Easy Short Ribs

“And while you’re at the store, see if they have some nice looking short ribs.” Twenty minutes later: “How many short ribs do you want?” “About two pounds.” And my cooking partner came home with three ribs totaling two and a half pounds. I’m used to seeing them cut into three- or four-inch lengths, but these were nine-inch whoppers. Good thing I have my Everyday Pan.

We had the ribs with whole green beans and potatoes mashed with parsley and dry mustard. Mm-mm.

1. Start the pan on high heat for browning.


2. Grind enough garam masala to coat the ribs.


3. Add a couple tablespoons of oil (I used sesame) to the hot pan.


4. Rub the ground spices on all sides of the ribs.


5. When the oil is very hot, start browning the ribs. Brown on all sides. Take your time: about 30 minutes overall.
   (Most recipes remove the ribs at this point and brown chopped carrots, onions, and celery. Considering those veggies are already in most recommended broths, it seems double duty to me).


6. Add liquid.
   I used about 20 oz. of water and a couple tb. cream of balsamic. Use your imagination: do a wine reduction; veal stock is recommended; other stocks work, too.


7. Cover and simmer for 2 hours
   OR
   Cover and bake at 350º for 2 hours.


8. Add pared vegetables. Potatoes, carrots, onions are common.


9. Cover and cook for another ½ hour.


10. Remove ribs and make a pan gravy from the juice.

Pesto Pasta

Thanks to AeroGrow, I have fresh basil in my kitchen, usually more than I know what to do with. The other day, though, I decided to make some pesto.

I usually avoid using a food processor because of the inconvenience it causes in my too-small kitchen, but I didn’t really want to chop a packed cup of basil, so I hauled it out and it did a rather nice job. There are lots of variations on pesto, but this one was the classic basil, pignolia, garlic, oil, salt, and pepper. I didn’t add cheese because I wasn’t sure whether I would freeze it and the hard grated cheeses don’t freeze that well.

It called to me from the refrigerator the very next day, so I was glad I hadn’t frozen it. Ah, yes, I will make some pasta with pesto, a few nice shrimp, and those lovely fresh green beans I just bought. And then…no long pasta in the larder! Who doesn’t have linguine, or vermicelli, or angel hair, or something long in the pasta spot? Argh! I don’t’ know why I have a minor aversion to short pasta with pesto, but I had my heart set enough on this meal to temporarily ignore it.

The only grating cheese I had was asiago, so the pesto became a variation I hadn’t heard of, but tasted quite good nonetheless. The beans and the shrimp were steamed (separately) then tossed in plain butter: between the pesto and the herb garlic bread, the nose had quite enough to do with this meal.

Roast Peppers

Rant Alert: to skip this little diatribe, go directly to the next paragraph. Why do produce suppliers feel the need to affix an adhesive label to every individual piece of fruit or vegetable? They’re such a nuisance to peel off, and if you forget, and wash the produce first, you have to wait until it’s thoroughly dry to remove the label or it will merely shred. A sign in the produce department saying, “Florida Oranges,” “produto de Brasil” or “Mexican Peppers” would suffice. Yet another example of America’s obsession with excessive labeling.

Fairly often, the Woodmans where I shop has clearance produce. Grocery carts full of bulging produce bags for seventy-nine cents each. Saturday, they had both green peppers and bananas in the clearance carts. That’s nearly four pounds of whopping great peppers, suitable for stuffing, at half a pound apiece. Yes, eight huge peppers for under a buck. I also picked up a bag of bananas weighing in at 3-3/4 pounds, mostly ripe, a few partly green, so I see banana bread in my near future.

Most people, when pondering a plethora of prodigious peppers would probably be tempted to stuff them in one way or another; not me. I’m rather cool toward stuffed peppers (except jalapeños stuffed with cream cheese, but that’s a different topic), and rather keen on roasted peppers. Rarely am I without a few in the freezer and I resort to the jarred form only when a large number is required (when serving Italian beef to a couple dozen people).

Usually I roast the peppers on the grill, but I wanted to try out my electric oven and see how it would do in this application. I had more than one panful and I suppose I could’ve just set both ovens to broil, but that seemed a bit excessive at first blush. So I looked up some instructions for roasting peppers in electric ovens and they were, basically, set the oven to 400º F (205º C), put the peppers on a foil-lined pan, and roast, turning every so often until all sides blacken a bit. (The method I use on a grill is to oil the peppers first, but I’m not sure that really serves a purpose, so I decided to roast them dry this time.)

Well, I messed up a little, but here’s how it went.

Lovely peppers ready for the oven.

I put the peppers in and waited for fifteen minutes. Nothing. So I wondered, if you can grill them and broil them, why set the oven temperature so low? Let’s crank it up to 450º. Finally, one turned a little brown, and then…

Oops…THAT’s not supposed to happen.

The burst skin really wasn't a big deal. The underlying flesh did not scorch, so all was well. After about twenty minutes of turning the peppers to char all the sides, I removed the peppers to a large bowl, covered them, and let them steam for about fifteen minutes; use plastic wrap if your bowl or pot doesn’t have a lid. This steaming finishes cooking the pepper and makes the skin that’s not burnt easier to remove.

Why you line the pans.

Ugly peppers before they transform into lovely condiments.

After steaming, the work begins.

If you want to keep the tasty juice, start by popping the top off of a pepper and inverting it over a cup.

Peel the skin from the pepper.

Remove the seeds and ribs.

Ugly peppers transformed into beautiful condiment.

Usually I quarter the peppers and freeze them about two peppers to a bundle in plastic wrap and then put the bundles into a freezer bag. But today I was running a little late, so I poured the reserved juice over the peppers and put the bowl in the fridge to keep until I can finish up. It’s amazing how time flies even when you’re not working!

A few of the green peppers, with much thicker flesh than the others, failed to cook all the way through, and their skins were a little hard to remove. Other than that, the oven method seems to work alright, but I still prefer the grill.

The knife making a guest appearance in this post is one of my favorites: a Kershaw parer that I bought on EBay several years back.

By the way, I thought it safe to use a nylon cutting board because I would just be removing the ribs and seeds, with no cutting against the board to dull the knife blade. So the knife is fine, but the red pepper stained the board badly. I'm going back to wood for all cutting applications. I have bleach, and I know how to use it!

Wouldn’t You Know?

I was looking forward to the down time afforded by the end of my last contract. My last day of work was Tuesday, September 30th. Guess what followed my partner home from work like a puppy that Friday: a cold virus! Sure, we can keep him, Honey.

We’ve both been under the weather for two weeks. I’m one of those people who get knocked flat on their butts by colds. The last time I had to work through a cold, I did so with copious amounts of DayQuil and NyQuil…when they still had pseudoephedrine in the formulas. They worked great. The newer formulas? Not so much. Well, I’m not one of those people who reach for a drug at the merest sign of discomfort, so with no requirement to buck up, I’d just as soon stay drug free this time and just deal with it.

I’m at the stage where my head is cloudy and my balance is a little off: like being on a boat. Pretty sure recovery is just around the corner. Still looking forward to that down time...the relaxing kind.

Fire!

A combination of attitudes usually prevents me from answering my phone in the car: drivers on the phone are even less considerate than the rest of the Chicago metro driving population and I am determined not to become like them, I can do without being connected to the possibility of human contact 24-7, and my phone is set to vibrate because I have no need of yet another source of aural stimulus…hmm….

That’s why I was in the parking lot at work on Wednesday morning when I finally got the message that the office was shut down by water damage sustained when the sprinklers put out a fire on Tuesday night. No one was injured. The fire was limited to a handful of cubicles on the second floor, and my first floor cubicle, along with all the others in that wing of the building, was off limits until the insurance inspectors could assess the damage. It might be days.

Timing

Last week I learned that my contract would end on September 30. Yesterday, with only ten billable days to go, the office was shut down because of fire damage; when I got home, the phone was blinking because a contracting firm had called to see whether I was available. Life is good.

Well, not that good. They wanted someone who could start Monday for a two-days-a-week job. I’m all for working fewer hours, but not that many fewer.

I’m looking forward to some down time. It’s not the work or the people…they’re both good…it’s the drive that has been sapping my energy these last couple of months. I have in the past finished up a contract one day and started a new one the next, but right now I need a little chill.

Looking back, it seems the process of finding a contract position starts like this: you find several prospects, and each prospect falls into one of several categories, although which category a specific prospect belongs to is not always immediately ascertainable.

The bulk of positions result from the panicked realization that the workload and deadline far exceed the company’s capacity. “Holy cow, we needed someone to start this three weeks ago!” These are recognizable within minutes of first contact with the client.

The non-position is the result of unfeasible projects. These prospects usually bring you through the interview stage, after which you learn that the company decided to either postpone or abandon the project. The panicked-realization project sometimes goes this route.

The half-price contract falls under the auspices of engineering in companies where the engineers in charge look upon professional writing as something that doesn’t involve much skill because it’s not engineering. (An example of this would be the Suburban Hausfrau’s “Old Company.”)

The future contract is the one that gets tangled up in HR or legal red tape for so long after the interview that you may no longer be available when the company is ready to move forward. If only these were easy to spot, I could take two weeks off between contracts every time.

Then there’s a super category that encompasses all of the above: the big-house prospects. The client contacts several contracting firms, large and small. Within hours, the job posting appears, with identical wording, on five job boards; two more within two days; two more within a week. You know they’re all offering different rates, so you respond to all of them and hope you can negotiate the highest rate possible with whomever contacts you. And your silent phone just stares at you.

Change

Early last week the manager I’m working for told me that my contract would be terminated at the end of the month. Due to budget constraints, most contractors are being let go. She is not happy about it, as there is still much work to do, nor is the engineering manager whose product my writing projects support. There is so much work, in fact, that the company could use another permanent writer.

They acquired a company out East, and its products are complex enough to be supported by two whopping documents and several smaller ones, as well as an online help system, all of which are grossly out of date with some documents going back to 2002. Most were in the process of being updated when the writer left, as people will do when their facility is about to close its doors and move several states away. No replacement was hired to fill the writer’s position.

Déjà vu struck when the engineering manager was opining that these manuals are so important that he would talk with his veep to see if they could come up with some creative ideas to keep the project going. No matter what company you go to, people deem their departments, functions, or products essential, and disagree with management’s decisions about where and how deep cuts should have been made…usually without any idea of the input and logic behind the decision process. I suppose it’s human nature to want to believe that your work matters at least as much as the next guy’s. But, regardless of all the second-guessing of the executives and their rationale, it’s their decision to make.

It actually comes at a very good time for me, psychologically if not financially. When I approached the contracting firm about this job in March, I knew it was a commute that I could not sustain over the long haul, and I said so. The contract was to be two to three months, and I knew I could endure it for that long. It has been six months and I’ve been approaching my limit for some time, even though I’ve been working from home one day a week. A few weeks ago, I broached the subject of working more than one day from home and was told that one day was all the director allowed, which is, of course, her prerogative. But it’s a showstopper for me. Early this month, I had decided to give notice and be finished no later than end of next month, so the cutbacks indeed came at a good time.

I did plant the bug in the writing manager’s ear that should the company realize that the current writing staff is insufficient, I know someone who might be interested in a permanent position. The Suburban Hausfrau lives up that way…