Pepper Cream Shorties & Cacio e Pepe Mash

Tastes like home.

“Copious amounts of peppercorns, rich beef sticky and tender, and creamy mash: something so deeply comforting you could eat it with a spoon straight from the pot. It is rich, comforting, a little nostalgic, and absolutely meant to be eaten with people you love.“

Lucy Tweed says…

I have to be honest: I am not a bougie believer when it comes to pies. What I love is the old school bakery version I grew up with in the Hunter Valley. A doughy bottom pastry soaked with glossy gravy; a flaky lid you can peel away in layers; and that final layer where the pastry meets the meat, staying just slightly underdone in the most satisfying way.

That kind of pie means many things to me. It reminds me of swimming carnivals in over-chlorinated pools, the smell of black ants racing across hot concrete carrying crumbs back to their nests, and sticky clay squishing between your toes after a swim in the dam. It reminds me of the rhythm of country childhood. One cartoon episode on television in the afternoon. Rage on in the early morning hours. Long days outside.

Cooking has always been deeply connected to my sense of home. I grew up on a small farm where food came directly from the ground or the paddock. Vegetables arrived with dirt and worms encased between leaves. Milk came from the self-serve dairy vat with a thick cap of cream on top. My mum cooked instinctively, leaning towards Mediterranean and Paleo styles of wholefood cooking long before those words were labels.

Then every second weekend I would visit my dad in Sydney, and suddenly food opened up in a completely different way. We explored Chinatown dumpling houses, Vietnamese bakeries, Portuguese chicken shops, Viennese schnitzel joints and tiny restaurants I couldn’t pronounce at the time. Between those two worlds I learnt that food could be both deeply simple and endlessly curious.

Food is always about adventure and sharing, and so many of my recipes simply follow the desire to satiate a craving. I search for the perfect balance of desirably deep umami, salt balancing savoury, a bite of bitterness, well-rounded sweetness and the perfect ping of tangy acid. The search for ingredients, the process of cooking, the texture outcome and of course how and where you will eat this make up 85 per cent of cooking enjoyment for me.

When I set out to make a pie-inspired stew for my book, this dish nailed all of my favourite flavours. Copious amounts of peppercorns, rich beef sticky and tender, and creamy mash: something so deeply comforting you could eat it with a spoon straight from the pot. It is rich, comforting, a little nostalgic, and absolutely meant to be eaten with people you love.

Ingredients

Serves 4

1.2kg (about 4 large pieces) bone-in beef short ribs
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup finely chopped brown onion
6 small French shallots, peeled and halved lengthways
1½ tablespoons finely chopped garlic
2 teaspoons black peppercorns, cracked in a mortar and pestle or coarsely ground
2 teaspoons green peppercorns in brine, drained
1 teaspoon mustard powder
2 tablespoons plain (all-purpose) flour
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups beef stock
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon chopped rosemary leaves
1/4 cup thickened (heavy) cream, to finish

Cacio e Pepe Mash

1.2kg (about 8 cups) floury potatoes, peeled and chopped
80g unsalted butter
110g finely grated pecorino
60ml thickened (heavy) cream

Pickled Red Onion Topping

1 small red onion, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon white (granulated) sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 160°C fan-forced. Season the short ribs with salt. Heat the olive oil in a large ovenproof pot over medium–high heat. Brown the ribs on all sides until golden, then set aside.

Add the onion and shallot to the pot and cook for 6–8 minutes until softened and just starting to caramelise. Add the garlic, black peppercorns, green peppercorns and mustard powder, stir them through and cook for 1 minute. Sprinkle the flour in and stir through. Add the wine and let it bubble for 2 minutes, stirring and scraping up any sticky bits from the base of the pot. Pour in the beef stock and Worcestershire, then add the bay leaf and rosemary. Return the ribs to the pot, bring to a simmer, cover tightly, then transfer to the oven.

Braise for 2-3 hours or until the beef is spoon-tender.

For the cacio e pepe mash, boil the potatoes in salted water until tender. Drain and mash, or pass through a potato ricer. Fold in the butter, pecorino and cream. Taste and season with salt and pepper.

For the topping, toss the onion with the vinegar, sugar and salt in a bowl. Set aside for at least 20 minutes.

For the final 20 minutes of braising the beef shorties, uncover to reduce the sauce slightly. Right at the end, add the cream and stir it through. Serve the mash topped with the short ribs, sauce and pickled onion on the side.

TENDER: WARM-HEARTED BRAISES, SOUPS, CURRIES RAGUS + MORE BY LUCY TWEED IS OUT NOW.

Published in ed#759

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