BEEF BACK RIBS AGRODOLCE
After the recipe, read a bit about the history of the cooking term “agrodolce,” from the history of cooking in ancient Rome and especially Sicily.
Photo from Alpha on flickr
RECIPE: Beef Back Ribs Agrodolce
Serves 6-8
Ingredients
Handful of dried porcini mushrooms
10-12 meaty beef back ribs (about 6 pounds), or beef short ribs in the same measure
1/2 pound guanciale, pancetta, or thick-cut prosciutto, cut into small chunks or thick sticks
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 medium onions, roughly chopped
3 carrots, roughly chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped on bias
6-8 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons tomato paste
Leaves from 3 sprigs rosemary and several branches each of thyme and sage
3 bay leaves
1 quart beef stock
2-3 cups 100 percent tart (not "black") cherry juice
1/2 cup aged balsamic vinegar (see note), or more to taste
1/2 cup honey
2/3 cup large golden raisins (sometimes called "sultanas")
1/4 cup pine nuts, lightly pan-toasted
Flat-leaf parsley leaves, chopped.
Directions
In a small heatproof bowl or cup, soak the porcini in hot liquid (you may use some of the cherry juice or the beef stock or just water) for 1/2 hour. Drain, squeeze, and rinse them, reserving the soaking liquid. Chop coarsely.
Take a large ovenproof Dutch oven or pot and, in sufficient oil and over medium-high, brown the ribs all over as best you can (the ribs' curved sides will be difficult of course). Set them aside and season generously with salt and pepper. Crisp the cured pork so that it's browned all over as well, 15-20 minutes over medium or medium-low heat. Set it aside with the ribs.
Over medium to medium-high heat, soften and turn golden the onions, carrots, celery, and garlic, making sure not to burn the garlic, adding more oil if necessary, 8-10 minutes. Add the tomato paste, herbs, and bay leaves, and then enough of the beef stock or cherry juice to deglaze the pot, turning the heat to high and scraping the pot's sides and bottom of any brown bits. Add the liquid in which the porcini had been soaked, being sure to catch any dirt from going in. To the pot, add back the ribs, porcini, cured pork pieces, the balsamic vinegar, honey, and then enough beef stock and cherry juice just to cover everything, stirring well to distribute all the ingredients.
Cover the Dutch oven or pot and bring everything to a heady simmer atop the stove, then place in a slow oven, 200-250 degrees, depending on the size of the pot and your oven, so that the braise can cook slowly for 2 and 1/2 hours. Check the braise 2-3 times during that period, stirring everything up again and distributing the flavors, adding more heated liquid if necessary.
When the beef is cooked through and beginning to separate from the bone, remove the ribs with tongs, set them aside, and strain the liquid through a large colander into a large bowl, reserving all the solids (vegetables, pork pieces, porcini). Go through the solids, removing any twigs or stems and the bay leaves. Mash half the solids into something like knobby mashed potatoes. Defat the liquid in the bowl (chilling it overnight works well; the fat rises and solidifies).
To serve: To the defatted liquid, add the golden raisins and pine nuts, heating the liquid and softening the raisins, about 20-30 minutes. Add the solids and the mash, stirring and heating through. You should now have a nice, thick, very dark sauce with which the nap the ribs and anything you serve with them. Adjust the overall seasoning for salt and pepper and especially the sweet-sour balance of the sauce, if necessary, with a bit more balsamic or honey. Garnish servings with the parsley.
Note: From Italy and elsewhere, balsamic vinegar comes in many stripes nowadays. What you're after here, for this recipe, is not the cheap, caramelized, very tart vinegar sold under the name "balsamic" (from wherever) that is thin and should be used for salad dressing only. You're after aged balsamic, which also is called merely "vinegar," but which is also more expensive, thicker, and slightly sweeter than the other stuff. Sometimes the Italians sell it as "condimento," although that term is rare. (If you see a condimento for under $30 a bottle, buy it.) Aged balsamic will cost anywhere from $10-$30 for a bottle sized 8.5 ounces and up.
When he was 18, I took our son, Colin, to Sicily. We had a grand time, father and son tootling around the huge island in a rented Fiat. We stayed in the southern town of Agrigento and went, one day, to the village of Corleone to see where Vito lived before he grew up to be Marlon Brando. We ate so much seafood that I needed gills to breathe.
But one dish I remember above all was a plate of veal ribs “agrodolce,” a treatment that I discovered later to be typically Sicilian. About agrodolce (which translates directly from the Italian as “sour-sweet”), Waverly Root in his classic “The Food of Italy” writes, “Agrigento cooks wild rabbit”—or veal ribs—“in an agrodolce sauce, of which the sweet element is composed of a mixture of honey and sugar, and the sour of a blending of vinegar and lemon juice.”
In our country, this balance of sweet and tart you will find most often in Sicilian caponata, the island’s famed pastiche of eggplant, olives, celery, and capers. Caponata isn’t caponata if it isn’t agrodolce.
Many culinary folk cite the influence of North African Arabs on the pervasiveness of agrodolce in Sicilian cooking—The Prophet, Mohammed, loved vinegar—but it’s also true that the entirety of what came to be called Italy rarely differentiated between sweet dishes and savory the way that we do. The lively, succulent balance of both sweet and sour in the same dish was a mainstay of Old Rome, indeed of all of the ancient Mediterranean and The Levant.
A few months ago, I taught a class on “Honeybees and Honey,” being gifted at my residence by the presence of two large hives and their thousands of working women. For dinner, I served those attending a turn on that wonderful dish from Agrigento, Sicily, that Colin and I had enjoyed so many years ago, this time made with some terrific beef back ribs, using recipes from Italy and Australia that date back decades. What a delicious braise; I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
I suggest making these beef ribs agrodolce one or two days ahead. That way, defatting the liquid is much easier, and the flavors will develop and merge even more deliciously.