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Again and Again and Again
I’ve been struggling with short ribs lately. The first time I set them on fire, butcher paper was the culprit. Nothing wrong wrapping with butcher paper, unless you’re cooking over direct flame, which I was. The second time, the ribs weren’t wrapped, but I’d recently added a log to the coal basket. In this particular instance, the ribs themselves caught fire. The following week, I ignited a pineapple top, again due to proximity to live fire. Salt and pepper needs to be a particular size. Not sure why, but it does. Roasting corn directly on the coals, a noble pursuit, works best with the entire husk, not the partially trimmed, “it looks prettier this way” version. Wait till the end to add sauce to whatever you’re making, or it’ll burn. And if you do opt for sauce, don’t add it while the meat’s over a direct flame. You’ll end up with smoke in your eyes, swooning. Having a dedicated prep area is also a great idea. That way, you won’t drop three cans of various size and pain quotients on the same foot in rapid succession.
I’d like to say that these pearls of wisdom accumulated over a period of many years of experience. Truth is, I make so many barbecue errors, I can’t keep track of them all. The mistakes I’m calling your attention to occurred in a ten day period. If I were to extend our focus beyond those ten days, I could include other, less dramatic missteps. I’m purposely leaving out the triumphs, in service of a greater point. When we take on challenges, we might be starting from zero. We can imagine ourselves up on stage, shredding that lead guitar, but the journey starts with tens or hundreds of thousands of sour notes. The barbecue journey begins with bitter smoke that makes our food taste like smog. I’ve got close to three quarters of a million photos on my computer. Most of those photos are godawful. With time and consistent effort, we improve. Maybe we never get to where we imagined we’d be, but we gradually notice the chicken doesn’t taste like smog any more, and that small adjustment we made in the way we photograph has created a noticeable improvement.
Mastery takes time. We all know people who’ve been perfecting their craft from a very early age. Some of us are late to the game, but we’re full of passion. We make up for lost ground through consistent effort and talent we didn’t know we had. We might never catch up to the ones who started ahead of us, but so what? Pick up that guitar and start working your way through the sour notes. You just might surprise yourself.
Musical Moment
Where are you going? How will you get there? Who’ll be on the journey with you? What happens if you fall?
Kick Some A**
Our next workshop, “If You’re Not Kicking Your Own A**, Somebody Else Will,” is taking place next Monday, July 18, 10am at Classic Coffee in Glendora. Self-discipline might be the trickiest discipline of all, so we’ve got to be tricky right back.