Halibut, Short ribs

Two separate recipes and meals -- not together! Just catching up.

I've written several glowing reports about Steve Sando's Heirloom Beans but the best recipe yet was his fabulous Flageolet bean and halibut stew with asparagus and parsley-mint pistou. What a great balance of flavors that brings the wonderful qualities of halibut to the forefront -- white, chunky, tasty in a non-fishy way.

First you cook the half-pound of beans, soaked overnight, in a dutch oven where you sautée two garlic cloves, a chopped celery stalk and a chopped half onion for 10 minutes, then add the beans and soaking water, bring to a boil and simmer for an hour, until the beans are almost tender.

In the meantime, make the pistou by chopping a garlic clove and salt in a food processor to make a paste. Sando specifies 1/2 c. parsley and 1/3 c. mint with 2 Tbl. of EVOO to make the pistou, but that amount is small even for my mini-food processor, so it's probably a good idea to double it and have a little extra in order to get a smoother pistou.

Preheat broiler. Add 1-1/2 lbs. halibut cut into 2-inch pieces, a large bunch of asparagus with ends removed and cut into bite-sized pieces, and an optional 3 stems of green garlic (I opted out) to the pot with beans. Submerge ingredients gently with wooden spoon and simmer on top of stove about 10 to 15 min., turning fish once carefully to not break in pieces. When asparagus is tender and fish cooked through, top with 1/3 c. toasted bread crumbs, drizzle with 1 Tbl. olive oil, and put under broiler until stew is bubbling and bread crumbs are brown. Serve in shallow bowls and garnish each portion with the pistou. Serves 4.

One of my RSS feeds came up with a recipe for Sherry-braised short ribs with autumn vegetables from The Barcelona Cookbook. It was such a hit I ordered the cookbook (the point of the exercise, I suppose).

You brine the short ribs -- they say 1 4-in. short rib per person for 6 but I did more -- in a marinade of 1 small chopped celery, 1/2 chopped carrot, 1/2 small chopped onion, 1/2 small head garlic halved (you tell me what that means, I just put in some garlic), 3 sprigs coarsely chopped parsley, 2 sprigs chopped thyme, 1 sprig chopped rosemary, 1 c. apple cider, 3/4 c. cream or other sweet sherry, 2 Tbl. sherry vinegar, 4 black peppercorns, 1 bay leaf, 2 tsp. kosher salt. Cover and refrigerate for 8 hrs. to 2 days.

Parboil and peel 2 c. pearl onions. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. The other vegetables get peeled and cut into 3/4 dice (though the book curiously does not specify this preparation for the potatoes, they certainly can't mean to leave them unpeeled and whole) -- 2 Yukon Gold potatoes, 2 parsnips, 2 carrots, 1 celery root, 1 turnip. You toss these with 3 Tbl olive oil, then salt and pepper. Spread 1 more Tbl olive oil in roasting pan and roast vegetables for 20 to 25 min., stirring after 10 min. (and rotating roasting pans if you need more than one to keep vegetables spread out).

To braise the ribs, preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix 2 c. flour, 1/2 cup paprika (not smoked paprika), 1/4 c. chili powder, 3 tsp. kosher salt, 1-1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper in a ziploc bag. Remove ribs from brine (keep the brine!), pat dry, and drop two at a time into bag to coat. Heat 3/4 c. olive oil in a roasting pan and brown ribs over medium high heat. Drain oil from pan and wipe clean. Return ribs to pan and pour 1 c. of brine and 5 c. veal stock over them. Cover with foil, bring to boil, and transfer to oven to braise 1-1/2 hrs. Remove ribs from braise and after it has cooled, strain braise. Skim fat or put into freezer to congeal fat on top. I did everything to this point ahead of time. For final assembly you raise oven to 425 degrees, put short ribs into pan with onions, veggies, strained braising liquid, bring to boil on stove and then roast in oven for 35 to 40 min. The meat is falling off the bone and the braising sauce is almost a demi-glace. Magnifique!

We served with a very nice Bradford Mountain Winery Grist Vineyard Dry Creek Valley Syrah 2006 that got 90 points from Wine Spectator and that I got at a good price from Wines Til Sold Out.