Courage in the Kitchen

My father was seventeen years old when the stock market crashed in October of 1929. He told me that Grandpa Rang lost all the money he had saved from twenty years of farming except for the last couple of milk checks that he had deposited in a bank that survived the collapse. With cows and chickens and a big garden, the family had enough to eat, but clothes, hardware and other “store-bought” things were precious.

Women and girls mended clothing, darned socks, and turned flour sacks into dish towels, pillow cases, dresses and curtains–often embroidered with flowers or geometric patterns. Men and boys made tools, repaired equipment and salvaged anything they could. My father and mother passed on those frugal ways to their offspring.

For instance, the second carpentry job I learned was how to straighten nails. The first was how to bend them, but that was self-taught. Today I still find myself reusing nails and saving wood scraps.

Before I left home for college, Mom taught me how to sew on buttons and stitch up a seam, and she gave me a patching kit with some needles and spools of thread. This spring I actually sewed on a button when I was spending a few days by myself at the cabin. It is still on my fishing pants, which seem to be getting smaller.

People didn’t waste food either. Leftovers were saved and either warmed up and served again or used as ingredients in another dish. Here is an example. We called it “dough potatoes.” It’s not fancy–just leftover potatoes and onions fried in a thin batter of eggs, flour and milk–but made with a baked potato and served with ketchup, it is a good example of northern European comfort food.

Dad sometimes made this simple dish when Mom was not home to cook dinner. My sister Barb thinks that he learned the recipe from his mother, so it might have originated in Germany. If so, I may have eaten it at Grandma and Grandpa’s the year I lunched with them when we had lost our good cook at Blair School.

Anyway, here is how to make Dough Potatoes

INGREDIENTS:

1 leftover baked potato (1 to 1 1/2 cups when sliced)
1/4 cup onion
3 T flour
2/3 cup milk
4 large eggs
1 scant tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
3 T butter, vegetable oil or bacon grease

PROCEDURE:

Peel the potato, cut it lengthwise into quarters and slice 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick. Chop the onion medium fine. Heat the oil in a skillet and fry the potato and onion until they begin to brown.

While the vegetables are frying, beat the eggs until lemon yellow. Add the milk, flour, salt and pepper and mix well until you have a thin batter. Pour the batter over the potatoes and onions and stir continuously until the batter begins to set. Reduce the heat to very low, cover the pan and cook until done, about 3 minutes.

Dough potatoes are rather bland, so make sure that ketchup, salt and pepper are on the table.

NOTES: You can use leftover boiled potatoes, but baked potatoes give a better flavor, at least to our tastes. Once the eggs are nearly done, you can use a spatula to turn them over so the bottom does not get too brown.

Time was when oxtails were cheap. In fact, if you bought some hamburger and a pot roast from one of the butchers in Hayward, Wisconsin, where I grew up in the 1950’s, he would often give you an oxtail free if you asked for it. When hamburger was 30¢ a pound, oxtails were a nickel or dime.

Oxtails were peasant food. That was probably why my mother made oxtail soup, and I know that was why I made it when Jerri and I were first married.

How times have changed. When I told a friend what I had to pay for oxtails last week, he said, “Why not use prime rib?” However, when I make oxtail soup, I don’t want to skimp on ingredients. Prime rib is good, but it won’t make one of the finest beef soups you will ever taste.

From what I read, gourmet chefs are responsible for the high cost of oxtails today. They’ve discovered that oxtails are a wonderful meat, whether braised or barbecued, used to make a paté, ragout, terrine, stew or…soup. And since there is only one tail per cow, oxtails provide a perfect example of the law of supply and demand.

Mr. Olson, the butcher who supplied us with many oxtails when I was a boy, would have thought you were crazy if you had told him that people would some day pay more for oxtails than hamburger. Today you are competing with people who pay $5 for a cup of coffee, but you need an oxtail no matter what the cost.

As is true with any meat you buy, the cost of oxtails varies from store to store. In the past year, I have seen prices from under six to over ten dollars per pound, which is pretty darned expensive for meat that is mostly bones and gristle. However, the connective tissue and bones are the reason why oxtails make such great soup. The long slow simmering releases the gelatin and flavor, which creates the delicious full-bodied broth that characterizes this wonderful vegetable beef soup.

This is my recipe from over forty years ago. I don’t make it too often today: Oxtails are pricey, but I can resist temptation only so long. Make this soup once, and you’ll begin saving pennies for the next batch.

INGREDIENTS:

1 oxtail, 3 to 4 lbs., disjointed (cut into sections)

4 or 5 slices bacon

1- 3 T butter

1 medium onion

4 – 5 cups water

4 cups beef broth

1/2 — 1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

2 bay leaves

4 whole cloves

3 or 4 garlic cloves

1 large carrot

1 small diced rutabaga

1 medium diced parsnip

2 ribs celery

1/4 cup parsley

1 small to medium tomato

1 cup pearl barley

1/2 tsp. thyme

1/2 tsp. marjoram

1/2 tsp. basil

1 cup dry red wine

2 T butter

2 T flour

PROCEDURE:

Cut the bacon into small pieces and brown them slowly in a large soup pot until the bacon is crisp. Remove the bacon but leave the bacon fat in the pan. You should have at least two tablespoons of fat to brown the oxtails. Add a tablespoon of butter if you wish.

Increase the heat and brown the oxtails, turning them to brown on all sides. While the oxtails are browning, chop the onion. Remove the oxtails when they have browned. If necessary drain excess fat. Reduce heat to low. Add the chopped onions to about two tablespoons of fat and stir them until they are translucent. Return the crisp bacon and the oxtails to the pot. Increase the heat and add the water, broth and salt and pepper.

Remove the paper from the garlic toes and cut them in half. Put them with the bay leaves and cloves in a spice bag or tied in a piece of cheesecloth and drop it in the pot. Bring to boiling, reduce the heat, cover and let simmer for three to five hours, stirring occasionally and checking to make certain that there is plenty of liquid covering the oxtails. Add more water if necessary. The meat should come easily off the bones. If it does not, let it simmer a bit longer.

When the oxtails have cooked long enough, turn off the heat and use tongs or a slotted spoon to remove them from the liquid. Remove and discard the spice bag. Let the oxtails and broth cool. After it has cooled, chill it in the refrigerator. Skim most of the fat off the broth. If all is going well, you will see that that cold broth resembles a soft gelatin.

While the broth is cooling, remove the meat from the oxtails with a small knife, taking care to separate the fat from the meat. You will end up with shredded beef which you will return to the broth.

Peel and dice the parsnip and rutabaga and scrub and dice the carrot and celery stalks. You should have about 1 cup each of carrot, rutabaga and parsnip and about one and one-half to two cups of celery. Remove the stem scar from the tomato and dice it quite fine. Chop the parsley fine.

Heat the broth to a gentle simmer. Stir the meat and vegetables into the broth along with the the cup of barley. Add the wine, thyme, marjoram and basil and parsley. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer very gently for about an hour, stirring occasionally.

Make a roux by browning two tablespoons of flour in two tablespoons of butter over moderate heat. The roux should be a dark golden brown to help color the soup. Remove the roux from the heat and carefully add about one cup of the soup broth, stirring well. Return this mixture to the soup and continue simmering for five to ten minutes. Taste and correct the seasoning if necessary.

Serve with a green salad and fresh bread.

As with most meat and vegetable soups, oxtail soup is even better warmed up. It can be frozen and reheated for quick lunches or dinners.

NOTES: If you don’t have beef broth in the house, use three bouillon cubes with the water. Feel free to brown some cubes of steak with the oxtails if you want more meat in the soup.