Chile-Coconut Short Ribs

When we returned from vacation last weekend, we had those post-vacation I-have-to-go-back-to-work/school blues. What better remedy than some comfort food in the form of braised beef in a tangy, spicy sauce?

So I went shopping for a few things: see my extremely fatty short ribs. My butcher asked me what I wanted to do with them, but I didn't want to shock him with the chile-coconut thing. Also, I'm not sure my French is up to describing this recipe. Especially considering that every time I order from the man, he screws up his face in intense concentration to understand what the crazy American lady wants now. Anyway, I just let him believe I was going to use the short ribs for a pot-au-feu or beef soup. That's why he gave me the marrow bone to the right: "to make the sauce more unctuous". Let me just say there was a lot of trimming involved, both before and after cooking.

And there is the cubed, trimmed meat (and marrow bone) in the pot with all the yummy aromatics: ginger, garlic, chile, lime. I only put in the juice and zest of one lime at the beginning of the cooking time, and I finished with the second lime when the meat was done. I think that freshened up the flavor. I also used a fat separator to degrease the sauce--it really needed it. Melissa may say that there's lots of "good fat" there, but I would like to respectfully disagree on that point.

I considered making the coconut rice and peas to go with the stew, as Melissa suggests, but that seemed like too much coconut for one meal. So I just made brown rice with peas. Claire objected to the rice being brown, but it was otherwise a nice accompaniment.

The verdict? The three of us who eat meat loved this. Once the meat was removed from the fat, it was fall-apart tender and delicious. And the sauce was just the right balance of spicy and tangy and sweet/creamy. There was none left after I had, ahem, cleaned the kitchen. It was a great way to ease back into the real world.