Dexter's Ribs (2 Posts in 1 Day! Unheard Of!!)

My knight in shining armour came to the rescue today.  Yesterday, in a fit of foolishness, I did a bit of RAG* engineering with some bricks, an umbrella and an old table.  Needless to say when I went to put it all away a teetering brick fell on my bare foot… The brick broke in 2 and I spent the next 4 hours in A&E checking to see if I broke anything.  Happily no, but crippled I am.

So for 2 nights in a row I’ve been cooked for (unheard of and awesome).  Tonight was a slow cooked Dexter Beef Ribs ragu and papperdelle triumph by himself… And a triumphant triumph it was!

I found the recipe in this month’s Delicious magazine. It was actually meant for pork ribs but I thought it would be fine with beef (fine!? It was awesome!).  I showed himself, he was unsure at first (we’d had veal ribs the week before) so I suggested he go through the magazine and see if anything else tickled his fancy.  His fancy remained un-tickled so he went with the ribs.  Even though the recipe said to cook the ribs for 2 hours I knew better ;-) I suggested to himself that he get started earlier rather than later, then if the ribs needed longer he’d have time up his sleeve.

The recipe was a classic, lots of red wine, garlic, eschalots, herbs and cinnamon.  There was some minor panic about how best to quarter eschalots but once that hurdle was overcome it all moved along quite smoothly.  He reduced the wine in a saucepan and browned the ribs in a large pot.  Then removed ribs and browned the eschalots, garlic, cinnamon quills, oregano and bay.  He added lots of chicken stock, a bottle of passata and the reduced wine.  Then he put the ribs back in to simmer, simmer, simmer.  As suspected, sleeve time was required.  The ribs actually needed about 5 ½ hours to really get to the stage where they were falling apart.

The rib bones were removed, meat shredded and excess fat removed.  Papperdelle was then cooked up to serve with the sauce.

The sauce was super rich so I suggested finely chopped parsley and lemon zest to lift it a bit.  He then served with lots of shaved parmesan.  IT WAS SENSATIONAL.  What a fantastic job, it was delicious.  I could not have done a better job myself.  I can’t wait for lunch tomorrow.

*Rough As Guts

Dexter's Skirt

So it was my BFF’s birthday last Friday so she came around to hang out.  Himself was off at his football grand final (yes, he scored the winning goal) and the wee girl was just hanging out at home.

BFF and I sat there deciding what to do/eat/drink for her birthday.  I had given her a badge to wear saying “It’s My Birthday!” to remind us of our intent then I gave her the options:

1. Walk down the road and get take away and bring home
2. Go to a pub/bar to eat, drink and be merry
3. Go to a BYO restaurant (in the interests of saving money – the wine rack is very full after all)

BFF was very excited, she doesn’t often get a night off from the baby and hubby.  She decided she didn’t feel like going out.  She said she’d been talking to another friend and said she was very exciting about coming around tonight because I was her favourite restaurant in the world… Oh… that’s right…  It suddenly occurred to me there was option 4.

“Oh, or I guess I could cook (insert BFF happy face here), I have some Dexter beef skirt in the fridge – I could make involtini” “what’s involtini?” she asks – OMG you don’t know?  I’m sure there’s some bocconcini and basil in the fridge… no prosciutto though, but we could improvise and rub some smoked paprika on the skirt instead… There’s broccoli, I could make a cheese sauce… by now BFF is looking very excited… and some spicy potato chunks...  BFF proceeds to happy dance around the kitchen.

First things first though, better see what wine we’re drinking…  So we chose two bottles of nice wine and started on the involtini.  Like the veal involtini (see: Hands up who likes Skirts!) I bashed the skirt out thin (to the beat of some bad pop music we were listening to very loud) and then showed BFF how to roll involtini, rubbing each piece of meat with salt, pepper and smoked paprika then rolling up a basil leaf and 2 bocconcini.  Between the two of us they were rolled quickly and ready to cook.  We then chopped up potatoes and sweet potatoes, threw them in a freezer bag with some oil and spice and did a hippy hippy shake dance to coat and put them in the oven to bake (on a baking tray, not in a freezer bag).  Once they were done we quickly browned the involtini ‘til the cheese started to melt, made the cheese sauce, steamed the broccoli etc etc and served. This took about a bottle of wine’s worth of time.

We started second bottle during dinner...  The involtini were sublime, I think making them out of beef really added an extra dimension of flavour missing from the veal (and of course it was Dexter – my favourite).  BFF was very happy with her birthday dinner.  After dinner and extra wine there may have been some lounge room dancing followed by several bad wedding  shows on TV.  All in all, it was an excellent night in…

The Brains of the Outfit

So brains right? Some came in my Flesh Box this week.  I was very excited.  What could be better than 6 bio-dynamic fresh lambs brains... Apparently, as far as my family are concerned a lot...

Upon thinking about how to serve these treats I turned to my Mum as Dad is a big fan.  "Mum, how do you do brains for Dad?" She explained she first poached them and then crumbed and shallow fried them so I thought I'd give that a go.
 
First I soaked them in salty water (I covered the bowl with tin foil so himself did not stumble across them in the sink).  I did show the wee girl, she was very excited to try them.

I then wrapped them up in little tinfoil bonbons (advice from Maggie Beer) and poached in water with bay, peppercorns and a dash of vinegar.  Took them out and left them in their little wrappers and put in the fridge for a while to firm up.  Then I crumbed in panko crumbs and shallow fried until golden.  They ended up looking like lovely little croquets.

So I served four of these morsels on a plate each with tomato and HP sauces on the table.  Before himself tried any I warned him it was brains.  OHMIGOD the revolt.  He would not try any, point blank.  Said he'd tried them (black market brains no less) in the UK in a curry and hated the texture then and WOULD NOT eat them now and sat there sulking.

The wee girl was more game but the first mouthful produced some fairly spectacular results.  Apparently the texture was a bit much for her... She heaved, her eyes watered and she finally, valiently swallowed.  I asked her if it was the flavour? No, she assured me, not the flavour but the very, very funky texture. She managed to finish the first one with only a bit more retching then moved onto the second one.  This one, like the first produced enough spectacular heaving and eye watering that she gave it up.  I was so impressed with her though, she tried so hard to like them!

I have to say - I quite enjoyed them :-) The texture WAS funky, but kinda cool too... I didn't manage to finish all four pieces but found the whole experience (including the family antics) very enjoyable indeed...

:-)

Oh, and I made butter too, today.  Realised there was none in the fridge but there was cream; and I couldn't be bothered going down the road just before breakfast.  So I added a bit of salt and wizzed with a wizzer until after a while it turned quiet yellow and looked separated.  I then put the whole lot in muslin and squeezed all the whey out and voila! butter.  The wee girl was very impressed with this magic and demanded all our butter from now on be hand made... I think not.

Stick Your Neck Out...

So one of the items in my last Flesh Box was a piece of pork neck (1.6kg) with a lovely strip of skin along one side... (Crackling here I come!)  So, what does one do with pork neck anyway? Happily the internet answered that question.  Slow roast pork neck apparently.  So I browsed around until I found one that floated my boat from a South African blog and then put a me slant on it. 

Remember my veal neck experience? Surely this should be just as good but with crackling as a side bonus!  So here we go:

Pork neck gets browned at a high heat after being rubbed with seeded mustard and olive oil (salt of course.  I also pierced the strip of skin over and over with my knife (very violent and zen at the same time) and rubbed with more salt – huzzah for salt!

After 45 minutes I added leeks, sweet potato, eschallots, garlic, sage and thyme which I had browned in some olive oil in the wok.  Pulled the pork out, put all the veg in the pan and pork back on top, making sure I kept the skin free of any fat or stock.  I then poured wine and stock over the veg and back into the oven at 150 degrees Celsius.  At the same time I had melted some dripping I had in the fridge and thrown some potatoes in there to cook.

Cooked for 2 hours until the pork was lusciously soft then removed the meat, cut off the skin/fat and browned that under the grill whilst resting the pork.  Cranked the oven back up to finish off the potatoes and then made a gravy with the stock/wine left in the bottom of the pan after removing the veg (of course – duh!)

I served the pork in thick slices, with veg, potatoes and a piece of yum crackling each.

The fam told me this was the best pork roast they had ever eaten, moist and unctuous; far superior to a pork rib roast apparently - Delish!