A Hard Sear
Short ribs for summer, a book to break your heart and sexy french lingerie
Highly Enthused is a newsletter, once a podcast, concerning all the best things to consume in life. It’s written twice per month by Sophie McComas-Williams and Sophie Roberts, and today’s dispatch is written by SoRo! The majority of each newsletter is free, but there are five extra recs in each for paid subscribers. That’s often where the gold nuggets lie. Thanks for being here!
Well 2025 has kicked off with a roar not a whimper! Over the space of this first quarter I’ve had my partners 40th birthday party, and actual birthday (happy birthday Andrew!), have to plan and book our two weeks in Japan (the most disorganised I’ve ever been for a holiday), then we have to go to Japan where Andrew will run the Tokyo marathon, and when we get back we’ve got my youngest sisters’ wedding (gotta help my other sister plan a hens party in there somewhere, and oh yeah, find a bridesmaids dress). Also did I mention I have a full time job? I’m tired.
In between googling ryokans in Kyushu and browsing dresses on The Outnet and keeping up with my one chapter of War and Peace a day I have still managed to sneak in a few long lunches, afternoons on the couching reading, and hours spent rewatching season 1 of Severance. Hoping quarter two will slow all the way down.
High summer doesn’t usually scream “short rib weather”, seeing as they’re the kind of thing you’re normally braising for hours until they fall apart into fatty, savoury, silky deliciousness. But the other day they were on special at the butchers and Alison Roman’s recipe for Seared Shortribs with Kimchi popped into my head. I bought four ribs for the two of us and had enough for two full meals.
The premise is simple, basically you’re treating the ribs like they’re a steak. You season them with salt, pepper and brown sugar, give them a hard sear on the bbq or a grill pan (exhaust fan on high please) until the sides are all dark and caramelised and they reach an internal temp of 57°C. (Get one of these and change your cooking life). We put some whole scallions on the grill at the same time and let them get really blackened. Throw some rice in the rice cooker while you’re at it. Then it’s simple - grab some good store bought kimchi, slice up some cucumbers and soft herbs, mix up some gochujang and sesame oil and arrange it all on a plate with some soft lettuce. After they’ve rested, cut them off the bone and slice the ribs as thin as you can with a sharp knife. Take it all to the table and prepare yourself for a salty, spicy, tangy, delicious, meaty meal. The leftovers we had in a kind of Vietnamese rice noodle salad the next day!
Small Rain is a very contained story. It follows our unnamed protagonist as he has an extreme medical crises during the first year of the pandemic, and is admitted into the ICU where he spends the next few weeks as the doctors try to stabilise him and determine the cause of the problem. But though the plot is small, the book feels large.
I have read two of Garth Greenwell’s previous auto-fiction novels following a young gay man living and teaching English in Bulgaria. I enjoyed those novels - there are scenes from his first, What Belongs To You, that still flash into my mind from time to time - but this third book cracked me open. I cried on public transport multiple times. There is so little contemporary literature about the experience of being gravely ill. The vulnerability of turning your body over to professionals and having to trust that they will be able to care for you when you can’t. It took me back to the weeks and months I spent with Alex in the hospital when he was sick, but it made me realise just how outside of his experience I had been. When you’re the caregiver your role is both active and passive - you have to advocate for them, you have to care for them - but ultimately you’re on the outside looking in. I was so stuck inside my own experience of fear and anxiety and love, that I couldn’t truly put myself inside his. I wish this book had been written then, though I probably wouldn’t have been able to bear reading it.
I know I’m making this sound so depressing, but it really isn’t. It touches on an experience that so many of us have been or will go through. It’s so beautiful, so profound, and so, so moving.
For most of my life I have lost sunglasses (and umbrellas) like it’s my job to distribute them randomly around the city. I’ve lost cheap pairs, I’ve lost expensive pairs. I’ve lost more pairs than I can count. I keep buying them though, and sometimes I even tempt fate and spend more than $20 on them! Enter the Gast Jan Sunglasses. They came into my life in Florence in 2022, purchased on a whim along with my favourite Italian perfume. Somehow they’re still in my possession, and thank god, because they’re my favourite pair I’ve ever owned! I have a very narrow face, and solid framed sunglasses often overwhelm me, but something about the slightly rounded angular frames work here. Handcrafted, they feel heavy and solid and incredibly well made. I’m a believer in classic shapes and styles when it comes to eye-wear (and I look ridiculous in the Y2K styles that have been in the past few years) and with luck I’m going to have these ones for a long long time.
A quick-fire rundown of the miscellaneous finds we’ve loved this month. In this edition: Cherries for your cocktails (or your ice cream), a sexy french bralette, the most useful kitchen gadget, a gluten free cookie that doesn’t suck, and a book you can gulp down in afternoon.