Rick's Braised Short Ribs with Arbol Chiles, White Beans, Mushrooms, and Beer



Greg in line @ XOCO, Chicago 2010



Rick Bayless is one of our chef heroes even long before becoming TVs Top Chef Master. We’ve followed his PBS cooking series, have just about every one of his cookbooks and have eaten at all 3 of his Chicago Restaurants: Frontera Grill, Topolobampo and XOCO. We’re true fans and followers I guess you might say.



Ahogado Torta @ XOCO

We had the most amazing dinner at Topalabamba with my sister and her boyfriend several years ago. We’ll never forget his trio of ceviches’ and goat empanadas from that meal. T also swears she actually saw him in the restaurant when she came out of the restroom. Since she’s the only one that was there this wasn’t verified by anyone else. Last year while in the windy city we tried Rick’s latest Chicago restaurant  XOCO. It’s more street fair food with some great tortas so while being low key and accessible Rick still comes through with great flavors. 

So being the Rick Bayless fan that I evidently am, I decided to cook something from his latest cook book, Fiesta at Ricks the newest to our collection, one or more times a month (maybe it was every week? That might be more than I can follow through with but it’s a good goal). Since the weather finally got cooler here on Sunday, braised short ribs sounded like the perfect comfort food to make. I decided on Braised Short Ribs with Arbol Chiles, White Beans, Mushrooms, and Beer. This recipe is actually on his blog as well if you’re interested in trying it out. Braised Short Ribs with Arbol Chiles, White Beans, Mushrooms and Beer

 I love the smells that emanate from the oven during braising. This recipe incorporated dried chile de arboles with a garnish of cilantro to give it that Mexican flare; otherwise, it was more American comfort food.
 

Searing Shortribs



Ready for braising in the oven



Next, the onions were added to soften before all of the other ingredients were added:  one whole garlic head cut in half, shitake mushrooms, crimini mushrooms, beef stock, dark beer (my buddy Jason left a Henry’s dark here last week for the game thought I’d go with that), one can fire-roasted tomatoes, three cans of white beans, thyme, salt, and pepper.

 Then it was in the oven for two-and-a-half hours to braise. To accompany the entree, I broiled some fresh asparagus coated with olive oil, salt, and pepper.



Shortribs after braising

We enjoyed some leftover Avalon cab (good deal from Pete’s for a mid-week sipper) from the night before (that doesn’t happen much) with our meal.

The next night we removed and shredded the meat from the bone and ate it more as a stew and it was just as delicious the next day.

 I am looking forward to my next Rick meal, maybe grilled rack of lamb with honey-pasilla glaze? But T wants to go with one of the seafood recipes, so we'll see who really gets to pick the next recipe.
 I toasted the chiles for about 30 seconds first, then seared the ribs with the chiles in the pot.

Gutsy Cooks Club: Tarte Tatin with Pears & Quilceda Creek

Our second recipe of the week for Gutsy Cooks Club was a Tarte Tatin from Illustrated Kitchen Bible. Baking has never really been our thing. With exception of cookies made with our niece & nephew a few times a year not a lot of baked goods come out of our kitchen.

And to be honest every time it’s our turn to do dessert for Supper Club I am always a bit disappointed, (although my last supper club dessert that we were responsible for was a pumpkin tiramisu and it was divine now remembering back. )

This recipe for upside down apple tart sounded pretty good so we invited our friends J & J to come join us for dessert later knowing they do love baked goods and dessert.

One reason we don’t bake a lot is because of the need for preciseness and exact measuring not my favorite way to cook. And when I saw I’d have to make pastry dough I was a bit concerned. I went on YouTube to find “How to make pastry dough using a food processor?” and got some tips. It was very helpful. I used the recipe's measurements just got the techniques from the video.

I was bit nervous though when I actually beat 2 eggs and then noticed the recipe only called for one and then tried to dump 1 egg out…."oh now this is why I don’t bake” went through my head.

Getting my ingredients in the food processor

So when I turned out the dough from the food processor onto plastic and it still looked like granular clumpy flour I was a bit nervous. But I kneaded it quite a bit in the plastic before putting it in the fridge and I became hopeful; it looked like what I thought pastry dough should look like after all.

The texture had me worried for a while

I was optimistic when I finally got it to this stage

G & I both love pears so we went with the pear adaptation mentioned in the recipe.

 G peeled and sliced the pears as I cooked the butter and sugar in a cast iron skillet. The photo in the recipe looked a little rustic so I figured a cast iron skillet might work fine. I placed the pears in the bottom of the skillet.

G rolled out the pastry dough and we topped the gooey mixture with the dough and into the oven it went.

G decided since J&J were coming over and they happen to be wine appreciators to the caliber worthy of opening a “nicer” bottle of wine that he’d open the 2004 Quilceda Creek Columbia Valley Red Wine that he’d been sitting on in the basement cellar for a while. He opened and decanted it before we put the tart in the oven.

When J&J arrived we all participated in unveiling the tart and flipping it as the cast iron skillet is too heavy for me to handle on my own when full of this goodness. Thankfully J reminded us of actually putting the plate on top of the tart and then flipping it because we were off to a disastrous start. She actually enjoys baking a lot.

The tart released perfectly from the pan and looked scrumptious.  

The four of us sat down to a great glass of wine and a slice of pear tart topped with some vanilla bean ice cream and were all overjoyed with how wonderful the treat was. The pastry was like a shortbread cookie thanks to the 10 tablespoons of butter. And the pear lusciousness was superb. It really was a TREAT.

I truly am grateful for the YouTube video in helping my pastry dough become  a success. And we all agree pears were the way to go, especially paired with the wine. The Quilceda Creek was lovely. It was incredibly smooth, sitting as long as we did on it might of helped a bit. It itself had hints of caramel and vanilla and just coated your mouth perfectly so it really was a compliment to the pear tart.

We drank our wine, watched a goofy movie and sent J&J home with a few slices of pear tart for the next day.

It was a nice evening with friends enjoying a great little slice of life together. Happy again that the Gutsy Cooks Club provided us with this treat we would have otherwise never made.