Do you remember the tale of mythical lumberjack Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox? Well it bubbled up from the recesses of my memory as I was thumbing through Annabel Langbein's The Free Range Cook and found a recipe for Braised Oxtail. I had visions of teams of big, yoked oxen with huge horns.
Since John likes braised meats falling off the bone and also favors oxtail soup, I decided to experiment. In the process I learned that "oxtail" is really a rustic name for beef tail, and that it's sold in chunks at the local butcher shop. That was almost enough to put me off the idea, but not quite.
For this dish the meat is roasted at high temperature for 30 minutes, then braised in a lidded casserole dish for 2/12 hours at a reduced temperature (three hours is probably better) in a mixture of tomato juice, soy sauce, water, dried chili, garlic, ginger, orange peel and star anise. It's the sort of dish that would work well in a slow cooker/crockpot.
It smelled delicious and looked beautiful coming out of the oven, studded with the chilis, garlic, ginger and orange peel:
I served it with carrot and parsnip mash, also from the book, which was easy and excellent. But I'm not so sure about oxtail after all this, it was very fatty. Lamb shanks might be a better option.
Coincidentally, this past Friday on National Radio's "Afternoons" show Jacob Brown from The Larder in Wellington walked through an oxtail stew recipe that can be found here. He recommends roasting the meat the day before and putting it in the refrigerator overnight to allow the fat to congeal and be removed before final cooking. I suspect this additional step addresses my main objection above, although it adds to the advance planning required.
Trust this tip helps anyone wanting to test out oxtail for a different rustic winter dinner!
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