The Cottage Smallholder

A few years ago I was in Fred Fitzpatrick’s butcher’s shop and spotted a tray of oxtail. My mum was coming for the weekend and somewhere in the vague backwaters of my mind I connected her with oxtail. So I bought the oxtail and rushed home to ring her and announce that we were cooking something very special for the weekend.

She arrived in a fever of excitement. I couldn’t contain the good news until the meal.
“We’ve made you a wonderful oxtail dish.”
When I saw her back straighten and a certain stiffening of the neck, I realised that the connection was clearly negative.
“Oxtail?”
She glanced at our astonished faces and added bravely
“Never mind darling, I am sure I’ll love it.”

And she did.

We used as our starting point the Braised Oxtail recipe from Gary Rhodes New British Classics. We have experimented and played with the recipe endlessly and now I feel I can genuinely publish it as my own. The key to the success of our dish is the slow cooking. We bought an expensive marmite (a large casserole with lid) in a sale a couple of years ago. This giant saucepan is a boon. It is happy to sit in a slow oven for eight hours or on the hob with a trickle heat, without loosing too much moisture. If you are going to try our overnight cooking method, give your casserole a dummy run when you are at home during the day. Then you can check how your own casserole behaves (about 20% of liquid evaporates from our marmite over 9 hours) before popping it in a slow oven for an overnight cook.

This dish freezes well.

Slow braised oxtail for six hungry people

Ingredients:

• 2 kilos of oxtail
• 300g of peeled and chopped onions
• 300g of sliced leeks
• 400g of peeled and chopped carrots
• 300g of chopped ripe tomatoes
• 2 tblsp of good quality rape seed oil (or olive oil at a pinch)
• 2 large garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 tblsp of sloe and bramley apple jelly /sloe gin/damson gin/splosh of white wine and a tblsp of redcurrant jelly
• 1 tsp of balsamic vinegar (added at the beginning always gives a gorgeous depth to a slow cooked dish)
• 1 tsp of Lea and Perrins
• 2 tblsps of mushroom ketchup
• At least 2 pints of good strong home made brown stock to cover so everything is just floating rather than just covered (Or 2 pints of stock made with 2 beef stock cube and a tsp of Marigold stock powder)
• 5 small stalks of fresh thyme

Method:

1. Pour the oil into a large saucepan and fry the tails until brown all over and reserve them in a warm space.
2. Add the onions, carrots, leeks and garlic to the pot and allow them to soak up the juices as the soften for a few minutws.
3. Add the stock (see above). Add the seasonings, the sloe and brambly jelly, balsamic vinegar, Lea and Perrins, mushroom ketchup and thyme.
4. Pop in the tails and stir make sure that they are floating in the stock. Bring everything gentle to simmering point and put some foil under the lid of your casserole to ensure a tight fit. Pop the casserole into a slow oven 110c (90c fan), bottom shelf for 8 – 9 hours.
5. In the morning drain off the liquid and remove the fat (I put it in the fridge to let the fat harden). Then liquidise the vegetables and stock – this will make a thick sauce. Remove the meat from the tails and mix into the sauce. Serve with carrots and a sprinkle of parsley and either mashed potatoes or dumplings.