Oxtail à la polonaise

About the dish

Oxtail was a cheap but highly valued ingredient in the bourgeois kitchen of 1914, and Erken gives it a French-inspired treatment here with a red wine marinade, long oven braising, and serving in an earthenware pot (cocotte) with chestnut purée.

How to make it

1. 1

   Marinate the tail

   Chop the oxtail apart at the joints. Rub the pieces lightly with salt, pepper, and allspice, place them in a small dish, and pour the red wine over them. Turn the pieces every half hour, and let them sit in the wine for 5–6 hours.

2. 2

   Brown the meat

   Take out the pieces, dry them well, and brown them in butter.

3. 3

   Assemble the pot

   Brown the onion, carrot slices, and pork fat. Use a saucepan just big enough for the meat. Place the browned tail pieces on the root mixture, and lay half of the roots over the meat.

4. 4

   Reduce the wine

   Pour the marinade wine into the saucepan, put on the lid, and reduce the wine until it is syrupy.

5. 5

   Braise

   Pour on just enough brown broth to barely cover the meat. Place the saucepan in a hot oven (about 160 °C (320 °F)) and let it cook about 3 hours, or until no blood comes out when you pierce the meat with a larding needle.

6. 6

   Strain and continue cooking

   Pour off the drippings and strain them through a piece of muslin back over the tail pieces. Baste the meat now and then and let it continue cooking quite slowly until the meat loosens from the bones – about 4½ hours in all.

7. 7

   Thicken the sauce

   Finally thicken the drippings with quite a little sago flour.

8. 8

   Plating

   Place the tail pieces in an earthenware pot together with mushrooms, strain the sauce over, and let everything steep together for 5 minutes. Serve in the pot with chestnut purée.