I was quite excited about my first opportunity to cook and consume beef cheeks (see the picture I posted, well, excitedly after a trip to Savenors). I even realized that I should make the dish over the course of two days... avoiding my normal "whoops, this took longer than I thought so now I'm eating dinner at 11:30" thing. I went shopping on Monday, carefully gathering everything I needed, and then calmly proceeded to braise said beef cheeks in wine over the course of two hours. They looked great! Fork tender would have been an understatement. I took a picture and then let the dish cool down before placing it the fridge overnight. Braises always taste better the next day, right? Last night I gently reheated the dish over very low heat and cooked some elbow macaroni to finish it off. Once everything was nice and simmering I added some chocolate, but instead of adding the 3/4 of an ounce called for in the recipe I added 3/4 of a pound. Uhm, whoops? Let me just confirm that 16 times the chocolate isn't always a good thing. If I would have been doing anything other than slavishly following the recipe (unfortunately not following it well) 3/4 of a pound would have stood out as being obviously too much... hell, I think that's more than was in my turkey mole. Independent and critical thought would have been a nice addition to my cooking regimen. Oh well... maybe next time.
If there's anything good that came out of last night's cooking fiasco it's that at least I started the cure on the pork belly I bought with the beef cheeks.
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