Oxtail

Until a couple of years ago, nobody under 40 really seemed to know about oxtail, resigned to the yellowing pages of dated cook books and plagued by memories of “harder times”... But thanks to a pesky dip in the global economy and an insatiable appetite for all things retro, oxtail has made one hell of a comeback as the saviour of frugal feasting, the one nominated for every penny pinching prize going and it now reigns supreme as king of kitchen economy. But until last weekend, I am ashamed to say I had never actually cooked it. Eaten yes, many a time, and many a time vowed to go home and recreate the thrifty masterpiece, but somehow I have never got round to it, until now. My grandmere, a grande dame of the highest order, bought a whole oxtail for my student brother who forgot (I suspect on purpose) to take it back to university with him. As luck (or fate) would have it, I became the proud owner our home-grown hero and this is what I did with it. It is an attempt to recreate I delicious oxtail number I had last week at Albertine, (1 Wood Lane, W12 7DP, 5 stars from me), and it was a pretty good replica. I served mine with mushed up butter beans, shallots, cream and spring onions, but any anaemic looking carb would do just as good a job methinks, if not better.

Braised Italian Oxtail

What you need:

Oxtail, about 2kg / 10 pieces – looks a lot, but 90% is bone, chopped into chunks

A couple of some, or all of these: carrots, onions (essential), celery, shallots all peeled and chopped into manageable chunks

Tomato puree, about a third of a tube

6/7 garlic cloves

Chicken stock, maybe a litre (whatever you have and then just top up with water, nobody will know)

Good slosh of red wine

1 tin of tomatoes

Chilli flakes, teaspoon

French mustard

Thyme

Plain flour

S+P

Patience

A big pot, preferably heavy based and oven proof.

And whatever you want to serve it with – spud, butter beans, polenta, big hunk of bread

Heat a little oil in the pan, and when beginning to sizzle, brown your oxtail chunks. When browned, set aside and sauté your veggies. They don’t have to totally soften, because my word there is plenty of time for that later, but just warm them up, point them in the right direction. Then introduce tail to veggies, and veggies to tails. Now I think its about now you do the flour bit, but flour is a bit controversial. This next sentence may well banish me from certain cooking establishments for life (my grandmother’s for certain), but I think its fine... so now sprinkle your happy veggie-tail party with maybe two tablespoons of plain flour, just so it coats them all in a light but sticky floury mess– this is to thicken things up a bit so you have more of a stew than a soup. Next up are the cloves of garlic (whole and with skin on is fine), thyme, chilli flakes, massive dollop of mootard, healthy slosh of red wine, tomatoes, and chicken stock – all in the pot. The idea is that everything is submerged so if you need to add a bit of water from the kettle in order to hit the plimsoll line, do it. On the hob bring to a gentle simmer then, if you are using an oven proof pot put into a pre-heated oven (sorry forgot to say – preheat the oven to 160 degrees), and if you don’t have an oven proof pot then you will have to do it on the hob – very low temperature and the occasional stir. Now all you have to do is wait. And wait. For about 2 ½ hours. I am sure you are more than capable of entertaining yourself but may I suggest that alongside watching the next three episodes of Mad Men you listen to this:


So great.

In the near 3 hours past, your funny looking lumps of cow tail should have morphed into the holy grail of frugal feats…soft, tender meat that Falls. Off. The. Bone. Very easy to verify – hoik one out and have a pick at it with a fork. If it flops off lazily, you my friend are at the last hurdle, you may pass go and you may collect £200. If things are still looking a bit tough and chewy then I’m afraid its back of the queue for you and another half an hour. However hungry / bored of waiting you may be, I think you really have to stick it out – tough oxtail is not something you want to be wasting your precious time on, in fact I think it would be hard to over-cook it as long as there is sufficient liquid (oh that’s another thing I forgot to say– check liquid levels are high throughout).

Almost there, but one last kind of fiddly hurdle. The picking off of the meat. This is optional, but you are going to have to do it either way, you’ve already spent a day on this, so whether you do it now or later when its on your plate andallyouwanttodoisshovelinamounthful, is really neither here nor there, but I’d do it now. So it is a bit of a faff, not sure what the accepted method is, but I just took the lumps out, left them too cool for ten minutes and then picked the meat off with my (clean) hands. In the ten minute wait you could scoop off the excess fat from the sauce left in the pan. Return picked meat to sauce and reheat.

Et voila, there it was - my very first oxtail supper. Delish. Think I'm going to try an oxtail curry next time.