Category Archives: Lifestyle

Yes, they were wrong…

I was bullied in school. It still breaks my heart when I see it. There is a lot of anger in me because of it. Bullying me these days would be very bad for anyone’s health. I wish I could take all those kids by the hand and tell them how special they are and how the adversity will make them stronger. Unfortunately, this is not always true.

Oxtail Stew a la mecci

Well, where to begin. So many things need thinking through, weighing, measuring and articulating.

I love food. A lot.

I also love cooking.

So here is my recipe for Oxtail stew. If you have not tried Oxtail stew I urge yo to do so soonest. You will not come across a more flavoursome stew anywhere.

As you are cooking ensure that you are constantly tasting what you are cooking. This will allow you to fine tune your dish to perfection.

You will need the following.

Ingredients:

About 4 kilos of oxtail (get your butcher to chop the tail up for you)

Olive oil

Butter

2 large onions, chopped finely (any onion you like – I have used red, brown and yellow onions – they all work)

3 celery sticks, chopped finely (each stick about 30 cm long)

3 large carrots, finely chopped

1 bottle of good red wine (remember you should always cook with the wine you drink – A Cab Sav or Shiraz is good for this dish)

100 ml of Port (Muscat or Tawny are good too)

3 whole cloves garlic, leave the peel on

3 Tablespoons of raw or brown sugar

Three bay leaves

Thyme (a bunch) – chopped finely

Parsley (a bunch) – chopped finely

Salt and pepper (to taste – do not under season this dish)

For the roasting tray:

2 parsnips, chopped into cubes

2 turnips, chopped into cubes

2 potatoes, chopped into cubes

Olive oil

Pepper

Salt

For the mashed potatoes:

2 kilos of potatoes – peeled and chopped into quarters (choose potatoes that are recommended for mashed potatoes, do not use waxy potatoes such as Kipfler.)

Butter (~100-150 grams)

Salt (to taste)

Milk (~50ml – check the consistency of the mash before you add the milk – the mash must not be runny – it should retain some firmness)

Truffle oil (a tablespoon – choose a truffle oil that has actual truffle in the bottle – both white or black truffle will work fine.)

The cooking:

You will need a very large cast iron pot to cook this in.

Lightly flour the oxtail pieces. Place to the side.

Place the pot on the stove on medium heat.

Add a good splash of oil and a good dollop of butter.

Add pepper and salt.

As the oil and butter brown add single pieces of the oxtail. Do not overcrowd the pot.

Take the browned oxtail pieces out and set them aside on a plate.

Once all oxtail pieces have been browned nicely, add the chopped onions and garlic cloves to the pot.

As the onions are starting to brown, add the chopped celery and carrots. You do want to let the carrots caramelise a little. Add some of the sugar at this point (about half).

Add half a bottle of wine when the carrots have caramelised a little. (Make sure you do not burn the onions.)

Add the meat back into the pot, add the three bay leaves, the chopped thyme and parsley and the rest of the wine. Stir all ingredients through.

Add about 100 ml of Port (Tawny or Muscat will work as well).

Add the rest of the sugar.

Taste the cooking liquid and season to taste. Bring to a simmer.

Place the lid on the pot.

Let it cook for about 4 hours on a low heat.

Check every 30 minutes or so and stir to make sure the bottom does not burn (too badly).

Once the meat is tender and separates from the bone and all the fat and ligament has rendered the meat is done.

Take it off the heat and put it aside.

At this point you want to, ideally, let the meat cool completely. In fact you might want to put it in the fridge, once the pot has cooled down sufficiently. After a few hours in the fridge you will be able to scrape the majority of the fat from the top. (You want to leave some fat for flavours’ sake.)

It is now time to preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Also place you turnips, parsnips and potatoes on the roasting tray. (I suggest you underlay some baking paper and liberally splash olive oil, pepper and salt over the diced root vegetables.)

Back to the pot – once you have removed the fat, take the meat off the bones and place on a plate or in a bowl. Cover.

Start boiling the water in a separate pot for your potatoes. (For the mash) Make sure there is enough water to completely cover the potatoes.

Place your root vegetables into the oven and let them roast for about an hour. Do not burn them.

Liquify the cooking liquid (now that all the meat has been removed) by heating it gently.

Once it is all liquid again, strain the liquid through a sieve back into the pot. Discard all solids caught in the sieve.

For the mash. Add the potatoes to the boiling water. They will take about 30 minutes on full boil.

Back to the pot. Add the meat back into the pot and bring cooking liquid and meat to a simmer.

Once your root vegetables are nicely roasted add them to the pot and let them simmer in with the meat.

Take your boiled potatoes off the stove (you can check if they are done with a fork – if the fork does not encounter much resistance they are done) and discard the water.

Place the pot upon a stable surface add a little milk, butter and salt to the potatoes and start mashing. Nothing beats really well hand mashed potato mash. Once your mash has the consistency you like, add the truffle oil and mash a little more.

That’s it, you are done! You can now feed about 6 hungry people.

Bon Appetite!

Ramblings

It is good to think. For yourself.

Most of us have given up on that. We take what we are being presented with as the truth. Not much of it is. TV, Radio, really any form of mass media or communication only have one product. They only sell one thing. That one thing is you.

The audience.

The only reason there is content is to make you watch. You will be exposed to hundreds, if not thousands, of different product placements every day. The very fabric of your reality is determined by advertising and the pursuit of your money.

Make no mistake, they know what makes us tick.

Yesterday I was taking an escalator. It was going down. On my left they were advertising sunglasses on a poster. A semi naked young woman was embracing a young man. She had her back to the audience, the young man was facing you. He was wearing the sunglasses, of course.

Really?

We are that dumb now?

As you are the product, you might wonder who the customer is. Everybody who wants to sell you something. Everybody.

They spent billions in an attempt to earn trillions. And they are succeeding.

Along the way this particular end has become the only end. We are, for better or for worse, a total consumer society. All our culture, our once noble pursuits, our science our art. They are all geared to sell more things no one really needs.

One of the greatest achievements recently, was the extremely high altitude jump from the edge of space. Sponsored by Redbull. Wow.

A softdrink company has a better space program than most nations.

I do not mean to be too negative but it is hard to see your way past the inevitable. We are becoming creatively barren. No art for art’s sake anymore. It is all driven by the mindless need to consume and make you consume more and more. Without end.

We live on a planet with finite resources. Unlimited growth is a dangerous fallacy. We will consume ourselves to death. The need for greater and greater profits and more and more stuff will, eventually, be the end of us.

Think for yourself. Do you really need that thing that you feel you must have? Really?

How about just sitting down and writing down your thoughts. You could start blogging…

Feeders

Sure, everyone has a fetish. People come in all varieties of crazy. Who are we to judge?

But,

if there are people starving and your fetish will eventually kill you, should you pursue it?

We are living in an age where psychiatrists are trying to have grief and sadness classified as mental disorders. (Look it up if you do not believe me.)

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘He is sad, his friend died.”

“Ooh, better lock him up and medicate him into happy land.”

Unlikely? Not really.

So, then, normal emotional expressions are becoming fast unacceptable, while unnatural emotional and physical states are protected under the banner of fetishism, consumerism and political correctness.

Eat until you are so morbidly obese that you become disabled.

Saying our children have ADHD is equally abhorent. Kids do not have the attention span of adults – period. Nor should they. Has anyone ever looked at the diet those alleged ADHD kids consume?

I bet my bottom dollar that it is full of sugar, additives, artificial colours and preservatives.

Morgan Spurlock made a brilliant point in his ‘Supersize me’ – he reported on a school which took in all the disciplinary cases from other schools – a last resort kind of school. The solution to the kids problems was largely diet. They fed them whole natural foods in the right quantities and at the right time.

Wow, common sense.

We are so far off course that any corrective action will take years before we see the fruits. That does not mean we should not do it.

Let’s start at home.

By the way, do you know what kind of food our grandparents were forced to eat?

Organic, whole foods. Because there was nothing else available.

How many cases of morbidly obese people and ADHD kids did your grandparents have to deal with?

Such is life…

This morning I took my wife to work. Traffic, as usual, was very busy and it was more of a stop-and-go arrangement rather than a swift and decisive drive.

The last part of the journey took us past a cemetery to our left. It is beautiful, small and recessed headstones, luscious lawns, well kept small hedges and a blue sky and sparkling sunlight to boot.

That was on our left.

On our right we see the legions emerging from the underground railway station into the blinding light. They assemble into shambling cohorts and trudge along miserably, already knowing the shape and circumstance of their day. No joy, no surprises there.

It seems odd that the near living should be in a position to envy the finitely dead. I look left again and think that I would probably prefer to bask in the sun – even under the lawn.

It is clear that most of the undead on the right in their pale imitation of life think similar thoughts if they are still able to.

Where did we go so wrong?