Oxtail Soup (in slow cooker)

2 pounds oxtail
3 carrots
4 stalk celery, chopped
1 onion
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can great northern (white) beans (low-carb, skip this)
1 Tablespoon minced garlic
2 Bay leaves
1 cup red wine
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp rosemary
1 tsp oregano (or thyme)
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 Tablespoon beef bullion
2 cups turkey broth (or beef. Or water)

olive oil
salt

Note before you start: this is one of those things that really, really works better with 12 hours in the crockpot. If you only have 6 hours, make something else.

Start by roasting the oxtails. Preheat oven to 425 F (220 C), coat oxtails in salt, pepper, olive oil. Stick in oven for 15 minutes. Contemplate this would probably work broiling. Worry about it. Open the door, poke at them, then give them another 5 minutes to get really nice and brown.

While they're roasting, pull out a 4-quart slow cooker. (You can always make it bigger by adding more stuff). Chop carrots, celery, onion. At this point, you can saute them first for greater flavor, or you can just dump them in for greater ease.

Add tomatoes and beans to slow cooker. (You could always chop up a potato or two and add that instead, or a handful of barley. Or be low-carb, and stick with just the carrots.) Add wine, Worcestershire sauce, and spices. Take oxtails out of oven before they burn, add them & their fat & pan juices to the slow cooker.

Dump a tupperware of turkey broth on top, to clean out your deep freezer, and add a heaping spoonful of beef better-than-bullion on top, to cover the turkey taste with beef. Or, if you don't need to clean your deep freezer, add some water, beef bullion, and maybe a little more wine. And drink some wine. I used a nice chambourcin. Don't cook with anything you're not willing to drink!

Turn the slow cooker on low, and leave it alone for at least 8 hours. Then pull the oxtail chunks out, and shred the meat off the bones. If you left it for 12 hours, this pretty much consists of the meat falling away in lovely shreds while you fish the bones out of the soup. If you didn't, return the meat to the soup. Serve!

I served it with a salad & the rest of the bottle of wine. And some oyster crackers on top, because I felt like it.

Happy Hanukkah

When all seems darkest, and the only choices appear to be a spread of dystopias, when it seems that all is blood, and fire, and ashes, and persecution...

Remember, the Children of Israel are still here.

They've seen Assyrians and Hittites, been slaves in Babylon and exiles in the Siberian gulags. They've wandered down into deepest Africa, and across the sea to undiscovered continents full of howling wilderness. And still they carry the Torah with them.

Despite being conquered, again and again, enslaved, and massacred in many languages, by many tribes, as the words changed from pogrom to genocide, they still light the candles on the menorah.

And so, let us celebrate again that though world has burned before and will yet burn again, still hope will live on with laughter, light, and love long after today's conquerors are tomorrow's dust.

And so goes the heart of many a Jewish holiday: "They tried to kill us. They failed. Let's eat!"

The past is another country...

Tonight, we were going through boxes in the storage unit that haven't been opened in years (two moves? three, for some!)

Peter broke out in surprised laughter, and waggled a picture frame at me. "Here! I can't believe I still have this! Can you find me in here?"

I took it, and immediately was stymied by my inability to read Afrikaans. The military class standing proud in their uniforms, though, was perfectly clear. I looked at it, and there, near the end of one row, were a pair of appled cheeks and two ears he'd grow into. This was clearly long before the next picture I know, which shows him among a group of very dirty, bearded, bedraggled and triumphant men standing on captured Russian equipment, but the cheeks are still the same. As I pointed at it, and he confirmed with a chuckle. "Is this back when you were a bright-eyed innocent and unworldly young man?"

He cast his eyes up, and the grin deepened in his white and silver beard. "Further deponent sayeth not!" He took the frame back, while I ruminated on that very South African variation of "no comment."

But as he packed it carefully away in the very small pile of things to keep, he took one long last look at it. The smile fell away to something much sadder, more wistful and quiet. "That was before I learned that I wasn't bulletproof."

"Ah."

He gently put the picture facedown, and left the past staring into shadow.

Low Carb Cheesy Garlic Breaad

It's not exactly like the pizza place down the street, no, but it's pretty close. Beware and be warned, though, that this paired with a salad was slightly more than two very hungry people wanted to eat for dinner. (Swapping all the carbs for protein makes it really filling!) Must remember the trick of adding yeast for bread flavour in other recipes...

Original recipe here, http://www.cutthewheat.com/2013/05/cheesy-garlic-bread-grain-and-gluten.html?m=1

Ingredients (for bread base):

1 1/4 cup almond flour
1 Tbsp coconut flour
2 eggs
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup warm water
1 tsp yeast (or 1 pack)
1 tsp sugar (for the yeast to eat, not you)
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp xanthan gum (optional, to prevent crumbling)

Ingredients (for topping):

1 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
3 Tbsp butter, melted
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
1/4 cup chopped crispy bacon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. In a small bowl, combine warm water and sugar and stir until dissolved, then add yeast. Set aside.

3. In a large bowl, combine almond and coconut flour, salt, baking powder, garlic powder and xanthan gum, stir well.

4. In another bowl, crack the eggs and scramble.

5. To the flour mixture, add olive oil and yeasty water mixture and stir well.

6. Add beaten eggs and stir. Then add the 1/2 C mozzarella shreds and mix gently until cheese is mixed well throughout.

7. Grease a 9x9 square casserole dish or large cookie sheet well. (If you want deep-dish-style dough, use an 8x8 casserole dish.)

8. Spread dough in casserole dish, or make a square / desired shape on cookie sheet.

9. Bake at 400 degrees for approx. 15-17 minutes or until the sides of the crust turn golden brown. (The top may still look uncooked.)

10. While base is baking, rinse the yeasty-water bowl, melt the butter, and add the garlic powder, italian seasoning, and salt. Mix well, so you can brush over the top of the garlic bread base. If you don't have a brush, use a spoon to gently dribble in a grid pattern, so you get the whole surface. This'll stay molten when placed on top of the oven/stove.

10.5 This is also a good time to make the salad & set the table, and spoon half a cup of marinara sauce into a bowl for eating with the breadsticks.

11. Pull base out, contemplate hitting it with the pizza cutter to make discrete sticks for easy cutting later. Decide that's too much work.

12. Top the base with the bacon & the rest of the cheese. I also added some mexican cheese mix, because yummy.

13. Bake at 400 degrees for about 8 minutes or until cheese is melted.

14. For the final 2 minutes, turn broiler on to brown the cheese. Beware! Cheese goes from melty to smoking in .45 seconds flat - keep an eye on it!

15. Remove from oven and let stand for 5 minutes before serving.

Moroccan Fish Tagine

For the carb-lovers, this is awesome over rice or couscous. For the carb-avoiders, this is just fine without.

1 Tablespoon olive oil
1-2 yellow onions, diced
1 red or yellow bell pepper, diced. (Or about a cup of the smaller colorful sweet peppers.)
1 teaspoon salt (omit if your broth is really salty)
2 cloves garlic, diced
1 can diced tomatoes (I prefer fire-roasted)
1-1/2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon paprika (smoked paprika is awesome)
4-6 cups chicken broth (start with 4 cups. If you want it soupier, add more)
1-1/2 pounds cod fillets, cut into spoon-sized chunks
2 cups thinly sliced mushrooms (one of the little supermarket boxes)
3 tablespoons tahini
1 lemon's worth of zest + juice
2-3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley, or 1 Tablespoon dried
1 Tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro, or 1 teaspoon dried (optional)

Open the bag of fish, pour cold water in so the fillets start to thaw. Dice the onion & chop the pepper. In a large saucepan, heat olive oil over medium heat, saute onion & pepper & salt until soft but not browned, about 8 minutes. Start thinly slicing all the mushrooms, set aside. Add the garlic and can of tomatoes, cumin, paprika, and simmer for 1 minute.

Pour in stock (or mix in bullion and then add water). Turn heat to high, start stripping cod fillets out of their vacuum packaging. Cut into chunks. When mixture is boiling, add the mushrooms & fish. When tagine reboils, reduce heat to simmer. Cook until fish is opaque, which is about 5 minutes.

Get fresh cutting board & knife not contaminated by fish. Zest lemon, chop parsley & cilantro. Shake / stir tahini jar. If you don't have a zester, use a peeler and dice the lemon zest fine. When the fish is cooked through, stir in tahini, zest, lemon juice & cilantro. Ladle into bowls, serve immediately.

But remember to blow on it to cool it off before eating immediately...

(Serves at least 4, up to 6 if you added the second onion and had it with rice or couscous.)

Street Food and Scars

Sometimes it's the little things that shock me. I like street food, and since it's a commonality from Venezuela to Turkey, India to Germany, I didn't understand my husband's deep culture shock at the concept of coming out of a concert and buying loaded hot dogs from a cart on the corner.

I figured it must be related to his civil war, but put off asking until I served him fish tacos. It's rather time-consuming to make good fish tacos, because I have to dice and chop the everything. Cabbage, red onions, green onions, tomatoes, cilantro, slices of limes, chunks of avocado... and have to make the lime-juice-mayo before I start any of this, so it has time to meld.
He explained gently that there was one street food in the townships, a bowl of corn porridge and if you were very lucky, some meat. But never in any of the white areas. It wasn't the paranoia of civil war that denuded his earlier life of fried pastries, things on sticks, things wrapped in foil or in paper... it was apartheid. Because the sheer utter evil that strangled his country would have found it unthinkable to let food vendors of any other race into white-only areas.

The man eats all his food with a knife and fork not because Britishness, but because the scars of evil prevented him from ever learning the careful dance you do to avoid getting the grease on you while enjoying the night. There were no ice cream trucks in his youth, no fried chapatis stuffed with more spice than meat, no fish and chips at the wharf cooked fresh from the catch coming in, no tacos or burritos out of the food truck, no hot dogs loaded with sautéed onions and peppers, no polish sausages oozing sauerkraut juice and mustard out of the lining, no cornish pasties, no pirogies, no blini rolled up and dripping powdered sugar and lemon juice, no corner coffee stands with paninis, no tapas, no currywurst, no fritters or kebabs, falafel or rice balls, mochi, or steamed pork buns...

I understood apartheid resulted in the shootings, the disappearances, the training the police dogs to eat the faces off of victims, and all the horrors we associate with great evils.

But I still find it small and sad to watch a man eye a fish taco with trepidation, and take the first bite due to love and faith, because he's never known the wide an wonderful variety of the food world on the streets.

Morning Sights Around Here

My next door neighbor has some oregano that's so ignored it'd best be described as feral. She told me I was "welcome to take all you want, anytime."

Now and then, she sees me skulking past in the bright morning light, wearing an oversize t-shirt and boxers, barefoot and bedhead sticking about wildly, with scissors in one hand and a couple sprigs in the other. For some reason, she's usually laughing when I notice her...