I have quite a few food memories while growing up. My mom had an extensive repartee of meals she would cook — some of them sent me making the rounds to see which friend’s house I could invite myself to dinner, while most had me looking forward to dinner at home. There also were times that had me sitting at the kitchen counter, watching the preparation with anticipation.
Oxtail soup was one dinner that had me glued to the kitchen. Not only to enjoy the smells as it was cooking, but also because I knew that after the oxtails were cooked, my mom would remove the meat from the bones and hand them to my sisters and me to polish them off. It was a pre-oxtail soup dinner ritual.
Photography note:When I make oxtail I always serve it over my favorite pasta, farfalle — also known as bow-tie pasta. When we were doing the shoot, I was informed by the food stylist, Alexis, that farfalle pasta was a kids pasta and we needed to make the dish look more sophisticated with egg noodles. The final image does look sophisticated but it won’t change the fact that when I eat oxtail soup, I’ll be eating it on my ‘kids’ pasta.
Start by trimming off the fat from the larger bones. Place oxtails in a roasting pan and salt & pepper the bones generously. Put pan in an oven, pre-heated to 450 degrees, for about 20 minutes or until the meat starts to brown. Transfer oxtails to a pot, add the thyme, bay leaves, garlic and cover with water. (You can add a cube or two of beef bouillon to kick-start the whole thing.) Bring to a boil and simmer for 2.5-3 hours, adding water to keep the meat covered. Remove the oxtails and let cool. Strain the broth, let cool and then refrigerate overnight leaving the fat layer. Remove the meat from the bones while they are still warm and refrigerate the meat.
Add a pour of sherry to bring out more flavor. Don’t bother with ‘cooking sherry’, make it a decent sherry. As with wine, if you won’t drink it on its own, don’t add it to your food.
Serve over egg noodles, pasta, spätzle or any other starch you like.