Humble ingredients made restaurant-ready: Braised beef short ribs, puréed cauliflower

Buttery-flavored braised short ribs are complemented by the mild tang of puréed cauliflower for a restaurant-worthy meal. Recipes below.

This week, you’ll find a pair of cooking posts here again. Individually, they’re quite good—together, they’re stellar. Also, Blue Kitchen has made the big time! Last week’s Hazelnut Rosemary Jam Cookies are featured in Bon Appétit’s Blog Envy holiday showcase. Go to the website and you’ll find nearly two dozen holiday recipes in all, all from bloggers—including me. Woohoo!

We watched the utterly charming film Ratatouille again this weekend [in case you’ve not seen it, I’ve included a clip at the end of the post—and even if you have seen it, you’ll enjoy it just as much the second time around]. As the lead rat-turned-chef Remy produced his beautifully architectural take on the title peasant dish, I suddenly remembered short ribs.

Increasingly, celebrity chefs everywhere are rethinking humble ingredients and dishes—reinventing them, elevating them to starring roles on elegant menus. Indeed, the ratatouille in question was actually created by Thomas Keller and served in his legendary California restaurant, the French Laundry. Pixar Animation Studios hired Keller as a consultant on the film and, according to an article in New York magazine, Remy is the embodiment of the famously fastidious, focused chef.

Short ribs are one surprising ingredient getting the star treatment these days. Layered with meat, fat, bone and connective tissue, they are as big on flavor as they are inexpensive [well, used to be before they hit the big time—but at four bucks or so a pound, they’re still reasonable]. As such, they have long been a popular ingredient for soups and stocks. Because of the long cooking times usually demanded by those chewy connective tissues, short ribs have also been a cut of choice for the traditional French boiled dinner pot-au-feu [“pot on the fire”]. Interestingly, Korean cooks take an opposite tack, butterflying short ribs almost to the bone, then marinating and grilling them.

For some time now, though, they’ve been appearing on some rather upscale menus. When I started poking around for ideas for cooking short ribs, I saw that über chef Daniel Boulud had covered them in his Café Boulud Cookbook: French-American Recipes for the Home Cook. At the outset, I had already decided to serve my short ribs, however I cooked them, on a bed of Marion’s puréed cauliflower. [Here’s a restaurant tip for you—if you want to make something seem fancier, serve it on top of something else. You’re welcome.] We often have this creamy cauliflower as a delicous, healthy substitute for mashed potatoes, and I knew its slight tanginess would balance the richness of the beefy, fat-marbled short ribs. Occasionally I’ll declare something I’ve cooked not just good, but restaurant good. The combination of these two flavors was precisely that.

Wine-braised Short Ribs with Puréed Cauliflower
Serves 2 generously [or 4 with extra sides]

2 cups dry red wine

2 tablespoons canola or olive oil
1-1/2 to 2 pounds thick, meaty short ribs, 3 to 4 inches long
salt, freshly ground black pepper
1 medium onion, diced
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 rib celery, diced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon dried Herbes de Provence [see Kitchen Notes]
1 tablespoon flour
1 cup beef broth
2 plum tomatoes, chopped
1 bay leaf

Puréed Cauliflower

Special equipment: Parchment paper, cut to fit just inside the pot

Bring wine to a boil in a medium sauce pan over high heat. Reduce heat to medium and cook until wine is reduced by half, about 15 minutes. You want to end up with 1 cup of reduced wine—if you overdo the reduction, just add enough unreduced wine to bring it back to a cup. This tip comes from Chef Boulud—he says it makes the sauce taste as if it has cooked for days. Boulud also suggests carefully setting the wine aflame when it’s hot to burn off the alcohol; the dish cooks so long that I didn’t bother.

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Heat a heavy dutch oven over medium high heat. Salt and pepper short ribs generously. Add oil to dutch oven and brown short ribs on all three meaty sides [but not on bone side] for about 8 minutes total. Transfer ribs to plate with tongs. Reduce heat to medium low. Add onion, carrot and celery to pot and cook, stirring frequently [you want to sweat the vegetables, not brown them], for about 8 minutes. Add garlic, Herbes de Provence and flour to pot and cook, stirring constantly, for about a minute. Add wine and broth and bring to boil over high heat, scraping up any browned bits. Stir in tomatoes and return ribs to pot, adding any accumulated juices.

Place parchment paper over ribs and sauce. Cover pot with lid and place in oven on middle rack. Braise until ribs are tender, about 2-1/4 hours. Toward the end of the cooking time, prepare cauliflower.

Remove from oven and transfer ribs to plate. [The slablike bones will likely have separated from the meat; you can discard them if you wish, but I prefer the look of the short ribs with the bone, so I reunited them when I placed them atop the cauliflower.] Skim a bit of the fat from the top of the sauce with a spoon, but don’t go crazy; it adds to the richness of the dish.

Place a bed of cauliflower on each serving plate and top with short ribs. Spoon some sauce and vegetables over each plate and serve.

Kitchen Notes

Herbes de Provence is one of my go-to herbs in so many dishes. It’s a mixture of dried herbs said to reflect those most commonly used in southern France. Depending on who’s doing the mixing, it typically includes rosemary, marjoram, basil, sage, thyme, and sometimes lavender flowers and other herbs. You can find it in many supermarkets; we get a delicous, fragrant version at The Spice House.

Any rat can cook. Er, anyone can cook. That’s the inspiring message of Ratatouille. In this scene, Remy gets his introduction to the fast-paced Parisian restaurant kitchen.