Braised Beef Short Ribs, Beef Stroganoff, Catalan Beef Stew

Since I had a free weekend to cook, I decided to make Keller's Braised Beef Short Ribs. But since this dish is used in two other dishes, I decided to make a total of 3 dishes. Fun!

Braised Beef Short Ribs

Combining all the carrots, onions, leeks, thyme, and other things into a nice dutch oven.

Pour in the red wine.

And simmer it through - you'll get this nice glaze after most of the alcohol evaporates.

Lightly flour the meat and sear the sides.

Use a cheesecloth between the wine reduction and meat, pour in the beef stock, and stick the dutch oven in the oven for a few hours.

Ta-da! Braised beef... mmm.

Beef Stroganoff

Pretty mushrooms!

Chop some of the mushroom in a food processor and cook.

Making the creamy mushroom sauce!

After cooking the sauce, blend it to get a smooth consistency.

Fold some of the cooked mushroom slices (shown below) into the blended sauce.

The rest of the mushroom that weren't chopped gets cooked.

Searing chunks of the braised beef to use in the stroganoff!

Cooked and lightly buttered pappardelle - my new favorite pasta :9

Toss the pappardelle with the sauce, plate, and then top with cooked mushroom, beef cubes, parsley, and fleur de sel.

I'm updating this in class right now and it's 1pm...My mouth is salivating :( So hungry, haha.

Close-up!

Catalan Beef Stew

Pretty mise en place pictures.

Olives

Fennel bulbs

Fingerlings

Braised beef cubes

Super - pretty leeks

Blanch the leeks and fennel, and boil the fingerling with sachet.

Puree tomatoes with grater (Keller's technique) to use for the sofrito. Sofrito is a cooking base used for this beef stew and has onion, tomato, and garlic.

Cook the chopped onion in canola oil for about an hour until...

...it turns golden brown like this.

Add the tomato puree and cook for another hour, and then add the minced garlic.

Combine the blanched fennel, leeks, olives, cooked potato, beef cubs, sofrito, and juice from the braised beef dish, and cook.

And it'll look amazing like this! Plate with fennel leaves and fleur de sel.

Drool.

Roasted Pork Short Ribs, Borlotti Bean Ragú, Honey-glazed Cipollini Onions

and *special* Asparagus Salad Amuse-Bouche

My friend Daniel came up the Bay Area for the weekend and wanted to try some Ad Hoc - what better way to bring some of my friends together than a nice dinner. Here was the dinner for 4 for Daniel, Esther, Basile, and me!

Roasted Pork Short Ribs

Okay, these aren't really short ribs. The butcher in the Ferry Building apparently didn't have any :\ These are baby-back ribs, which are pretty much the same thing just longer in cut. They were still amazing so :)

Just generously season the meat with salt and pepper, and sear.

Stick in the oven to slowly cook for about 2 hours and have it sit for about 30 minutes before cutting into pieces.

So simple, but oh so good. It had a nice crust and was super moist in the inside. Mmm.

Borlotti Bean Ragu

Pretty mise en place!

Borlotti beans are no where to be found in markets! But, they were sold at the Farmer's Market. After soaking your dry beans overnight (which I didn't do), boil it down with chicken stock, carrot, leek, onion, and sachet.

Once the beans are cooked, add it to a pot of bacon slabs that were seared with butter, shallots, and thyme.

Mix and cook through!

Because the beans weren't soaked for long enough, they were obviously a little tough - sad.

Honey-glazed Cipollini Onions

After cutting the top and bottom of the onions to make flat surfaces, cook the onions in a pan with canola oil, honey, thyme, and garlic.

The honey creates a nice glaze for the onions.

The onions were soft, sweet, and deliciousss.

Amuse-Bouche

Amuse-Bouche is literally translated to "amusing the mouth" and is a single, bite-sized hors d'œuvre that's given before a meal. This was given to them before all the other parts of the meal shown above.

One of my favorite dishes in Ad Hoc, so far, was the Asparagus Salad and a had a good idea to condense it down into one bite.

Making croutons by cooking ripped pieces of country loaf in garlic oil.

Grilling smaller pieces of asparagus.

Instead of poaching a regular egg, a quail egg was used to make sure it would fit in the bite.

So cute!

Tied prosciutto into little knots and assembled all the other ingredients onto a spoon. Drizzled balsamic and olive oil. Wahlah!

The one biters were amazing just like the original dish. Definitely a great way to start of the meal because we all wanted more! Love the amuse-bouche ideas and might do them more often.