Sunday Dinner

Beef short ribs, horseradish skin-on smashed potatoes, and a token green salad. Tim browned off 8 pounds of short ribs and put them in a slow cooker with dried cherries, sweet onions and this
Cherry BBQ grilling sauce from American Spoon Foods. He had them in there 5 or 6 hours. Nothing like getting a rich, deeply beefy aroma wake-up slap in the face when you come out of the bedroom.

We had to skim a hell of a lot of beef fat off the sauce, but we were prepared for that from the last time we made these. That was Memorial Day Weekend, and we knew we had to do the same thing again once the weather got cold again. Today was the perfect day for meat and potatoes. Cold and so blustery the patio furniture actually got pushed around on the deck (is it honestly really time to put that stuff away?? We just got it out for the summer!) The shiny, thin layer that was left plus the collagen rich melt-in-your-mouth goodness in the slow-cooker crock: MMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Mouthfeel.

Tim even shed a few tears grating the fresh horseradish root for the potatoes. What a sensitive guy. I am sooooooo lucky.



This went pretty nicely with it all. Cherry and vanilla notes, so it went well with the beef, and then hinted at the vanilla sugar in the apple crisp we had about an hour later.





I guess it was kind of a cross between apple crisp and Brown Betty. I wanted a really crispy crunchy topping, so on top of the usual oatmeal-butter-sugar topping, I added a layer of lightly buttered whole wheat bread crumbs and demerara sugar crystals. I've had a gratin thing going all week: I think I've put toasted crumbs on top of every dish I made. Why stop at main dishes?