Oxtail Jardinière

 

A Spring Saturday Morning In Early March

Mary (a friend from the Wildfood board) had been making oxtail soup and this triggered a longing in me, I hadn’t made Oxtail for many a long day and one of my favourites was Jardinière, that hearty peasant stew with loads of vegetables, even though it was spring (according to some), it was still cold in the mornings, in fact we had been having a bit of frost of late.

I had popped into our local slaughter house (Tönnies) as they always have that type of stuff readily at hand (heart, tongue, beef kidney and pigs heads) and bought some fresh vacuum packed, it weighed in at 2.2 kg.

Saturday was a smashing morning, the sun was out and it had raised the temperature a bit so I thought I will make the jardinière and then go out and do a bit of bird spotting at the gravel pit.

You will require (for the Jardinière not the bird spotting, for that you need bino's and a camera)

2 kg (approx) of oxtail

500g of onions

3 large cloves of garlic

2 tbsp of oil

1 handful of freeze dried soup vegetables

4 brown mushrooms

1 Ltr. of beef stock

2 large carrots

1 large piece of celeriac

White of a leek

Bunch of parsley

Grinding of lemon pepper from the mill

The Aromatics

10 pepper corns

3cm piece of cinnamon (broken into small pieces to fit into the tea egg)

A piece of mace

4 juniper berries

2 cardamom pods

1 bouquet garni (consisting of. Sprig of rosemary, thyme, a few sage leaves and a large bay leaf)

100 ml (or there about) of port

 

So I unpacked, washed and chopped the oxtail into smaller portions,

gave it a good grinding with lemon pepper, I then peeled all of the available onions that I had (some white, some red and also a large shallot that was lying around doing nothing) and 3 large cloves of garlic.

Sliced the onions and crushed and chopped the garlic

Heated the oil in a large frying pan and slowly browned the onions and garlic, removed with a slotted spoon and put in the bottom of the SC.

Next I raised the heat and browned the pieces of oxtail all over, I needed to do this in two lots, during this time I had heated the stock and added the freeze dried veg, allowing to soften a little.

Transferred the oxtail to the SC and deglazed the pan with the stock and the Port, this went into the SC on top of the oxtail etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I put the aromatics into a tea egg (you know the type of thing; it is what was used to keep the tea leaves out of the cup before tea bags).

This was pushed down into the liquid, and then came the bouquet garni, also pushed down into the liquid. Lid on switched onto high and went out for a couple of hours doing a bit of bird watching at the gravel pit.

THE SAND BIRDS OF THE GRAVEL PIT

I hadn’t been to the gravel pit since the end of last years breeding season and was surprised and somewhat taken aback, the owners had been in with a bulldozer and chain saw, the bank bushes and saplings had disappeared, these gave cover for first the ducks, geese and other water birds, but also provided nesting areas for all the small song birds that abound in the wet lands.

But I was happy to see that the opposite bank had not been touched (I hope it stays that way) and was full of geese, ducks and cormorants.

 

The water was alive with moorhens and coots and a pair of great crested grebes had once again settled there (I hope that they breed as they did last year).

 

I counted 30 coots and these only the ones on the water also a flock of barking Canada Geese had also taken up residence on the far side of the pit, alongside them was a pair of European Cormorants and a single Barnacle Goose.

 

 

There is this year as there was last year a pair of pure white ducks (I thought at first I had a pair of snow geese in my sights but alas they turned out to be the same pair of white American Peking ducks as last year. These unlike the Chinese and European Peking ducks do not walk upright

 

 

I walked to the other side of the pit, forcing the birds into the water so that I could get a few good photographs of them swimming

 

 

and the cormorants in flight and on the water

 

 

I then retraced by footsteps back to the car and headed into Gütersloh market to get some root vegetables and lunch of fish and chips (not too bad but the batter was very greasy so I didn’t eat it). I also popped into a Supermarket to get a pack of frozen broad beans (for me a must in Jardinière).

I popped back home, chopped the vegetables, diced the mushrooms, add these along with the beans to the SC and turned down low, then went out to watch the Bundesliga  around at the pub (only drinking water, but I still lost at dice).

I returned to the wonderful smell of oxtail stew, the vegetables by now just cooked, I had a baked potato that I hadn’t eaten from Wednesday, and I removed the skin, diced and adding this to the jardinière. I allowed it to warm through and then poured myself a large plate full, perfect just what the doctor ordered.