Keller short ribs, Pureed garlic potatoes, root veg

Epicurean Exploits - Food and Recipes
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I went to Costco, reached for “flap meat” but came home with “ribs.” These are rectangular pieces of marbled meat, I am not entirely sure that I understand how these relate to “ribs”. But we are having company and I decided to do braised ribs. At first I was going to just go home-style and cook in the crock pot. Then I thought it was an opportunity and looked in Ad Hoc at Home. What I found was a very do-able recipe except for the beef broth which I didn’t have time for. So I bought commercial stuff and did some fairly major doctoring – I caramelized carrots and leeks in the oven, and got fresh thyme and bay leaves etc. and added that and simmered with the broth until it tasted fabulous.

My problem is that while it tastes wonderful and is rich and dark and looks as brown as good chocolate – it is properly salted, but there is high volume, and I can’t make a sauce by reducing it. I wasn’t thinking enough, I combined low sodium broth with “regular” broth.

I suppose the obvious solution is to thicken with flour and make gravy. Anybody see a way out that I’m not seeing?

The Keller recipe for ribs uses tons of interesting vegetables and herbs and a whole bottle of red wine, but you throw everything out except for the beef and the broth.

So I took an idea from his “Pot au Feu” recipe in “French Laundry” and cut up a batch of root vegetables, carrots, parsnips, pearl onions, and turnip, and cut them all up medium small, and simmered together. I am kind of thinking of serving this in bowls and telling people to add the sauce. Or perhaps I should “plate” it and make it into a “soup”??

The third part of the meal is the luxurious mashed potato dish that he suggests for the braised ribs. I made a batch of garlic confit, and I just pureed the garlic. I am simmering the potatoes, unpeeled Yukon Golds. When they are done I will peel and mix in the pureed garlic and some butter, and later some cream, salt, pepper. LESS CREAM and less butter than he suggests but it is still gonna be good.

For the appetizer, Louise has made fresh Brown Irish Soda Bread and we have Kerrigold butter and cheeses. For dessert she made a sweet potato pie with almonds toasted on top. Wines will be the Charles Ellner Cuvee de Reserve NV Champagne, and the pinot noir from Mac Murray Ranch, Russian River Valley 2007. I will rummage around and see if there is a Burgundy that strikes my fancy.

F

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Sure you could set up a container with semi-permeable membrane and reverse osmosis some salt out of it, then reduce that. Since that is not practical without having either MacGyver or Alton Brown handy, I’m gonna say a roux is your only way out.

I’ve never thought to doctor store stock. Pretty crafty there.

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Thanks. It would come closer to working if one bought the lowest-sodium commercial broth available.

Of course making your own is preferable in lots of ways. I just bought these “ribs” by mistake and had no time.

FWIW the Ad Hoc beef broth is way easier than his standard Veal Glaze in the other cookbooks…

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Can’t potatoes extract salt?

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From what grandma used to tell me add quartered bits of potatoes …as Chris said

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I had heard that too – but what I did was just reduce slightly and then thicken with flour. Got it to a thin but clingy consistency. The gravy was an enormous hit, I said “put it on everything” so it went on the ribs, the mashed potatoes, and the root vegetables with equal success. I was glad I had as much as I did.

I didn’t serve the MacMurray after all – instead a 1990 Volnay from Drouhin which tasted really fresh, young, and lovely. And a 2009 Morgon Cote de Py from Desvignes which is a lovely wine from that killer Bojo vintage.

One couple were grad students from UGa. They said it had been 85 degrees down there. Here it was wet and cold, maybe 42. I told them I thought of the theme of the supper as “goodbye to winter.”

I certainly recommend the one part of this meal that I kind of thought up myself – the mixed root vegetables. Well, I stole the concept from Keller’s “Pot au Feu” but they work just beautifully on their own, with some gravy mixed in, which adds up to about what you get in the Pot au Feu. The parsnips make it so sweet, and the turnips are funky, and the pearl onions (I used frozen) are just delicious when cooked tender. Some time soon it will be kind of warm for a dish like this…

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I’ve never had any luck using potatoes to remove salt. I’d be interested in hearing what AB says or CI have to say
On the subject.

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Great post Frank. Dinner sounds great.
I’m curious if you know why Keller insists on peeling the potatoes while they’re steaming hot. It seems so much easier to peel the potatoes before boiling them (as most cookbooks recommend). I use a ricer to emulsify the potato and butter together and the texture is always amazing. Less cream and butter works, but getting them salted properly (and they take way more salt than you would expect) is the key to making them taste great.

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Dave, you know, working by eye, I ended up using nearly a whole stick of butter. And the potatoes clearly would have been better with more cream than I used. He doesn’t just make this stuff up, it’s all like an experiment and he presents the ideal path to the tastiest product. You heavily salt the boiling water (with the skins on) and I had no idea why I was adding so much salt at that stage but I figured maybe it’s like peanuts salted in the shell, the salt miraculously works its way in during the long simmer. I did mix in some milk with the cream so I could add more liquid. Putting cooked Yukon Gold potatoes through the ricer you get a product that in some ways is dry as dust.

Why do you peel after boiling? All I know is Chef Keller said to do it that way. He was worried about something involving “the outer layer” of the potato proper. Maybe the skin protects that, whatever it is. I have such a high level of respect for this guy that I’m loath to change anything without a really good reason. I changed the beef broth because otherwise I couldn’t make the dish at all.

It was such a nice dinner BTW. My front tenants are grad students, and Louise’s cousin is a grad student at UGA as I mentioned. She had been invited to be on a panel at NEMLA which is right in town here this weekend, so she came up with her husband, another grad student. (NEMLA not NAMBLA!!!) I knew that while we could have one sort of conversation with Louise’s cousin and her husband, because they are family, she’d have a completely different conversation with our tenants. It was really lively and everyone had a great time. And I knew the food and wine was wonderful even though there wasn’t a whole lot of comment about it. The Georgia couple were pretty impressed that not only did I have a wide selection of wine, but when people asked for tea with their pie I had a huge selection of teas… I made one pot of Darjeeling FTGFOP1 Musc (how many of you know what THAT means???) and another pot of pearl jasmine. And then we broke out some Lafaurie-Peyraguey (I told them about Brideshead Revisited) and some Balvenie 15. When we adjourned to the living room I showed “George Lucas in Love” and then the newest episode of “Archer.” They were amused.

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He leaves the skin on because the potatoes absorb water when peeled. Without the extra water, they will soak up more cream and butter. Robuchon does the same thing, although he uses fingerling potatoes. It is now part of my normal procedure(not peeling first).

As to the other problem, although it is too late now, the only real option s I saw besides going with the gravy would have been to extend the sauce with something else such as wine and then reduce. Also, you could have just reduced it a bit more and then added some cream which would help it keep the thickness while smoothing out the salt. Granted, the flavor profile changes either way but I suspect either could yield a good result.