Comfort Food FTW this cold Sunday afternoon. I think that short ribs are perhaps my favorite cut of beef — provided you had enough time to cook it low and slow, which I did for nearly 2 and a half hours. I’ve made a number of short rib recipes before (search the site, if you are interested) but this “Provençale” version is a new one for me, with Niçois olives. I’ve served it here with Crème fraîche mashed potatoes (no recipe), but would also go well with other potato styles or even butter noodles, dumplings or Spätzle, though that wouldn’t be all that traditional.
I have mentioned this in the past: If I were to ever open a bakery (which I am never going to, so this is one of those things that I just say), I’d name it The Cheeky Little Tart. Yup, lots of multiple meanings in that name and I think it is cute. When I was trying to think of a name for this little, rustic, unadorned, plain, simple little apple pie, my brain named it The Naked Little Tart … which of course has even more meaning. 🙂 So whenever I think about it, my brain still thinks about that name, even though I guess I am going to officially call it Rustic Browned Butter Apple Tart. Either way, it is the simplest and yet most delicious pie you’ll have anytime soon. Enjoy.
Happy Obligatory Cake Day! Yes, here we are again at that one day out of the year that I really feel that I should bake a cake. This year, we have a Salted Caramel Chocolate Torte. Though I haven’t tried it all put together (clearly it hasn’t been cut yet), all the components separately were delicious, though not surprisingly, a little on the sweet side. And if I were to spend my days critiquing myself, I would say that I am still not great at frosting / decorating, but meh, it’s ok.
Starting the year off with something slightly more healthy than cookies, I’ve made granola bars. This is an all purpose recipe that lets you swap out the type of nut (almonds or pecans or cashews or peanuts) and the type of fruit (I’ve made these with dried apricots, cranberries, cherries and raisins). If you can’t find pecan butter, or if it is too expensive (because wow, it can be very expensive!), stick with almond butter as it is the most neutral of the nut butters. I’ve not tried it will sunflower seed butter, but I will eventually and will report back on that too.
A while back, I bought these noodles at Eataly. I didn’t really have a plan for what to do with them, but turns out they are pretty great for a deconstructed Skillet Lasagna. If you don’t have these small-ish noddles, you can always break lasagna noodles into pieces. Turned out pretty casual and good; a nice little riff on the standard lasagna.