Recipe File: Braised Beef Short Ribs

by Stepto
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Been a while since I did a recipe file entry. I love braised beef short ribs. Cooked properly, this simple meal is like an uber-thick beef stew and is perfect either by itself with a small salad side or fantastic ladled over steamed jasmine rice.

I’ve been cooking some all day so let’s get to the recipe. Cook time is five(!) hours.

Ingredients:

3 pounds cut beef short ribs
3 tablspoons extra light, extra virgin olive oil
1 yellow onion
3 medium size Yukon Gold potatoes
1 package whole mushrooms (washed)
1 celery stalk
1 whole carrot (peeled)
Three tablespoons crushed garlic
1/4 cup worcestershire sauce
2 large tomatoes, stewed (you can also use 1 can stewed tomatoes)
16 ounces red cooking wine
3 tablespoons fresh italian seasoning (dried can be used as well)
Fresh gound white pepper
Sea Salt

Stew the tomatoes any way you like, keeping in mind proper cook time all told for this recipe is five hours for best results so don’t go bonkers. I tend to be a kitchen prep fiend so while you’re stewing the tomatoes, go ahead and chop the celery into bite sized pieces and cut the whole carrot into 16’ths or so. Quarter and wash the potatoes, cut the onion into eighths. Leave the mushrooms whole.

Salt and pepper liberally the short ribs. We’re going to be browning them first. Since we won’t really be adding any salt to this dish beyond what we are doing here don’t skimp! Don’t cake it on, but it’s fine to use much more salt here than you really feel comfortable with. There’s going to be so much liquid and we’re not adding any more, that remember you are really seasoning a whole dish here not just the ribs.

Brown the ribs meat side down for 5 minutes in the extra light olive oil. Mind the heat so the oil and beef fat doesn’t brown, but the effect we are going for is that of almost seared meat. This takes a while to do three pounds so I usually split it up in two batches.

YUM

While the meat is browning I prepare a nice sized, fairly deep baking dish with the italian seasoning (just dump it in the bottom and spread it around), the Worcestershire sauce, and the crushed garlic. Today I tended to have some rib cuts that were really thin, so after I browned them again on the rib side (use about half the time) I lined the dish with them and the vegetables like so:

YUM YUM

You want place them rib side down so the marrow from the bones leeches into the cooking sauce.

Then I layered in the meatier ribs in the center, again remember, rib side down. By now all vegetables and meat should be in the dish, I usually pour the stewed tomatoes on top. All you should be left with now is the 16 ounces of red cooking wine.

This I pour evenly over the whole baking pan. Ideally you should be looking at the pan being 50-75% level liquid wise if you are using a transluscent one like I am. Now, you can cheat and add some beef broth if you would like. It all depends on how much of a rush you are in and how big the bones are you are cooking off of. In this case I have a lot of time so we’re going commando as it were.

Ok cover the whole dish in foil. With your oven pre-heated at 250 put that baby in for a nice slow four hour cook time. The goal here is that right about 2 hours the liquid is boiling low but nicely and starting to really reduce. Over the next two hours the water content from the mushrooms and onion will really offset the reduction to the point that at hour four you’re looking not only at fork tender meat that’s flavorful but a nice thick sauce that’s heaven in a spoon from the reduction and marrow, but not overcooked or scorched.

The meat should be off the bone fairly easily, discard the bones and ladle what you have left over rice. Enjoy!

Today’s a good day.

by Stepto
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It’s a cold Saturday morning and foggy outside. Everything’s just still and quiet. I’m sitting here reading the news and drinking coffee and it occurs to me that I feel really, really good.

I feel good for a lot of reasons, it’s the weekend. I’ve got some great video games to play. Barack Obama is the president-elect of the United States. Not all is right with the world, surely, but so much more is right than last Saturday it seems.

Brand new days.

by Stepto
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The beautiful, and dare I say luscious, Shyama introduced me to "From 52 to 48 with love". It’s a bit of a misnomer since it has the ratio wrong, but its heart is pure which is why I will not correct it. It’s a great post, it represents exactly the moment. The only enemy here is post hip cool cynicism.

I took a lot of emails and calls election night as I spoke to friends and family both red and blue. During one red call a friend mentioned they were crying and had no idea why, they had voted for John McCain. I twittered my response to him.

November 4th, 2008 was, really, a moment. I don’t care if you’re a cynic who loves to poke fun at history in the making, hey maybe you want to really be the guy quoted as going "yeah that FDR and his followers, what idiots".

I mean be the contrarian if that’s the sole thing you feel is important. But on november 4th, 2008, we finally dealt with September 11th, 2001. We dealt with it, at long last, like Americans.

We did not do so because we finally elected a black man President, nor did we do so because we elected a Democrat over a Republican.

One thing is not in dispute, by either side of the American political spectrum, although it has been used lately by one side over the other: This country was not founded on fear.

It was founded on hope.

This country has not thrived on fear.

It hasn’t in its history.

This country has thrived on hope.

Whenever anyone tells you to fear in America, that person is telling you to deny what America is. I have some cynical friends, let’s call them post political, that like to make fun of this. I’ve seen that they prefer to revel in the atmosphere of a sense of country defined by sacrificial murder as a way to explain the very politics of love of country. To get swept up in a movement of hope, makes you an idiot no matter its potential. That’s ok.

Raised on the history of Vietnam, the supposed guilt of 9/11, and the shame of the second Iraq war’s mistakes, it’s easy for them to play the jaded idiot savant; they are more interested in snark than the honor that even I never believed was our earned birthright as Americans until recently: we are actually better than our politics would suggest. We really are.

Frank Rich wrote recently :"It Still Felt Good the Morning After"

In that essay he said:

The actual real America is everywhere. It is the America that has been in shell shock since the aftermath of 9/11, when our government wielded a brutal attack by terrorists as a club to ratchet up our fears, betray our deepest constitutional values and turn Americans against one another in the name of “patriotism.” What we started to remember the morning after Election Day was what we had forgotten over the past eight years, as our abusive relationship with the Bush administration and its press enablers dragged on: That’s not who we are.

So even as we celebrated our first black president, we looked around and rediscovered the nation that had elected him. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Obama said in February, and indeed millions of such Americans were here all along, waiting for a leader. This was the week that they reclaimed their country.

I think Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t talking about race. I think, with history’s hindsight, he may have been talking about fear, in all its forms.

So let’s say it loud. Let’s say it without fear of ridicule. Let’s say it to the face of every extremist who will kill the innocent to try and make us change our ways.

Free at last,

Free at last!

thank God almighty, we are free at last.

The view from the mountaintop, with my friends of all colors and creeds.

by Stepto
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I had a whole post written. Talking about all variety things about this election. I am reduced and humbled.

What a night. My god.

What a night.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, the real work begins. Barack Obama may very well stumble or fail us. We have to realize it doesn’t end with our vote. That is what Barack Obama has given us.

Celebrate now. But wake up tomorrow and let’s get to work.

The Redmond Reality Distortion Field

by Stepto
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Sometimes I get asked "What the hell were you guys at Microsoft thinking when you did [insert action/product/initiative]?

It’s not exactly our fault. The answer is the Redmond Reality Distortion Field. To wit:

The Redmond Reality Distortion Field:

The field that influences Microsoft employees and product designers to make wildly incorrect assumptions on the use of technology, computers and devices by the world. The field is caused by the fact that Microsoft employees tend to be far more affluent and have free access to technology than the general population. Generated by Microsoft employees, the field is centered in Redmond but can manifest itself weakly in any area where a significant number of employees gather, such as remote campuses or subsidiaries.

Its most common effect on individuals is to make design decisions or requests either on the way customers should use products as opposed to how they actually use them, or by the interoperability of a product in the unique environment of the employee’s home.

The field itself is invisible and exceedingly hard to detect, as once under its influence reality itself becomes distorted. Entire Microsoft products have been designed under the influence of the field.

An example of one is the Microsoft Cordless Phone System, released in 1998. While the system itself was innovative and contained many unique features like multiple voicemail boxes, customized answering machine messages for individual caller ID’s, etc, the phone system required a dedicated computer be on at all times to enable its features. Due to the software’s high resource demands and the fact it would only work with Windows 95 or Windows 98, it was assumed customers would dedicate a second PC to the phone, thus essentially asking a customer to commit a $500+ dollar investment to make their new $100 phone work. The assumption is that customers either already had a high end computer, a cast off second computer, or would be willing to buy a second computer to make it work. This assumption is based on the fact that almost every Microsoft employee in 1998 had two computers at home (NOT including work machines) due to our access to technology and tendency to be on the high curve of technology investment. Now? Well It’s 10 years later and I have five computers in my home, which I bet is on the low end of most MS people. Imagine what decisions are being made about the general state of home networks today thanks to the field!

Another example of the pervasiveness of the field on the Microsoft campus is feedback between Microsoft product groups. The following is an actual email to the Xbox team, redacted appropriately for confidentiality:

From: [Microsoft Employee]
Sent: [Recently]
To: [Internal Xbox Feedback Alias]
Subject: Xbox LIVE through ISA Server

[Redacted]

Nearly 6 years after Xbox LIVE released and our own Firewall/Router product doesn’t allow any setting above "strict" for an Xbox 360.

Repro Steps:

Set up an Xbox on a network that goes through an ISA Server 2000, 2004 or 2006 to get to the internet.
Set up ISA Server to allow ALL traffic.
Do the Xbox LIVE Connection test and note that the NAT type is "strict".
Wait 5 years for these two teams to talk to each other.
Do the Xbox LIVE Connection test and note that the NAT type is still "strict".

Now, on the face of it you might expect that indeed, our firewall product should work well with Xbox LIVE. Until you realize that ISA Server is our corporate level firewall, which requires significant technical expertise and a license for Windows Server to operate. So the ISA people optimize their time and development tasks towards corporate scenarios. Xbox and Xbox LIVE dedicates our resources to optimize consumer scenarios.

At a bare minimum, this employee, due to their access to our products, is running $2500 dollars worth of enterprise software capable of handling tens of thousands of users to basically perform the function of a $59 standard router easily capable of handling 20 users.

Where the field comes in, is that the employee doesn’t just want the two teams to dedicate resources to make it work to their level of expectation, but expects it to already be a priority simply because Microsoft makes both products.

So when you wonder why, exactly, the company would have Playsforsure not work with the Zune or release a digital USB speaker system (whose best features required USB) at a time when few computers had USB at all, the answer is the Redmond Reality Distortion Field. It’s not our fault. Really.