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Italian Sunday

Update (1/22/11): This short rib ragu won Food52‘s contest for Your Best Short Ribs, and will be included in their next cookbook, out later this year!

Maybe it’s the tomato tooth I was born with instead of a sweet tooth, maybe it’s the towering heels I rock when my old bones let me, or maybe it’s only that Marcello Mastroianni was perfection on two legs, but I’ve always wanted to be Italian, just a little bit.


Exhibit A: Photographic evidence of alleged perfection, minus corroborating proof of two legs.

It isn’t that I don’t love a good bowl of shrimp & grits or that I don’t get a nostalgic glow from a breakfast of couche-couche and cane syrup, but polenta has been my go-to corn base of late. And after a long work week, what could be a more welcome sight or more soul-satisfying over cheesy, buttery polenta than a ragu of braised short ribs, I ask you?

It’s a dish that’s nearly impossible to mess up, […]

More grilling? Well, if you insist…

I fully intended to give you a rundown of our July 4th menu today, complete with a couple of lovely side salads inspired by Mark Bittman’s picnics column from last week, but today’s fare was ribs and there’s just no way I can write about vegetables at a time like this.

Since I first posted about the grilled vegetable salad I found on The Kitchen Sink, it’s been a weekly fixture on our table, so I knew Kristin’s featured recipe for baby back ribs wouldn’t disappoint. As ever, through poor planning or simple willfulness, I adapted the recipe a bit, but can’t imagine them being any better even with the full complement of ingredients.

The adaptations were fairly minor, but worth pointing out. To start, as embarrassing as it is for a Southern girl to admit, I have no bourbon in the house. Lucky for me, there is a lot of Jack leftover from some party or other, so that went into the glaze instead.

Though I seem to have an extremely well-stocked spice rack (okay, […]