I took Buddah and two of her friends to BWI earlier in the day to catch a flight to Manchester VT and then a car to NH where they were visiting Ann at college.
Mary Douglass had a school dance and dinner before hand so Debby and I had a very relaxing, romantic dinner for two.
As previously noted, yesterday I did most of the work on the short ribs.
Main Course: Braised Short Ribs
I don't really have a recipe but they're pretty much fool proof.
Day 1: In a large heavy dutch oven add some vegetable oil -- a couple tablespoons. When it is hot, put as many ribs in as you can fit comfortably, meat side down. Brown for about 5 minutes and then brown the other sides. Put browned ribs into large bowl and repeat until all ribs are browned.
I cut a couple onions pole to pole. About 3 to 4 cups? Throw them into dutch oven and brown them over a medium, medium high heat. Once they're browned add a couple tablespoons of tomato paste. I swear by the tomato paste in a tube deal. Much less waste than the cans and better quality in my humble opinion.
When you put the tomato paste into the pot, move all the onions over to one side first. Then really "cook" the paste for a good two to three minutes. It'll get fragrant and deeper in color.
Then throw in five or six peeled garlic cloves. Whole. Let them get fragrant. Maybe a minute at the most.
Turn up the heat to medium high and add a couple cups of wine and let it reduce about half.
Once it is reduced I add peeled carrots, a cup of beef broth, a bay leaf, and then the ribs along with any juices that accumulated in the bowl. The goal is to cover the ribs completely. If necessary, I either add more broth or red wine if the mixture is too shallow to cover as much of the ribs as possible.
Then you take the whole thing, covered and throw it into a 300 degree oven and cut it for a good 2.5 to 3.5 hours. You basically want the ribs on the edge of falling apart. I move the ribs around once or twice while they're cooking but if you have enough broth you don't have to do that.
After they've cooked, I put the entire dutch oven into the outside fridge and let them chill overnight.
Day 2: Remove the fat from the dutch oven. There will be a thick crust at least a quarter inch thick. Once I've done that I take the ribs out of the broth and put them on an armetale platter which I cover with foil and put into the warming drawer until dinner. (The temperature in the warming drawer is about 180 degrees so if you are using the oven, just set it for the lowest temperature.
I then strained the sauce in which the ribs were cooking. The problem was it still felt greasy. So I took the strained sauce and put it in the freezer for twenty minutes. A new layer of fat solidified which I removed and then I strained the strained sauce again. Now it didn't have any kind of greasy taste.
When I had reduced the sauce by almost half, I added another couple cups of wine and reduced it again. I also made a roux separately. Half a stick of butter melted and then maybe 3 tablespoons of flour whisked in, one tablespoon at a time. When it was smooth and the flour was cooked I added it to the sauce and it was done.
I have spent a very long time in search of perfect brown sauce. The reality is unless you start with veal bones and create meat stock and then reduce it for years...etc....anyway, the brown sauce that short ribs produces as a by-product is pretty rich and full of taste.
Side: Sautéed brussels sprouts
I think brussels sprouts rock. Trim them. Remove the outer leaves. Quarter. Put them into a pot of cold water and add some salt. Put the heat on high. As soon as the water boils, pull the sprouts out and put them in ice water to stop the cooking. They should be a rich green.
When they're done, throw some clarified butter into a pan.
Clarifying butter: easier than you think
Take a stick or two of butter. Put it in a small pan and put it over a low burner. Once the butter's melted. Turn off the fire and let the butter cool for ten minutes or so. Then take a ladle spoon and start to skim off the white stuff on the top of the butter. The white stuff is milk parts. The milk in butter either rises to the top or settles on the bottom of the pan.
After you've skimmed as much of the milk parts as you can, pour the remainder into a container. You should be able to pour about 75% of the butter before the remaining milk parts start to pour.
That is clarified butter. The great thing about clarified butter is it doesn't burn. You can heat it up to high and it won't brown. It won't smoke.
So put some clarified butter into a pan, set it for medium and right before you're sitting down to eat, throw some shallots into the butter. It'll cook fast. Then throw in the brussels sprouts and a handful of kosher salt. It'll just take a minute or two to heat them up.
That was all we had. All we needed.
It was a pretty wonderful meal. Relaxing. tasty. We had a pink martini or two before dinner. Some wine with dinner. All in all, a great meal.
