Delicious as it is, the idea of spending two days cooking cassoulet won’t get too many of us excited. The good news, though, is that we’ve had at least half a dozen attempts at this dish over the past few months, and while traditionalists won’t like that fact that we’ve settled on store-bought confit duck and tinned cannellini beans, we’ve managed to get the total cooking time down to just over three hours.

Patience! That’s the secret ingredient here. Long, slow cooking coupled with the best quality short ribs you can lay your hands on will result in ribs that are a little charred and sticky on the outside, but with meat so tender that it will literally melt when you finally touch it!