Sunset from Hill House, Mount Helen. February 2024

Saturday, November 26, 2011

The dumplings that keep on giving

Flushed with the success of my couple of attempts to use pieces of oxtail from the Donald Russell stewing boxes, I ran wild the last time I was in the Chatsworth farm shop and bought a whole oxtail (happily divvied up into pieces)

I put them in my slow cooker with some onions and tomatoes and white wine and garlic and herbs and left it all to simmer while I was at work. Once it was cooled, I took out the oxtail pieces then put the juices and vegetables into the blender and then passed them through a fine sieve to create a sauce. I put it in the fridge, and the following morning I took the fat from the top. I also stripped the meat from the bones and put it in a bowl in the fridge.  We had some of the sauce as a soup for lunch.

That evening I put the meat and the rest of the sauce in a casserole and decided to make a savoury cobbler with it.  So I made some herby dumplings and formed cobbles and put them on top of the stew.  I took the left over cobbles and put them on top of the other cobbles and put it all into a moderate oven for about an hour.

When I came back, the cobbles had risen and risen and risen and RISEN. The cobbles had also sucked the juices pretty much entirely from the stews.  What I now had was a thick, gravy infused suet pastry over my stewed and succulent meat strips!!!!!

I made some gravy with the water the potatoes had been cooked in and we had the dumplings and the meat with mashed potato, veggies and gravy.  I put the mountain of left over meat and pastry in the fridge while I thought about it.

The next day we had pork chops while I thought some more :-D

The following day I took some of the meat and rejuvenated it with a tomato gravy and put it in a casserole with a lid.  I put some of the pastry over the top and  heated it slowly in a low oven. We had that with boiled potatoes and buttered cabbage. The day after that I took the meat, the pastry (now reformed into dumplings) and added peas, beans, baked beans, cabbage and gravy, then crumbled a healthy handful of stilton into it all and simmered it on the stove top.  It turned into a truly delicious, glutinous, thick stew. There was a little left over and we have that with a few extra vegetables added with weiner schnitzels and chips.

Apart from the day we had the pork chops while I thought about things, that oxtail and its accompanying dumplings/cobbles/pastry fed us all week, and gave us a couple of lunches as well.  It was extremely good value for the £8 I spent on the tail.  I must buy another one (although I'll try and be a little less heavy handed with the dumplings next time!!!)


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