Sopa de Res

Ingredients

• 1 kg beef short ribs, cut into pieces
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 large onion, quartered
• 6 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 green pepper, roughly chopped
• 2 celery sticks, sliced
• 2 litres beef stock
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 culantro leaves
• 400 g cassava, peeled and cut into chunks
• 300 g yam, peeled and cubed
• 250 g taro, peeled and cubed
• 250 g pumpkin, peeled and cubed
• 1 green plantain, cut into thick rounds
• 2 corn cobs, cut into thirds
• 2 carrots, cut into thick rounds
• a small handful of coriander, chopped
• 1 lime, cut into wedges
• 1 tsp black pepper

Method

1. Brown the ribs

   Heat the oil in a heavy caldero and brown the short ribs on every face, in two batches, until they are properly dark. Crowd the pan and they steam instead, and a soup built on steamed beef tastes thin no matter how long it runs.

2. Sweat the aromatics

   Lower the heat, add the onion, garlic, green pepper and celery to the same fat and stir for eight minutes, scraping the brown crust off the bottom as they release their water. That crust is the colour of the broth; leave it stuck to the pot and the soup stays pale.

3. Simmer the beef

   Pour in the stock, add the bay leaves and culantro, bring to a bare tremble and cover. Ninety minutes at a whisper, never a rolling boil, or the ribs tighten and go stringy instead of sliding off the bone.

   1 h 30 min

4. Skim and season

   Lift off the fat that has gathered on the surface, then grind in the black pepper and taste for salt. Season now rather than at the start: the pot has lost a third of its liquid and salt judged an hour ago would be wrong twice over.

5. Stage the viveres

   Add the cassava, yam, taro and corn first, then five minutes later the pumpkin, plantain and carrot, and simmer thirty minutes in total. Dropping them all in at once gives you cassava that is still hard while the pumpkin has dissolved into nothing.

   30 min

6. Finish and serve

   Scatter the coriander over the pot off the heat and serve with lime wedges on the side. Squeeze the lime in the bowl, not the caldero: acid in the whole pot dulls the beef by the second helping.