Beef ribs in red wine and pepper

SERVES 4

These are lovely rich, succulent ribs when cooked long and slow so make sure you give them the time to cook — they should be melting off the bone. Also don’t do what I did when I cooked these for about 50 people — if you fill your oven up with three trays of ribs, they are going to take a lot longer to cook than just eight ribs. I had a lot of hungry people patiently waiting for dinner and a TV producer who was getting a little cranky!

2.25 kg (5 lb) beef ribs

olive oil

6 French shallots, peeled

4 garlic cloves

1 tablespoon cracked black pepper

2 teaspoons raw (demerara) sugar

400 g (14 oz) tin chopped tomatoes

750 ml (26 fl oz) bottle good-quality red wine

3 bay leaves

1 rosemary sprig

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas 4). Trim the ribs of excess fat. Heat a splash of olive oil in a large flameproof casserole dish and heat over high heat. Brown the beef in batches on all sides. Once browned, remove from the pan then you add the shallots and garlic cloves and brown those a little also. Sprinkle with the pepper, sugar and some salt and give them a stir, then add the tomatoes. Give it all a stir and bring to the boil then add the wine, bay leaves and rosemary. Return the ribs to the pan, stir it all again and bring to the boil. Put a tight-fitting lid on the casserole dish and cook in the oven until the meat is tender, about 1½–1¾ hours.

When cooked, carefully remove the ribs and shallots from the cooking liquor, strain the liquor into a clean saucepan and simmer until it has reduced to a consistency you are happy with — probably by one-half to one-third. While the sauce is reducing, trim any gristly pieces from the ribs where the bone was attached so that all you have left are lovely pieces of meat (the fat will have rendered during the cooking leaving the skin, and the bones will have fallen out during the cooking process and have been discarded when you strained the sauce). Keep the meat warm.

Divide the meat and shallots equally between the plates, stacking the pieces nicely. Spoon the sauce around and over the meat and serve with a side of green beans. You could also serve this with a mash of some kind or even some polenta, but the rib meat is juicy, rich and fine with just the beans.