SAVOUR & SIP
RECIPE Oxtail Ragu Ahead of the publication of her new cookbook, Islands in a Common Sea: Stories of Farming, Fishing and Food Around the World, local author Jenny Jefferies shares a delicious
recipe for spring INGREDIENTS • 400g carrot • 200g onion • 200g leek • 100g celery • One bulb of garlic • 200g tomatoes • 200g mushrooms
• Eight pearl onions • Rapeseed oil • 3kg oxtail • Half a bottle of white wine • Two bay leaves
STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE • Finely chop the carrot, onion, leek, celery and garlic. Halve the tomatoes and roughly chop the mushrooms. Peel the pearl onions and set them aside. • Heat a pan to the hottest it will go, then add some rapeseed oil and sear the oxtail until golden all over. Don’t crowd the pan; you may want to do this in batches, deglazing between each batch by pouring in a little water and scraping up anything stuck to the bottom(reserve this liquid). • Once all the oxtail is seared, set it aside and deglaze the pan again, then pour the deglazing liquid over the meat. Using the same pan, sweat the onion and garlic over a low heat in oil. Add the leek, celery and half the carrot, then cook until the vegetables just start to colour (between 15 and 20 minutes). • In a separate pan, cook down the mushrooms in a small amount of butter and add these to the vegetables. Turn up the heat, add the wine and cook until most of it has evaporated. • Add the oxtail back into the pan along
with the tomatoes and top up with water until there is enough space for the meat to move around. Add the bay leaves. • Cook on a low heat with just a few bubbles for seven hours or in a pressure cooker for two hours. Strain and keep the liquid, remove the oxtail and pick the meat off. Discard the rest of the vegetables. • Sweat the pearl onions with the remaining carrot, add the meat and strained cooking liquid, then reduce it down to a ragu consistency. Serve with stiff mashed potato. Islands in a Common Sea is published on 12 March and available to purchase from jennyjefferies.co.uk and mezepublishing.co.uk as well as Waterstones and Amazon
36 MARCH 2024 CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK
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