Cooking In Charleston South Carolina

Here I am in Charleston wondering what in the world I was going to write about. My wife, Charlcie and I are here for a Leadership Meeting for the Vineyard Churches. I'm sitting at a coffee shop and someone has left a local paper on the table beside me. The top headline catches my eye, "Cooking up chemistry, Food 1D." So I open to 1D and muse through the cooking section. An article about brazing short ribs catches my eye.
Now braizing is something I remember my mom doing, but I've never really done. It's great for the tougher cuts of meat. Braizing means cooking with moist heat to soften up the meat. Then I realized that cooking pot roast and cooking with a crock pot are forms of braizing.
When you're braizing, you first sear the meat and you can brown the vegetables also. This enhances the flavor and gives out the most wonderful aromatic smell (pardom my drooling).
Anyway back to the article. After you braise the meat you add a cooking liquid that usually includes an acidic ingredient like beer, wine, Italian dressing or tomatoes. Use some beef stock to almost cover the ribs.
The article mentions 2 traditonal liquids to add. First, is a standard French combination of onions, celery, carrots, garlic and thyme. This one I've seen my mom use many times. The second combination is soy, sugar, sesame seeds, oil, garlic and ginger. It also talks about a fusion flavor that sounded great. You use left over coffee, couple of chilies (mild and a chipolte), remove the seeds and stems and don't forget to wear gloves. Then you add some wine and the result is an exotic tasty dish.


To really make this dish work it needs to be cooked for at least 2 hours, 3 0r 4 would be better. You can do this the day before and then it really tastes great.