Little, Brown and Company, December 2009
A Nice, Simple Way to Make Short Ribs 1
4 pounds short ribs
Salt and pepper to taste
2 teaspoons crumbled dried rosemary
3 tablespoons bacon fat 2
3 cloves garlic, lightly crushed
1 small onion, cut into half rings 3
1 cup dry red wine
1 cup beef stock
Season, brown, stir, cook, serve. 4
1 There are more than a dozen recipes in Cleaving which is, in part, a book about Powell’s apprenticeship as a butcher. But it’s also about Powell’s infidelity and the way in which she clings to and destroys her marriage at the same time—cleaving in both senses of the word. Personally, cleaving is what I would like to do with Powell—I long to divorce the writing, which I enjoy, from the writer, whom I dislike (originally out of jealousy, now on moral grounds and one too many “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” references—we get it, Julie, you’re uber-cool). With fiction, it’s easy enough to separate the two; with memoir, the author is the story.
2 I became a vegetarian more than fifteen years ago, not because I care about animals or the way they live and die but because I don’t like the way they taste. It’s just easier to tell people “I don’t eat meat” instead of “I don’t like meat.” Vegetarians are respected; picky eaters are not. But I do miss bacon and hamburgers and pepperoni. More than anything, I miss being part of the community of meat eaters. Powell’s Julie and Julia, and Julia Child’s memoir, My Life in France, left me panting to whip up a beef bourguignon. Cleaving had a similar effect. Fortunately, my husband is a major carnivore—Dave’s grandfather was a butcher, he has meat in his blood—so I decided to live vicariously through him. I chose the short ribs because, per Julie, they’re cheap and simple, which mirrors Dave’s approach to food.
3I’m in charge of prepping the rosemary, garlic, and onions. Because the recipe serves four to six and Dave’s eating for one, he purchased less meat than Powell specifies, so I’m trying to precisely adjust the proportion of seasonings. “You can just wing it,” Dave says. He knows me better than that. I don’t wing things, which is why I prefer baking to cooking. It’s exact and precise. A chef once described to me the difference between the two sides of the culinary coin as such: cooks are sprinters, bakers are long distance runners. Julie Powell doesn’t like to bake; in Cleaving, she calls pastry making “my personal vision of hell.” Emotionally, I parted ways with her then and there.
4 (My abridged instructions.) The short ribs spend at least two hours in the oven, during which time I boil myself some pasta and talk on the phone with my brother, Matt, in St. Louis, while Dave falls asleep on the couch, head tilted back, eyes closed, mouth agape in a creepily corpse-like pose. This is what I cleave to.
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Patty Wetli lives in Chicago. Her work has been published in the literary magazine I Ate The Spider, and she contributes reviews to Booklist.