In the spirit of total honesty and full disclosure I should probably admit that I am currently procrastinating. I am only 3,000 words in the 18,000 that I need to write before the 3rd April. Having had a productive day yesterday I have now lost the element of fear and consequently so far today have only got as far as opening a word document. Why is it that the subject of oxtail pie seems so much more intrinsically important to my life the a study of Pitt the Younger in political satire?
I have spent the last four years at university bemoaning my degree. Wondering whether it has been a glorious waste of money and a huge self indulgence, putting of facing the real world. In the only state that your parents will ever be proud of you for being unemployed and simultaneously running up huge debts. But now as I am about to set out into the abyss otherwise none as adult life and rip off the plaster of denial, I am beginning to assess with a less embittered sense of academic boredom the value of my university education. I say university education as I believe I have grown as much as an individual as a result of the time spent at university as I have through academia. It has given me the space in a very unstructured environment to determine what it is that I want from life and what kind of person I want to be. I want to be an achiever not necessarily for financial gain, I don't want to look back at my life and wish what if. I would rather fail with aplomb than never to have stepped into the unknown.
My university education may not have equipped me with industrial skills with which I could instantly fall into the work place as a seasoned professional. As I very well may have been by now if four years ago I had forgone university to head straight for the work place. Four years ago despite feeling like and adult, I thought like a child and wrote like a child. I enter the work place now as an optimistic realist rather than a naive enthusiast.
I had some oxtail stew in the freezer which I thought to ring the changes I would trow together into a pie rather than leaving as stew. Having recently watched Heston make a suet pastry I was inspired to attempt to emulate him. Unfortunately as usual I was laking in equipment to was forced to make it in a cake tin rather than a pudding bowl. The structure was not a sturdy enough shape it seems to somewhat collapsed on its release from confinement. If I had had more time on my hands I would have removed the meat from the juices and reduced them down of thickened with flour. As you can see in the not very good photo the sauce was way to thin. I would also like to take this opportunity to apologise for the poor quality of photos on this blog but we live in a basement where daylight in scarce and I rarely have more than few moments to capture my creations before the boys way into attack.
Ingredients:
couple of sticks celery
1 leek
3 carrots
200g mushrooms
1 large onion
2.5kg oxtail, jointed
250ml red wine
100ml brandy
200g tinned tomatoes
1 bay leaf
2 sprigs thyme
750ml chicken stock
750ml beef stock
Method:
Sweat the chopped celery, leeks, onion and carrots. Once soft, remove from the pan and set aside. Return the pan to the heat and add a bit more oil, cook the mushrooms and set aside.
Add a splash of water to deglaze the bottom of the pan. Add the liquid to the cooked vegetables.
Brown the oxtail over a high heat in batches, deglazed the pan in between. Put all the ingredients back in the pan and simmer for 3hrs or until the meet comes away from the bone easily.
At this point it can either be eaten as stew or thickened with flour to fill a pie. If you are making a pie this amount filled a 9inch cake tin and fed 6. I baked it at 200C for 45minutes.
Suet pastry:
300g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
250g suet vegetable or meat
200ml water
Mix all the ingredients together and kneed until you have a smooth dough. Leave to cool in fridge before working.
When I was little I used to love making mice pies as they were one of the few things we actually made at christmas. My mother never bothered with a Christmas cake or pudding. However as an enterprising eleven year old I thought I would try and sell my mince pies one christmas. From an economic point of view this went very well unfortunately over 100 dozen later I never wanted to see another mince pie. I still make a few batches every year now but try to keep to to a minimum. In our house we have always made mini mince pies and I have two fantastic trays from the Pampered Chef. Each tray takes two dozen and a batch of my pastry should make four dozen or two trays worth. I would advise anyone to invest in this particular tray especially over the lakeland plastics one. The lakeland one is not non stick and the sides are so steep that it is often a nightmare to get the pies out without destroying them in the process. The pampered chef trays are still non stick despited being nearly ten years old and work every time.
Normally I would agree with the adage that you roll out sweet pastry in icing sugar rather than flour. But with mini mince pies while the sugar caramelising looks beautifully crispy and golden you cannot get them out of the tin in one piece.
I always use the same recipe for sweet pastry I'm not sure where it originally came from but it is now engraved on my brain I have made it so many times. I can't understand how people to seem to have such problems with pastry. To make this shortcrust pastry all you do is put everything in the magimix and turn in on.
Sweet Shortcrust Pastry
8oz Plain Flour
5oz Butter
2oz Icing Sugar
1 Egg Yolk
Zest of an Orange
2Tbsp Orange Juice
Pinch of salt
Put all the dry ingredients in the magimix and pulse until you have a bread crumb texture. If you don't have a blender rub the butter into the dry ingredients. Then add the egg yolk and enough orange juice to bring the pastry together into a dough. I would advise allowing it to chill in fridge for half an hour or so before rolling out as it will make it easier to work with.
If you are using this pastry for a summer tart you can use water and vanilla or lemon zest and juice.
I usually make my own mincemeat and then top this with pastry stars but this year I have been finishing up all sorts of odds and ends of mincemeat so thought I would try and add something new to my mince pies. I have read about topping mince pies with frangipani so thought I would give this a go.
Frangipani Topping
200g unsalted butter
200g caster sugar
200g ground almonds
50g flour
2 large eggs
2 tbsp brandy
Flaked almonds to decorate and icing sugar to dust
Beat butter until very soft, in food mixer with paddle attachment, gradually add sugar and ground almonds. Mix in flour, then eggs and lastly the brandy.
Fill casing with mincemeat then pipe the frangipani or smooth it on with a spoon. Sprinkle with flaked almonds. The ratio of frangipani to mince meat is totally up to you. I used the same amount of mince meat I usually use and then piped a thin layer of frangipani on top. This meant that the almond taste was not very strong but created a thin crisp layer on the top which sealed in the moisture.
Bake for about 25mins till golden brown and dust with icing sugar. The ones without the frangipani cook much quicker than the ones with it.
The recipe I followed was from Molly's Kitchen. I halved this quantity.
