Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Jennifer Reese [37]
3 pounds boneless short ribs
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons dried marjoram
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, sliced
2 tablespoons sugar
3 carrots, peeled and sliced
2 celery stalks, sliced
2 bay leaves
1 cup red wine
Horseradish (recipe follows), for serving
Buttered noodles or mashed potatoes, for serving
1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Spread the short ribs out on a flat surface and sprinkle them with the salt, pepper, and marjoram. Be sure to coat all sides.
2. Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven on the stovetop, and when it’s hot, add the short ribs—in batches, if necessary, to avoid crowding. Sear well on all sides. You want the meat to be richly colored all over.
3. With a fork, remove the ribs to a plate. Add the onions, sugar, carrots, celery, and bay leaves to the fat and drippings in the pot. Cook, scraping up the drippings, until the onion begins to soften and caramelize.
4. Return the ribs to the pot, add the wine, and bring to a boil.
5. Put the lid on the pot and place the pot in the oven. Bake for 3 hours, checking occasionally to be sure the liquid has not evaporated. If it has, add a splash of water. The meat is done when you can break it apart easily with a fork. Remove the bay leaves.
6. Serve with horseradish and buttered noodles, mashed potatoes, or crusty bread.
Serves 6
HORSERADISH
Horseradish sauce—especially this horseradish—is all edge, which makes it the perfect bracing corrective to unctuous meats. You can cut this horseradish with a little whipped cream or mayonnaise if you want to soften its bite, which you might. My biggest challenge was finding fresh horseradish root, which I had to drive 45 minutes to buy. I’ve since heard it will grow like a weed in the garden, though I’m not sure I want horseradish growing like a weed in the garden.
Make it or buy it? If you can easily get your hands on fresh horseradish, make it. If not, buy it.
Hassle: It takes about twelve minutes.
Cost comparison: To make horseradish: $0.08 per tablespoon. Morehouse horse-radish: $0.39 per tablespoon.
6 ounces fresh horseradish
Scant cup cider vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar Salt
1. Peel the horseradish, trim off the gnarly bits, and put the crunchy white root in a food processor. Grind with the metal blade until the root is finely shredded. Stand back from the feed tube; the fumes could knock you flat.
2. Add ¾ cup vinegar and grind it a bit more. Test to see if the horseradish has a soft, semisolid consistency. If not, add more vinegar. Stir in the sugar and salt to taste.
3. Store in a jar in the refrigerator, where it will keep about a month, gradually losing potency. That’s a good thing.
Makes 1½ cups
BURRITOS
If you cook a lot of Mexican food—pinto beans, savory rice, carnitas, or carne asada—reheat the leftovers, mix some fresh salsa and guacamole, and wrap everything up in extra-large flour tortillas, steamed until soft and pliable. You will be very happy with your burrito dinner.
But if you don’t have those leftovers? You have to start from scratch, cooking the beans, the rice, the meat, the salsa, the guacamole. This is a lot of prep work for what is essentially fast food, often eaten by construction workers and kids with incipient hangovers at midnight. There are now taco trucks and taquerias and Mexican restaurants just about everywhere in America where you can buy a splendid burrito for between five and eight dollars. Like the Vietnamese delis, they’ll appreciate your business.
Make it or buy it? Buy it.
CRÈME BRÛLÉE
If you like to cook, and you ever mention that you love crème brûlée, someone, someday, may give you a crème brûlée torch. I was glad to get one for Christmas from my father. We promptly fueled it up and made crème brûlée. The first batch was amateurish, but once I figured out to sprinkle the sugar evenly and heavily, then patiently wait