Ever since I can remember, Sunday has always been a dull day. As a teenager, Sunday afternoon was the most depressing time of the week; and if it was winter, even worse.
Growing up, Sunday afternoon has grown on me, and sometimes a boring Sunday is nice: staying indoor, coiled up on the couch, watching a movie or reading a book is a welcome alternative to the usual weekend craze.
But after a while, one gets bored.
Luckily, there’s Netflix.
I opted for “Julie & Julia”, one of a handful of good food-themed movies that have come out in the last 10 years.
This one is a very good one: written by Nora Ephron, with Meryl Streep as Julia Child and a young Amy Adams ad Julie. If you have not seen it, I recommend it.
True to my no-spoiler policy, it will suffice to say, I decided that I was making good use of my indoor time, cooking some boeuf bourguignon. After all, in the movie Julia Child starts taking cooking classes because she’s bored in Paris!
I had some beef short ribs in the fridge already, because the ones I found at my HEB were beautiful, large and meaty… I couldn’t resist.
So I thought I’d make a crossover between Julia’s classic recipe and Gordon Ramsay’s version with short ribs.
I’m sorry if I repeat the same things over and over again, but short ribs are delicious, and also very cheap.
However, I took some liberties with both recipes.
First, I used half the garlic used by Mr. Ramsay.
Then, after I put the beef stock and the wine in my cocotte, it was so heavy that I did not trust myself to lift it and successfully insert it into the oven, so I did all the cooking on the stove. It took 4 hours to reach the sought-after melt-in-your-mouth tenderness.
Finally, I did not garnish with mushrooms & lardons, because the short ribs release enough fat already, no need to add some more by means of lardons.
To skim off much of this fat, after the cooking was done, I removed the meat and put the sauce in the fridge for a couple of hours, so that the fat solidified in a layer and was easy to remove.
When I was ready to eat, I reheated everything and made the sauce thicker: removing the meat to a plate, I added a spoon of sieved flour to the sauce and then cooked for 5 or 10 more minutes, whisking to avoid lumps.
I served it with baked potatoes, but really potatoes would be good in any fashion. Polenta would be great!
ricottaforte 