A Perfect Meal

I've probably eaten at least 50,000 meals so far in my life. Some have been quite memorable, but of all of them there's really only one that stands out as the "perfect" one. And it's the only meal I really remember from my childhood.

One day my father brought home a few small fish. They were maybe 10 inches long and had a very pointy nose -- he called them "needlefish." i know now that they are commonly known as pike mackerel. He cooked the fish under the broiler in our electric stove. He seasoned them with shoyu, which he preferred over Chinese soy sauce (back then the only brand of shoyu available was Kikkoman), and he put the pot of leftover rice from the day before on the table.

My mom didn't like fish so this was a special meal just for my dad and me. I couldn't have been more than six, but I still remember the wonderful salty crispy skin on the fish and the tasty brown meat. We ate, as we always did when it was just the two of us, with our fingers. He would hold out his hand, palm up, with the fingers together, and tell me that the hand was "the natural fork." And when he ate with his fingers it was very neat. Just a small bit of the rice, with a small piece of fish. I would try and copy his movements so that nothing would fall and be wasted. 

Since then I've taught myself how to cook a lot of things. And I've watched many wonderful cooks and listened to them talk about their food. But I've never learned how to grill a fish with shoyu so that it comes out crispy and moist. Maybe I just want to preserve the memory of that day and that one perfect meal with my father.

Oxtails

If you have never had oxtails, then you are missing out. Even the pickier eaters in our family will grub on some oxtails. the meat is lean muscle - if you cook it long and slow it has lots of beefy flavor. and the tailbones are modified vertebrae so the ends of the bones where they would meet on the cow are covered with cartilage. they make a nice sticky gelatinous sauce and are good to gnaw on. the only downside is that oxtails are usually sold with quite a bit of the covering fat still attached, so they can be greasy. but i can show you how to make them tender and how to remove almost all of the grease.

There is a famous Filipino stew of oxtails in a peanut sauce called kare kare, but this down home version is how i make oxtails most of the time.

Take 

• two packages of oxtails (two whole oxtails, cut at the joints)

season them with

• johnny’s seasoning salt
• garlic powder
• paprika
• black pepper

layer the meat in a big crock pot with

• 1 large chopped onion
• 4-5 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 2 jalapenos, chopped
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil*
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce*
• ½ cup shoyu or soy sauce*
• 1 cup water

(okay, i know that the soy sauce, sesame oil and fish sauce aren't exactly “traditional” southern seasonings, but soul food was created by cooks who knew how to make good food from whatever ingredients were available. I would argue that soul food is the original American “fusion” cuisine.)

now, back to the oxtails.  cook on high temp in the crockpot for 6-8 hours, or until meat is almost falling from the bone.  

if you want oxtail stew, you can add for the last hour:

• potatoes, peeled and chopped for stew
• carrots (peeled  baby carrots are fine)

Now, here are two really important things to know about stews or stewed meats, especially those made with red meats. The first is that they ALWAYS taste better the next day. one reason is because letting the dish cool and then reheating it gives time for the flavors to blend and develop. another reason is that the texture of some ingredients is improved by the cooling process (potatoes being the prime example).

but the third and really important reason is that if you chill the dish properly, any fat that has been rendered from the meat will rise to the top and solidify so that it can be removed.

the layer of congealed fat

so, once the oxtails are tender, remove them from the cooking broth, let them cool a little and then refrigerate them overnight. put the cooking liquid into a separate container and let that chill in the fridge, too. the next day, the beef fat will have congealed and you can easily remove it and throw it into the trash (or, if you live somewhere like Seattle, put it in the curbside composting bin).

it comes off in slabs . . . yuck

next, start to warm the cooking liquid after you've removed the fat. once it’s gotten to room temperature, you can blend it to liquify the onions or just leave them alone if you like a more homestyle stew. then, you need to taste the broth. if it’s salty enough, you can leave it as is or thicken it with a little cornstarch. but, if it’s not very salty, then the best option is boiling it down. if you can reduce it by half, you will have a lovely, sticky sauce.  but you have to keep tasting to make sure it’s not over-reduced so that it gets too salty. the alternative is to save the cooking broth and use it to make soup and just serve the oxtails (and the carrots and potatoes if you added them) by themselves.

Here they are, without any embellishment