Outside the dugout: What's cooking?

Oxtail is not actually from the tail of an ox. It is steer tail and it is the sweetest meat on the whole animal.

My favorite use of oxtail is in a ragu to serve over buccatini or rigatoni. I only make it once or twice per year because of how rich it is. There is a Bartoli recipe out there on the net but it needs a lot of edits. Nobody is making a ragu for a family dinner with five pounds of oxtails. The main concept of the recipe is really good, though.

It is also a staple in Jamacian cuisine.

 

Chopped salad tonight. I use iceberg lettuce for two things: Tex-Mex taco toppings and chopped salad. If I had a guinea pig it would be for three things.

Normally I use escarole, curly endive, romaine and radicchio as the leafy things for salads. On rare occasions watercress.

 

When I was a kid they were very cheap. It was "poor people" food. My mom made an excellent oxtail soup. Us kids called it dinosaur bone soup.

The damn foodies final found out how delicious "oxtail" meat can be if properly prepared.

 

Chicken tinga tacos tonight. Made a batch of pickled red onion as a topping. I have two ripe avocados as another topping.

Also started jerk chicken. My wife loved it so much that she asked me to make it again with enough leftovers to take to a friend's house as a meat topping for his grilled pizza. Used habs for the peppers again and that is OK. Next time I will check Ward's because they often have scotch bonnets and those are better. Datil peppers also work but you pretty much have to grow them yourself. Maybe you can find them in St. Augustine.

 

Fried I assume. If so then they actually do taste like chicken. LOL. I have had them sauteed in garlic and butter as well.

Tonight we are invited to dinner and I made my signature tapenade and my wife made hummus and deviled eggs to take over for appetizers. Toasted pita and bagette for the hummus and tapenade, of course. Also taking Boodles gin, limes and nice tonic water for gin and tonics. Boodles was Sir Winston Churchill's favor gin and he did like his gin. I like Plymouth better as a classic gin and Hendricks as a gin with a different flavor but they are another step up in price.

 

I ordered my steak medium rare when I was a kid at a resteraunt. My mother always cooked them to shoe leather.

 

Grilling jerk chicken tonight.

 

Making Thai red curry with chicken tonight.

 

Also trying P F Chang's vegetable spring rolls from the freezer section at my Publix as a side. I am guess they will be meh at best. Even the best places in Gainesville make spring rolls that are meh at best.

 

The egg rolls were pretty bad.