Hey shortie: Annalena makes ribs

Short ribs, to be exact. I cannot remember when short ribs started to appear on my "culinary horizon," but one day, it seemed that if you were a restaurant, you HAD to serve a short rib recipe. It made sense. Relatively speaking, short ribs are inexpensive, and they are very, VERY tasty. On the downside, they are extremely fatty, and the meat is tough. It needs long, slow cooking. If short ribs aren't done right, they can be a horror to eat. And believe me, I have had some HORRIBLE ones. There are restaurants, however, where they "get it." I know of one, for example, where they put the short ribs up for cooking when the restaurant closes, and leave them to cook at a ridiculously slow temperature, all night. The meat is extremely succulent and tender, falling off the bones. Falling off the bones so much, as a matter of fact, that they don't serve the meat on the bone.
Sometimes, you can have too much tenderness. Let's face it, and not be prim about it: there is something wildly satisfying about picking up a chop, or a leg , or something with a bone in it, and gnawing the meat off of it. Even if the meat is very tender, and there's no work involved, the licking of fingers, etc, somehow appeals to all of us. And why not? I have heard many theories about this appeal, but the one that I like the best, is that it allows you to show that you feel comfortable around people and, to twist what my friend David means when he says it wildly, "you're not afraid to get messy." When I serve food to my friends, I WANT them to get messy. I want them to dig in, slurp, make noises, crack bones if they have to, and just get every single molecule of flavor out of the food. So when I serve t his recipe, I put the bones into the meat, even if the meat has fallen off, as it usually does.

This recipe has a special appeal to me. Guy and I do a dinner party every single month, usually on the third Sunday. This was the first thing I ever cooked. I've modified it somewhat (there's a surprise, isn't it?), as I've learned more about cooking. I will include variations within this recipe. DO know that you have to make it at least a day, and preferably further ahead, of the day you want to serve it. I will explain why as we go along. It's worth the wait.

First, you need a braising sauce. This involves ancho chiles, which may take some work finding. Go to a Latino grocery. When you find them, bend them. They should be soft, instead of brittle. Anchos are dried poblano chiles (I LOVE the fact that, in Mexico, when a chili is in dried form, it has a name different from the fresh one. For example, a dried jalapeno is a chipotle. There are o ther examples. I wish we did more of that. We do it for plums and prunes, but what about other stuff? And I'm sorry, but "craisins" just does NOT cut it for dried cranberries). Get four big ones. What you will need to do is cut the stem away, and split them open and shake out as many of the seeds as you can. You will see veins inside the dried chili. Whether you cut them away or not is a question of how spicy you like your food. Anchos are pretty low on the heat scale in terms of chilis, but they DO have heat. If you do not like spicy, cut them away. If you are ok with it, as I am, leave them in. And if you just can't handle heat at all, ask around for some milder dried chilis, and use those instead. Just take a look at the size of the anchos first, and use that as a guide for what you will need. Boil two cups of water and pour it over the anchos. You need to do this to rehydrate them for what is to come. Leave it alone for twenty minutes, and then drain away the water, and save it. Now take those chilis, and put them in a blender, with a quartered onion, three chopped cloves of garlic, and if you like spice, 2 tablespoons of those canned,chipotle chilis I've written about before. . Also add two tablespoons of maple syrup, the juice of a lime, and a teaspoon of salt.

That's a lot of stuff in a blender. If you're concerned, then do this in two parts. Puree it until you have a fairly smooth puree, but don't worry about getting really smooth stuff. Put this to the side.

Now, to the meat. You will need anywhere between 6 and 10 pounds of short ribs, depending on what kind of ribs you use. I use a mixture of buffalo and beef, and so I need the larger amount. I need this because the bone/meat ratio on buffalo ribs, is much higher than on beef. It's interesting, because they are related animals, of course, but you can see that they are NOT the same by lookning at this cut. And you are going to need about a pound of meat on the bone per person, maybe more with the buffalo ribs, because this is going to cook down substantially, and of course, bones weigh a lot.

If you've learned anything from here, you will have salted those ribs and left them exposed overnight in the fridge. If you forgot, the day you're cooking them, pat them dry, sprinkle them with salt (don't be shy here: you could use up to two teaspoons). You will also need to have a few tablespoons of vegetable oil ready in a big pan. Get it nice and hot, and then carefully add as many ribs at a time as you can, and brown them. This is going to take a few minutes. Get as good and dark a color as you can, because from here on in, there is no chance for the meat to get brown and caramelized. As you brown them, move the meat to a roasting pan. OR, roasting PanS if you have a lot. You want to keep one layer throughout. Maybe separate buffalo and beef?

Ok, now you're going to do something that is very typical of Mexican cooking (to the extent I know anything about it). You're going to fry your spice mixture. Remember all that stuff in the blender? Well, move your head back (this is gonna spatter), and pour it all into the pan. Lower the heat, and stir for about five minutes. Now add the water, and also add - ready for this? - half a cup of good strong coffee (if you don't have coffee around when you're cooking, you can get by with a half cup of boiling water with a good tablespoon of espresso powder added. Truth to be told, that's about what I always use, and I double it). Stir this and bring it to a boil. Then, pour the stuff over your ribs. If you're using two pans, divide it of course, and do it equally.

Cover the pan or pans with foil, and put them in a preheated, 350 degree oven. You will need at least 3.5 hours for beef ribs. You may need less time for buffalo. check by seeing if the meat is coming away from the bones, after 2 or 2.5 hours. If it's close, take them out and continue with the beef.

Now, here is a step that I think is essential, and was not in the original recipe. The original recipe said "skim the fat and serve." Go ahead, try to do that. I guarantee you, you will be SWIMMING in fat from this recipe. I estimate that at least one third of the meat mass comes away in fat. If you try to skim that, you will lose your sauce, you will lose your patience, and you may very well lose your mind. So, what do you do?

Remember up above I said do it ahead of time? Hmmmmm? Well, let the stuff come to room temperature, then cover it and refrigerate it. The next day, you may be grossed out, but you will have tons of solid fat on the top of the dish, just begging you to scoop it away with a knife or spoon or something. You don't have to be a zealot here. If you spend all your time hunting down the little "globlets" of fat that escape the skimming process, you'll never get dinner on the table. You'll also notice that the fat has a decided orange color. Yup. Chili flavoring comes from oil. Oil is a fat. Fat dissolves oil. So you're taking some of that flavor with you. That's why you have to overflavor the dish at the start.

When you've cleared the fat, you will notice how soft and succulent (I love that word) the meat is. It WILL be coming away from the bones. Of course, you can't serve this cold like that - that would be gross - so put it back in the oven, with the foil cover, and reheat it for about twenty minutes.

If you are serving only beef, one large short rib is fine for a person. You would probably need about four buffalo ribs. If you combine the two meats, overfeed everyone, or offer smaller portions and seconds.

This is a very robust tasting dish. It is recommended with polenta, which is great. You could also serve it with hominy, or with that wonderful Sardinian pasta, fregola. Leftovers make a good pasta sauce, and they also make a wonderful "sloppy joe."

This is definitely winter, cold weather food. I love short ribs, but I can't imagine eating them in the summer.

They are now a tradition with us. Try them, and maybe they will become a tradition for you.