Pub Short Ribs for Coziness

The first chill of fall (right before that freak snowstorm) came at the right time for me to make this...

 Pub Short Ribs

From a cookbook that I have used a few times, after having bought it in one of those it's-such-a-good-deal and the-photos-are-so-pretty moments: Braises and Stews, by Tori Ritchie.

The funny thing is, I couldn't for the life of me be sure whether they were beef short ribs or pork country ribs. I know, peg me with an A for Amateur, but I checked online for pictures of both, and I just couldn't tell. Pigs can get big, right? Anyway, I finally figured it out (I hadn't asked the butcher, just pointed; David Sedaris comes to mind) by realizing that the chapter where the recipe resides is all on beef. So, for those of you may also not have known, these are beef short ribs, and so tender that they are breaking apart into their own little bit-size pieces. Glorious.
I used a regular onion because I didn't want to spend my one red onion on a slow cooker recipe, and I used not a porter or stout but some random dark beer of moderate quality that I had had in my fridge for, like, a year. I don't drink the stuff. But it was marvelous what it did for the flavor of the sauce!
Highly recommended, book and recipe. Now that it's really getting chilly, DC, go to!

Bittman, Baking, and The Best Dishes

Today, I bring you three recipes tried and news of some fun to come.

The first recipe is for "Autumn Millet Bake," the sound of which is something quite atrocious, but turned out pretty well, even with my typical tweaking tendency. I first saw the recipe at Heidi's site here, and was inspired to try something with millet: how pioneer-like! how quaint! how self-reliant! (You see how I like to get carried away with evocation)

Here were my changes:

• scaled it down by half
• used cooked squash
• didn't have sage
• added roasted corn kernels
• didn't use nuts
• added different seasoning (a disadvantage of losing my notes on this one is I can't remember which)

I don't think I managed to fully cook the millet, and I'm not sure why, but it was quite crunchy, and quite tart from the (frozen-fresh) cranberries. I had it in the morning as a whole-foods pick-me-up at work and it worked out well, providing about 4 servings (so I gather they were estimating for hungrier people in the original recipe!).

It certainly looked pretty with the colors that pop, and satisfied the belly, being made with plain foods and low in fat. If and when I try this recipe again, I would stick closer to the original and maybe cook it longer so that the cranberries had more of a chance to stew.

This next one has only one picture, because it wasn't very photogenic and it wasn't very flavorful. Strike Two (bringing the count to 1 and 2) for the Traditional Scottish Recipes book I bought in Scotland.

Third and final recipe: Italian Apple Cake, from FrenchieTBD, which stands for The Best Dishes in the title of this post. As far as I can tell, it is a defunct blog, and I often find a broken link, but some industrious fishing gets me back to the actual site and recipes. I really liked the writer's style of posting a life anecdote with a dish, so I'm bummed that she hasn't posted in a year, but what can you do: life goes on- thank goodness!

I brought this one for coworkers, and boy, was it good! Moist, as the photo shows, good browning, rich and airy crumb, and with the intoxicating scent of rum mixed in with the fresh, local apples. Ah, life is good.

And now for the news to come: I am excited to participate in the Food Blogger's Cookie Swap 2011!

I haven't decided yet what type of cookie to bake for my compatriots in the Food Blogging World, but I want it to be good! And I'd rather make an assortment of 2 or 3 types to mitigate the risk of disappointing, but we have been instructed to only use one recipe... so I guess I'll look over my recipients' blogs to see what they like!
Try this cake. You won't be disappointed.

Scottish Imitations

Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery...

 My first imitation was Millionaire Shortbread (top: mise-en-scene for the Compilation; bottom: one of several goodies on a dessert plate), but since I brought it to a party and for some reason didn't have my good blogger hat on (cell phone camera), it has gone largely uncatalogued, except in the memory of my tastebuds (and those of the party guests). But I will definitely try making it again for a gathering, just include more chocolate (the top layer swam a bit because it was too skimpy)!

For this second attempt, I went to the next favorite thing on my list of foods tried in Scotland for the first time: tattie scones. Now, I've linked both of these to the internet recipes I used for reference, but I sort of cross-referenced those with the versions in this book, which I got while I was in Inverness, but ... it has its own limitations. So I ended up doing a hybridized, as well as scaled-down, version of both these attempts, and they both came out all right: the caramel shortbread off on  some proportions, but tasting fantastic anyway, and the tattie scones lacking in shape, but tasting marvelously Scottish for a' that.

So anyway, how do ya make 'em? Basically, you boil potatoes, mash 'em up, let 'em cool, add some flour so it'll stick together, and then roll 'em out and play patty-cake. Since I am hopeless with a rolling pin, I gave it one 'old college try' then resorted to my hands and this nifty new kitchen tool that you see above: one of those slicer/scooper-up thingies. A name, anyone? I know I'm showing myself as the amateur I am, but Oh Well. I figure this tool will come in handy when another wave of bread-baking comes upon me, since dough and I have been through some interesting times...

Even with the dough slicer, the triangles I formed were less than happy to remain uniformly sized, and so it became a bit of a hodge-podge. It also took longer than the expected 5 minutes on each side to brown them up. Perhaps I should have added more flour? Or even, sacre bleu, an egg?

But here we are, with the finished product, a proper genealogy of tattie scones (you can trace it from the paleozoic era to the pliocene epoch, kids!), as, from left to right, top to bottom, I 'progressed.'

I put half away for later, stuffed myself with the other half (this girl is not used to eating a whole potato in one sitting), and happily fell asleep.