Mexican Sweet and Sour Short Ribs
One of the things I love about Bruce's kitchen creativity is his ability to combine culinary traditions, genres, and flavors in new but still accessible ways. One look at the cake chapter in THE ULTIMATE COOK BOOK should convince anyone. Lemon Meringue Cake? Two vanilla genoise layers with a lemon curd filling and a meringue on top for icing. Crazy fun, definitely outside the box, and darn good.
To be honest, I love culinary innovation, but (ah, here's the rub) within limits, albeit whimsical ones. Suffice it to say that I'm not one for molecular gastronomy. For God's sake, can't I just eat dinner without having to be shocked and awed at every bite? If the food at our table overwhelms the conversation among us and our friends, then there's just no point.
This past weekend, we hosted a small dinner party and Bruce concocted a new, whimsical, but also somehow familiar short rib braise based on the technique in COOKING KNOW-HOW, a braise that was so very comforting as we all waited the big East Coast Nor'easter about to blow in. (18 inches of snow at our house. Sheesh!)
Imagine this dish: beef short ribs and plantains braised with chiles, tomatoes, raisins, and vinegar. Sort of Mexican sweet and sour. And just terrific: a subtly spicy dish that never got in the way of the lively conversation. That's the art of living. Strange, too, for a food writer, no? To want the food to disappear? But I do--because what I want, in the end, is comfort, pure and simple: a bottle of wine, some good friends, dinner on the table. Seems like Paradise to me.
Once again, Bruce used grass-fed short ribs from Whippoorwill Farm. The meat was succulent and tender without being grossly fatty, a nice contrast the rich and complex sauce. Plus, it's hard to argue with buying beef and pork from family farms we know.
OK, so here's how the dish all came together:
He started out by stemming and seeding 6 dried New Mexican red chiles, then soaking them in very hot water for 15 minutes, until softened. (You could heat the whole thing up even more out by swapping out a New Mexican chile for a dried chipotle or a couple dried guajillos.) He picked them out of the water and ground them in a mini food processor until pasty, using just a tablespoon or so of that soaking water to make sure the whole thing could really puree over the blades. (Don't have a mini food processor? Do it in a bigger one, but add the 1 3/4 cups canned crushed tomatoes to come so there's enough volume to puree the chiles--or grind everything in a mortar with a pestle.)
Next, he browned four ounces of diced slab bacon in a big, heavy, oven-safe casserole, one of those cast-iron kind that weighs, oh, a ton. Of course, you could also use a Dutch oven, provided it, too, is oven-safe. He let those diced cubes go until they were nice and brown, crunchy and ready to eat. Then he transferred them to a large bowl with a slotted spoon--so as to leave the rendered bacon fat behind, of course.
He then browned 4 pounds of short ribs in the bacon fat. Again, no skimping, no graying the meat. The short ribs got turned several times so they had a good browned crust on all sides. Oh, some of the ribs also got tied in one or two places with knotted loops of butchers' twine, just so the meat would hold its shape in the long braise to come. (And by the way, these were cross-cut short ribs, but the recipe will work with the more familiar ones that each come attached to their own bone.) He then transferred the short ribs to the same bowl as the bacon.
By this point, as you can imagine, the pot was getting pretty nasty with browned and blackened bits. Excellent. He added 1 cup frozen pearl onions (no need to thaw) and 2 minced medium garlic cloves. He stirred until the onions were a little golden, then he dumped in 1 3/4 cups canned crushed tomatoes, 1/3 cup golden raisins, and the New Mexican red chile puree. He stirred that around a bit, just until the mixture started to bubble.
In quick succession, he dumped in 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons honey, 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce (guess whose?), 2 teaspoons ground cumin, 2 teaspoons dried oregano, 4 bay leaves, and the New Mexican chile puree.
After stirring over the heat less than a minute, just until nicely aromatic, he poured in 2 cups beef broth, stirred the bacon back into the sauce, poured in any accumulated juices in the bowl, and finally nestled the short ribs in place so they were sort of half in and half out of the liquid.
He brought the whole thing to a simmer, covered the pot, and put it in a preheated 325F oven for 2 1/2 hours.
He checked the meat, making sure he didn't need to add any more liquid. (A little more if the ribs are sticking too far out of any sauce.) He did use a big spoon to skim the pot of any excess fat--there's no point in just doping our bodies with the stuff. He gently stirred the sauce and ribs to make sure they weren't stuck. Then he peeled and sliced up 2 very ripe plantains, sprinkled them over the top of the contents of the pot.
Back on with the lid and back in the oven for another hour or so. At this point, the only way to tell if the meat is done is to test it with a fork to make sure it's meltingly tender. But you can't disturb the short ribs too much or they'll fall apart before you can get them into bowls.
And that was that. A bottle of red wine and we were set.
Bruce says I should add a note--so here goes. There's no exact way to tell how long short ribs should cook. These were done at 3 1/2 hours. But others he's braised haven takes 4 or even 4 1/2 hours to get good and tender. You just have to be patient. (AKA, open another bottle of wine.) He'd tell you it's all about how stressed the cow was at its death, how stressed it was in its life, what it was fed, what seasons affected its early growth, etc. I would also add that a small amount of acid--as the vinegar here--will often reduce the cooking time, depending on the amount of cartilage that holds the meat to the bone.
I should also add that this recipe does not appear in COOKING KNOW-HOW. Rather, this is a recipe developed from the "Shanks and Bones" technique in the book. The book breaks apart the basic science and art of a dish into its over-arching steps, then gives you all you need to create dishes like this on your own. (And if you don't want to be so, well, whimsical on any given night, each recipe-driven technique also includes five to eight recipes in a chart form so you can just plug the ingredients into the stated steps.)
beef, braise, chiles, comfort food
Reader Comments (5)
Looks cool guys.
Love the look of the new site! And I'm always glad to see a post that sneaks the resident collie in!
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Lisa and Julie: Oh, Dreydl. Aka, doodles, doh-doh, drey. Right now, he's mowing the carpet hoping for dinner crumbs. I think I may have to squeeze him with a hug in a minute.
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