Creekside Short Ribs ( or How I finally truly learned to make beef)

Creekside Farm Beef Short Ribs

6 servings

3 pounds bone-in beef short ribs

3 tablespoons butter

1 large sweet onion, halved and sliced

2 fooled you jalapeno peppers *

1 carrot thinly slice

1 clove minced garlic

dash thyme

2 tablespoons flour

1 1/2 cups beef broth

1 tablespoon of "better than boullion" beef (what I call liquid cow)**

1/2 cup dry red wine

2 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Place ribs on a rack in a shallow roasting pan.  Roast  30 - 40 minutes until browned, turing once halfway through.

While that is roasting, in a dutch oven, heat butter over a medium heat.  Add onion, jalapeno, and carrot. Cook  and stir util tender, about 10 minutes.  Add garic and thyme and cook another minute to release the garlic fragrance. Stir in the flour until well blended. Gardually stir in the broth, liquid cow and wine. Add the parsley.

Transfer the ribs to the dutch oven.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer,covered, 2 - 2 1/2 hours until the meat is tender.

* Fooled you Jalapenos are one of the many peppers we grow out here at Creekside farm. They look like any other jalapeno but do NOT have the heat. Then why bother you ask? The jalpeno flavor adds a zip of fresh bright green flavor to what ever you add them too.  I pickle them for sandwiches, nachos, pizza, salads, really the list is endless.

**I've mentioned this product before. Better than Boullion is in your soup aisle at the store and comes in chicken, beef and veggie.  It is a semi liquid concentrate that adds flavor like crazy.  

Creekside Tomato Salad

 At long last I am posting recipes from our summer "Welcome to Creekside" party.  Yeah for retirement!

  A few weeks before our party last summer, David and I vacationed just outside Ojai, California for  family reunion at my sister Pat's  house. While there, she served a wonderful tomato salad served over cold pasta. I put over my spinach salad too and decided that this was what I wanted to serve our guests.

  I changed Pat's recipe only with the addition of the motzerella balls.  Shortly after food was set out one of our guests, Suzanne, saw it and immediately recognized it as Caprise Salad.

  Call it what you like, this is bright and fresh and screams "SUMMER!"

Creekside Tomato Salad

Serves 4

3 or 4 large tomatoes. Dice these into about 1/2 inch pieces and keep all the juices too

1 cup of rinsed basil.  Cut this into ribbons.

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1/2 cup good quality olive oil

1 cup crumbled feta cheese

1 cup fresh motzerella balls, halved

Mix all together in a large bowl and let marinate at roome temperature for at lest 6 hours.

Serve over cold cooked tube pasta, like a ziti or a penne.  This is also wonderful poured over a garden fresh salad.

Simple Pickle Slaw

Crunchy fresh with a bite of vinegar and a happy sweet finish. Make this as a garnish or use it wherever pickles might be used. This is so very simple:

Slice the skin off of a fresh slicing cucumber, leave a bit of skin if you like. Then thin slice the skinned cucumber using a mandolin or other grater. (Long strips are better than short ones. Thin is the thing.) If you must, use a sharp knife or even a potato peeler, just try to be careful to keep the strips thin. Then simply toss the strips with cider vinegar, salt, and pepper. Let the mixture sit for a few minutes and then put it on, or nearby, anything.

You can make this as you get ready to prepare sandwiches. You won't get the salty bite of a store bought pickle, or the dilly deliciousness of a good home made pickle. What you will get is a sharp vinegar bite, followed quickly by a happy cucumber flavor. This will  to round out sandwiches in a new way.  You might add some crushed garlic, ground wasabi, grated horse radish, or thinly sliced onion to the mixture, but the cucumber is the king of this simple garnish.

Simple Pickle Slaw also works well as a side garnish for rice dishes and I'm told that eating this daily will keep pesky Summer mosquitoes away.