Short Ribs in Red Wine and Port

For this week's FFwD we made Short Ribs in Red Wine and Port. This is the third time I've made braised short ribs in the past three months, which means I must like them. I was disappointed with this rendition, though, but it was mostly my fault and a series of unfortunate events, not a problem with the recipe. The problem started when I decided to buy the short ribs from the grocery store instead of the butcher where I'd gotten them previously. The ribs were sliced surprisingly thin, but I decided to gamble with them. That was a half mistake. The preparation was not unlike the ways I'd done it previously, save the cut of the meat, so I felt very confident with the recipe. The previous times I'd made them, I hadn't refrigerated it overnight and had just used a fat separator for the sauce, but I found scraping the chilled fat off much easier this time. I had pancetta left over from last week and thought I'd make pancetta green beans again. I waited to check the quality of the pancetta until I was about to put it in the pan, only to discover it was pretty moldy. Definite mistake, but luckily green beans taste just fine plain. Then, as I was pulling the pan of ribs out from under the broiler just as we were about to eat, the potholder slipped, I caught the handle with my bare hand and instinctively threw the pan down onto the oven door. Big mistake. It was quite painful and I ended up with a sizable blister on the heel of my hand, but it doesn't hurt anymore. Luckily Andrew was standing next to me when this happened and managed to scrape the meat back into the pan, so dinner was at least salvaged.

So, there we go. It plated up pretty nicely. I had seen a lot of recipes for short ribs that used polenta rather than potatoes, and I thought it'd be a nice change of place. The weird thing was the polenta didn't have much flavor, but still manged to be unpleasant, so I didn't eat more than two forkfuls of mine. the meat was delicious, but I wish there had been a little more to it. I was not very crazy about the gremolata at all. I hate cilantro, so I used parsley instead but I think it was the orange zest that threw it off. It just overpowered the flavor of the meat. Oh well. So, I still think this is an excellent recipe, but I'd use a better cut and potatoes next time while skipping the gremolata. I did actually appreciate that it took two days to make since I usually have mornings off but don't get home from school until the evening, so I like to be able to make something in the morning and finish it quickly later. 

I also used this wine for the sauce and for drinking. I came across it in the store and immediately had to have it since "The Thinker" appealed to me as a philosophy grad student and Alexander Calder is one of my all-time favorite artists. Plus the wine was half off. I've had better, but it was still nice.

Spring is already here in Atlanta. It's hard to believe, but it's true. Huzzah!