My First Oxtail Stew

My husband LOVES oxtail and i, his wife, have never cooked oxtail before.  Until this past Sunday that is.  Being away at his 10 year school reunion, a weekend of late nights and large amounts of beer, i thought that he would like to come home to something hearty and fortifying, something to remind him of why he likes to be at home.  So, i made my very first oxtail stew.  I don't know much about this cut of meat, except that it needs to cook for a very long time.  I didn't have a recipe, and unfortunately, i was too excited to make use of the beautiful sunny day by getting some gardening done that i didn't take any pictures either. It was a beautiful, deep red stew with soft sticky meat peeling off the bone.  Gorgeous and mouth-watering, but you will just have to take my word for it.  Or, come over for dinner and see for yourself!

Ingredients
Serves 4 (or in our case, 2, and 1 left over lunch portion for hubby the next day)
1.2 kg oxtail
Couple of tablespoons of flour
Salt
Pepper
Coriander
Paprika
Knob of butter
Onion soup (you can use the packets, but i absolutely abhor anything that is processed, except Ina Paarman's liquid stocks, so i grabbed a tub of onion soup out of the freezer, about 1 liter)
1 sachet Ina Paarmans (yummy) beef stock dissolved in 500 ml boiling water
Glass of wine (or two... if you like something to drink while you're cooking!)
70 g tin of tomato paste (for that lovely rich colour)
1 onion
6 young carrots
3 potatoes

Method
Mix the flour, salt and spices in a bowl large enough to toss the meat around in.  Toss the meat in the flour mixture until well coated. In a roasting dish on your stove top, melt the knob of butter and start browning the meat.  Once all the meat is browned, deglaze the roasting dish with the wine.  Let the alcohol cook off and then add the stock and the onion soup.  Pop into an oven preheated to 200 ˚C and leave to do its thing for 2-3 hours.  Once you think that the meat is soft enough, add the onion, carrots and potato and roast for another 1 hour.  If a lot of the liquid has cooked away at this stage, feel free to add some more boiling water or stock for the veggies to cook in.  Boil some rice et voilà, trés délicieux!  Dinner is served...or a lazy late Sunday lunch, as was our case.

Winshaw Weekly Experiments (Béarnaise Sauce)

Image courtesy of Daily Telegraph

So, my 'new' husband and i are both very into our food.  Stay tuned to see how this affects our waistlines!  Maybe i should take some before and after photo's ;)  Cooking dinner together is genuinely one of our favourite pass-times.  We start off with my husband pouring us each a glass of wine or cracking open a cold one and then... the fun begins.  A few weeks ago we decided, to challenge ourselves, to choose one recipe a week that is something different to what is served up from our usual repertoire.  For our first 'experimental' meal, to make use of the wonderful deep-fryer we received as a wedding gift, we decided on something that has to match well with potato chips.  The obvious choice: Steak of course!!  I received a gorgeous recipe book (Sauces, Michel Roux, Rizzoli International Publications Inc, 2006) as a gift from my cousin for looking after their dogs while they were away on holiday that i have been very eager to put to use. So, steak and chips... plus which sauce... Bearnaise of course!  Michel Roux has a helpful index at the back of the book with a list of foods and the sauces that would pair well with them.  On the top of the list for sauces to match with beef:  Bearnaise!