amanda had sent me a link to this website as something to think about maybe doing someday. "renowned" chefs from some of houston's most cherished restaurants take you on a tour to some of the places they enjoy that you may never have experienced and try to educate you on the culinary culture of houston. it looks pretty cool, albeit expensive, but it was interesting reading through the bios of the chefs that participate in the tours. i had been to some of their restaurants, but clicking through to the links of others got me excited to try some new places. also, it got me to stumble onto revival market, which apparently had been started by a couple local chefs that wanted to open a market where people could get fresh, local meats, produce, and other products to take some of the philosophies of these restaurants into their own kitchens. reading through the website got me excited to check it out and try some of their food.
so we went there without really having a plan, just to see what they had. it's a pretty small store. they have a display counter along the back wall with cheeses, various cured or prepared meats (charcuterie i guess is what you call it), and various cuts of lamb, pork, beef, and poultry. they have a fridge on the right wall with premade soups and chili, fresh stocks, dairy products, and other refrigerated items. they have a small, somewhat limited produce section that wraps around to the front wall. then they have some house products in a display in the middle, such as sauces, jams, olive oils, etc. that's about it. i was most excited about the prospect of fresh, local meats, so that's where i headed.
they had some pretty incredible looking steaks and pork rib chops, but i wanted to try something i'd never done before. the guy behind the counter was extremely helpful and asked if i had any questions. they had quite a few beef short ribs in the display and i asked what you do with beef short ribs, since i'd never cooked them before. he got very excited and ran down a step by step set of instructions for braising them in red wine. i'd made braised lamb shanks in red wine and that had made amanda very sick and we decided that cooking with red wine was on the no-no list, presumably because of brewer's yeast that is likely not filtered out of the wine and only gets concentrated in the sauce. he said we could use bourbon as a substitute (she does much better with distilled spirits), so we decided to give it a shot. he cut us three large short ribs (he said one large one should be enough for one person, but we got a third just in case) and we were on our way.
he said to salt the meat and leave it in the fridge uncovered overnight, so that was step one. we had made a slow cooked beef roast to take with us to big bend the week before, so we had some leftover carrots, celery, and a leek. he also recommended potatoes, but we opted to leave those out. of course, we used plenty of garlic. the next day, around 3pm, i heated a large sauce pot with a few tablespoons of olive oil and seared the ribs on all sides, removing them to a plate and leaving the juices and charred bits in the pot. i had prechopped my carrots, celery, leek, and garlic. i don't know if there was supposed to be more of a stepwise process to adding the liquids and vegetables, but i just sort of wung it. i added about half of a 375 of jim beam, which caused the pot to smoke pretty good. i dumped all of my veggies in, then added about a cup and a half of beef stock. i also added a few sprigs of fresh rosemary from our "garden", some ground thyme (because i don't have fresh thyme), a bay leaf, and ground probably about two tsp of black pepper into the pot. i added the ribs back in and added a bit more beef stock until the ribs were almost, but not quite fully submerged. i let the liquid come to a boil, then reduced the heat and started waiting.
i flipped the ribs about every half an hour and let them cook about two hours in total. i took the ribs out, put them on a platter, and wrapped them in foil to keep them warm while i reduced the sauce. i took out the bay leaf and the sprigs of rosemary, then used my immersion blender to blend the softened vegetables into the sauce. i turned the heat to high and boiled the liquid down until the sauce was thickened.
i made a parmesan and asparagus risotto to go with it, so we had the ribs with the risotto and the reduced sauce on top. the ribs were fantastic, extremely tender, coming clean off the bone, but not falling apart. the ribs had a great flavor, but the sauce really set them off, with the concrated flavors of the bourbon, veggies, herbs, and stock. all in all, i was extremely pleased and am excited to try it again.
here's the ingredients as i made it:
3 large beef short ribs, salted and left uncovered in fridge overnight
about 200 mL of bourbon
about 2 cups of beef stock
2 tbsp olive oil for browning ribs
4 cloves of garlic
2 cups chopped carrots
1 cup chopped leaks
1 cup chopped celery
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
2 tsp ground thyme
2 tsp ground black pepper
1 bay leaf
