Jubilee Short Ribs

Some recipes naturally lend themselves to introspection.

These short ribs, for instance. All told, you’ve got about 4-4 ½ hours on your hands, most of that inactive cooking time. The first thing to do with all that time, of course, is to stay ahead of your dishes. But even then, you may find yourself with a glass of wine, leaning against the counter, listening to Joni Mitchell and letting a few things simmer in your mind (not to mention your Dutch oven).

First, are you a wine bottle half-empty or half-full kind of person? This one will present itself pretty quickly after you’ve misread the cookbook font and opened an extra bottle of wine. The difference between 3 cups of wine and 5 cups of wine is perspective. Perhaps opening the extra bottle will annoy you. It’s a waste of your careful planning, a waste of money, and perilously close to a waste of wine! But if, on the other hand, a glass of red on a cold and lonely COVID winter night sounds like the right kind of company, then you’re in luck! Lemons and lemonade, as they say. Or in this case, grapes and wine. 

An hour and another mistake later, you may find yourself pondering nihilism. If you accidentally pour in all the molasses, is everything doomed?  3 hours into a 4-hour recipe and close to 8 pm, there’s certainly no turning back. Was it all pointless? Was killing time with culinary indulgences (4 pounds of short ribs for one person, mind you) just a distraction from the banality of another Saturday night in COVID? In life? Before you spiral into philosophical oblivion, consider instead that all of the molasses was going to end up in the same pot anyway. In the grand scheme of things, adding a cup of molasses 30 minutes ahead of time is hardly consequential. There, now you can think about all your actions and consequences instead. (Good thing that second bottle of wine is still open). 

So, the next time you’re waiting for your short ribs to fall off the bone, consider this: if any given issue is surmountable, was there ever an issue at all?

Recipe from Toni Tipton-Martin’s cookbook Jubilee.