French food focus-About living and cooking in rural France,recipes,lifestyle,comments

FRENCH FOOD FOCUS Latest Post Other Posts Recent Older Truffles Cassoulet Index of Recipes L inks House Sitters FiFi About me About 'My' France Comments to: yankinparisot@gmail.com Archives		Life in rural France - Food - Friends - Wine - Cheese - Comments Welcome to French Food Focus. The name describes the intent of this blog. I'll focus on food and because I live in rural France the stress will be upon French food. There are numerous posts concerning life in France and, certainly, opinions about anything that strikes my fancy. If you have some good recipes or if you want to rave about any great French restaurants this is the place to do it. I hope you enjoy my ramblings about rural France! Click Here to send me a comment
		This is our village. Our house is the white one at the top right.
	Taking the bull by the ...TAIL! I'm still on my comfort food kick. Especially today as we've had 3-4 inches of snow. A fairly rare event for us & since we live on a hill which is very unlikely to get plowed who knows if we can get out. No big deal. The reference above is to the fact that I've finally had the courage to buy some Ox tail from the market. I've always loved ox tail soup; the good old Campbell's kind. Do they still make it? Hope so as it brings back childhood memories. In any case they sell nice cross cut pieces of ox tail in the markets here; its not expensive & comes with the bone & marrow. So, how to cook it? I didn't see any recipes that really grabbed me on the internet although there were some good ideas. I ended up creating my own recipe. Nothing fancy, just good basic cooking technique, but it turned out very well I think. He's what I did: Made a mirepoix. That is I chopped up a combination of one large onion, 3 medium sized carrots & 2 stalks of celery into a rough dice. I then started sweating this in a large pot with an ounce or so of butter. Low heat, lid on until the mirepoix is soft, but not browned. While the mirepoix was sweating I browned the ox tails in a frying pan with a little oil (vegetable or olive) until both sides were nicely browned. Once both were ready I added the ox tails to the mirepoix, laying them flat, and then added a roughly 50/50 mixture of red wine & beef stock. I used enough to cover the ox tails plus about an inch over their tops. To this I added salt & pepper, a couple of bay leaves, several crushed juniper berries and some thyme. Stirred everything well, put a lid on and let the whole thing simmer gently for about 4 hours. Later I prepped a medley of vegetables to go with the ox tails. In this case I used a combination of: (use whatever is fresh & strikes your fancy) - Parsnips peeled, cut lengthwise then quartered. - Carrots peeled, cut lengthwise then quartered. - Onion peeled and cut into quarters - Turnip peeled and cut into rounds - A red bell pepper seeded and cut into a rough julienne. - Several cloves of garlic, peeled, but not crushed. (go easy or they will dominate) - Potatoes peeled and cut lengthways into about 1/4 inch slabs. (NOTE: Although these worked well I think next time I'd do mashed potatoes to better soak up the gravy.) Coat all of the vegetable lightly with a coating of olive oil then add salt & pepper. Spread them out on a baking sheet. After the ox tails have cooked for about 3 hours heat up the oven to 190 C. & when hot put the vegetables in near the top. After roughly 3 1/2 hours gently remove the ox tails from the cooking liquid then pour the liquid through a sieve into a container. Mash down on the vegetables to extract as much juice as possible. Return the liquid to the cooking pot & boil until reduce by about half. Return the ox tails to the pot & simmer gently. When the vegetables are cooked take them out of the oven. While they cool a bit remove the ox tail from their liquid. Thicken the ox tail juice either by further boiling or by adding a thickener. Plate up with a selection of vegetables and an ox tail for each person. Pour on some of the gravy. That's it. Delicious & comforting. As mentioned above next time I'll do mashed potatoes instead of roasting them with the rest of the vegetables. Try this it really really good!