:

• Dry rub – a mixture of paprika, garam masala, salt, pepper and cumin. (btw, I never measure this stuff, but it was probably something like 1/4 C paprika, 2 T garam masala, 2 T salt, 1 t pepper, 1 t cumin) Cover the ribs in this mixture and let marinade for at least 6 hours.
• Grill the ribs over high heat until the outside is crispy and has some nice charring (but of course don’t burn them!) maybe 10-15 minutes per side depending on the heat of the grill. Presumably they aren’t cooked through at this point, though I never checked.
• Move them into a large baking dish, add a couple cups of white wine, heated up to boiling, and bake, covered, for about 3 hours, flipping occasionally to keep all sides of the meat moist.
• make a mixture of honey, garam masala and worcestershire sauce. brush over the ribs and grill again (or use the broiler) until they are bubbly and crispy again.

That method produced ribs that were moist, fully cooked, and super tasty. They even had the elusive pink smoke ring. The sauce I made for them was:

• saute 1/2 onion, finely chopped, in butter

add the following

• a bunch of Ketchup (god, I don’t know, maybe 3/4 C?)
• a can of Moreno chipotle sauce (I think they add crack to this stuff…)
• 1 T (?) garam masala (this really was the key ingredient in everything…)
• 1-2 T (?) brown sugar
• pepper

and that should do it. The braising liquid, btw, is also really good. you can add that to the bbq sauce if you want (I added a bit, but I was a little scared to mess with it too much because it was already almost perfect.)

Casey and I went out and tried a new hill today – one that I had found by putzing around on veloroutes. It’s just over the CT border, so if you ride 101 past the high point, you can then loop back toward Providence via Bear Hill Road/Central Pike (which adds another nice climb.) Here’s the veloroutes map, and here’s the gradient map:

It has some pretty steep sections, but I don’t believe the 21%, especially because I also don’t believe the 0% immediately before it – it should probably average out to something like 10%.

On the way there, we also did the 101 hills up to the RI high point. I had always assumed that none of the hills were tough enough to warrant inclusion here, even though the aggregate is pretty tough. Today, though, I decided that the first and last are indeed difficult enough, and I think the combination of all three will rank fairly high in my list. Here they are, in order:

I stopped by circle A today for 2 reasons:

1. Chris told me that he had some old campy parts I might be able to scavenge to put on my new Gazelle. They were pretty dirty, and didn’t look like much, but after I got home and got everything cleaned up, it looks quite good:

what you see there are: ITM handlebars, mirage 9-speed levers, mirage 9-speed rear der, mirage triple front der, veloce triple crank, avanti brake calipers. And this wasn’t from Circle A, but Mark N. generously donated this flite saddle to the cause. As Carrie said, this bike is going to start looking like Johnny Cash’s Caddilac.

Also included in the package were some Avanti 8-speed brake hoods, a decent rear wheel with an 8-speed cassette (I may keep it if I can get a 9-speed hub to work on it…seems to be possible, but not super easy), another saddle, a bottom bracket in horrible condition, 40cm handlebars, an 8-speed mirage rear der, and a sora front der. Most of the stuff I’m not using will be offered for free on craigslist pretty soon.

The second reason I (or I should say we, because carrie came along for this part of the trip) went to circle A, is to talk about either painting her old tricycle to match my circle A, or maybe having them build something like one of these like-a-bikes for the little one that is on the way. Chris mentioned the like-a-bike last time I came in, and it seems quite cool. No pedals, the kid just pushes him/herself around and lifts the feet off the ground to coast. It supposedly helps kids transition to 2-wheel regular bikes without the need for training wheels. And since there’s no drive train, and no steering column (essentially just 2 forks connected by a single tube down the middle) it should be pretty easy for them to make. I’ll keep you posted on that.

btw, if anyone reading this blog is looking to get rid of parts, I’m still looking for the following – and in spite of the fact that I have so far gotten everything free, I am willing to pay for them:

• seatpost – nothing fancy
• stem – doesn’t necessarily need to be a quill style – I might try one of those adapters
• front wheel
• maybe a rear wheel – or the extra cog and spacers to successfully convert the 8-speed i just got to a 9-speed
• 9-speed downtube shifers – not sure I really want to use the ugly mirage hoods, so I might just gut the Avanti’s and use downtube shifters if I can find some at a decent price
• 42-tooth chainring (135 bcd) – that one was missing from the veloce triple
• compatible english square-taper triple bottom bracket

It’s almost official. I’m just ironing out some details on buying the following frame from a guy in Germany:

The only difference I see is that the rear brake cable isn’t routed internally. Once I get it, I’ll start searching for cheap campy veloce components, to build this up as a second training/crit bike. (Oh, and I’ll also be attaching one of these onto it sometime after August!)