First Dinner Back, Or, The Comfort (Foods) of Home

For our first meal back from vacation, I cooked the above-pictured pasta dish. The recipe is officially titled "Slow-Cooked Meat Ragu" but we just call it "The Sauce" chez nous. It's from my doughty copy of the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, which is foolproof and, in my house, splattered with enough different types of foodstuffs that its pages would provide you sustenance throughout a Gobi desert crossing. This recipe is one of my all-time favorites. It's simple and every one of its (few) ingredients are nonperishable pantry-type items. Here's how you make it:

Ingredients:
1.5 pounds beef short ribs
Olive oil
One minced/chopped onion
1/2 cup red wine
One 28-ounce can of diced tomatoes.

You brown the short ribs in the olive oil for ten minutes, then remove them from the pan. You saute the onions in that same pan for five minutes. Add the wine and reduce to a glaze (2-4 minutes). Dump in the can of tomatoes and return the meat and accumulated juices. Bring to bubbling, cover, and let simmer for about 2 hours. Shred the meat and remove the bones. Serve over pasta - I use rigatoni but any "short" pasta works well (penne, farfalle, etc.). Top with grated parmesan.

So simple! So easy! You can vary the fat content of the sauce by removing as much of the remaining beef juice from the pan as you like before adding the onions. The quality of the short ribs makes a big difference in this recipe. I've tried meat from every grocery store in town and find that the Whole Foods short ribs trounce every other ribs in this recipe, but since the amount of meat is relatively small, the dish is still not a budget-buster. I keep this meat in the freezer at all times so I can bust out The Sauce on pretty short notice. A green salad and nice baguette would make this a swell dinner-party dish, and it makes the whole house smell delish. Sometimes I get crazazy and use canned fire-roasted tomatoes. A little bit of red pepper flakes might give it a pleasant little kick.

The longer you cook this sauce, the more tender and falling-apart the meat will be. Two hours usually makes it shreddable into soft cat-whiskers. It tastes just as good leftover. Can a recipe save the world? If so, this might be the one. Unless you are vegetarian, in which case I got nothin'.