First communion

The butcher in Manor Green Road happening to have a likely looking pack of oxtail earlier in the week, this afternoon we took our first oxtail of the season, that is to say since March, an occasion noticed at reference 1.

More or less the same drill. Two large onions coarsely chopped into the bottom of the dish. Place the oxtail on top: two large, three medium and made up to about a kilo and a quarter with some small pieces. Put lid on. Cook for 10 hours at 100C. Basted and drained at the 7 hour mark. Basted again at the 9 hour mark. And again 15 minutes before the off, at which point it was drained for the last time.

Meantime cook 5 ounces of Tesco's easy cook brown rice, a rice with a good deal more husk left on it than they do at Sainsbury's. Takes half an hour to cook rather than ten minutes, but rather good. Much more like the stuff we used to get from Neal's Yard forty years ago, when they operated out of a real warehouse, with sacks, left over from the Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market, at that time not long closed.

And cook around a pound of white cabbage, a change from the usual crinkly cabbage.

Taken with the wine given us by the people at Majestic, as per reference 2. A touch better than our usual stuff. And according to the manufacturers website: 'the picturesque Taylors Pass Vineyard is located on the north bank of the meandering Awatere River in Marlborough. With soils ranging from silt over gravels to stony gravels, the vineyard consistently produces ripe and full flavoured fruit. The nose offers aromatics of ripe gooseberry, lime, passionfruit and grapefruit, whilst the palate is complex and layered with ripe tropical fruit and subtle minerality, typical of the Awatere Valley. This wine is gently structured with acidity providing balance and length. The wine will gain further texture with short term bottle age'. Hmmm.

Plus there must be something wrong with my palette. Several times recently we have drunk wine described as dry, as this one is, which does not taste at all dry to me, more rich and fruity. I think I would know that it was white blindfold, but not dry. Is my failing that I do not care to drink white wine cold?

Wine flannel aside, all very good, but given the very modest amount of water and fat drained off during the proceedings, I think I should, on this occasion anyway, have added a little water to the oxtail at the outset, maybe half a pint. The product would have been a little softer.

Dessert in the form of late raspberries. OK, but very much end of season. Not much punch left in them.

Not a cheap meal at all, with the oxtail coming in at around £15, with just a couple of the small pieces left to snack on later this evening. We could probably have had steak for that - not that either of us are much good at cooking the stuff. Partly because we don't do it very often - not for years in fact - but also because we do not have a proper grill. A proper, full strength gas grill with a proper volume control.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/03/oxtail-four.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/10/irritation.html.