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Busy Days and Comfort Food
by Guest Writer, Valerie Whitmore It's been quiet around here lately. And by "here", I mean Feed Daily - not CDKitchen. CDKitchen has been the opposite of quiet
Among other things, I embarked on the rather daunting task of reorganizing a large number of the recipe categories on the site this past week. With 120K recipes in over 3500 categories - well, you can see why that was daunting!
When I am in the midst of big projects like that I don't usually do a lot of cooking. Well, not interesting cooking anyway. Aside from the time the projects require they can be mentally taxing, and I just don't feel like cooking anything with lots of steps or time consuming procedures.
Sometimes, however, I'll really want some comfort food to ease the "pain" of whatever I'm working on. What exactly I consider comfort food varies. Many of my stress reliever favorites also double as cold weather favorites As luck would have it, we had a hard frost this last week. The nighttime temperatures got down into the low 20's, which is pretty darned cold for Austin
In situations like this I usually go for a dish that is rich, slowly braised, and anything but low fat: short ribs, shanks, or like we had this week - oxtails.
My mom cooked oxtails occasionally when I was growing up. It was always a favorite dish in our family. I don't cook them very often even though I love them still. They require a very long cooking time and can be expensive. Oxtails used to be considered "scraps" and were cheap per pound since they were primarily used in making things like stock. However, as they became a trendy culinary ingredient their price skyrocketed. I'm lucky if I a) find them at all, and b) get them for under $5 per pound, and even then they aren't usually very meaty. I find I have to buy several packages of them to get enough for a real meal.
Recently I saw my local grocery store had some very large, meaty ones available so I grabbed them. I didn't really have a plan for them at the time so I turned to my favorite recipe website to see what I could cook up.
The recipe I chose was calle brown oxtail casserole. It was similar to other recipes for things like short ribs that I've made where the meat is browned and then slow cooked with simple vegetables in broth. The directions have it cooking in the oven for 4 hours so I knew it would be good and tender
And it was
The meat was falling off the bones. The "gravy" that it stewed in was rich and delicious. I made some plain egg noodles to serve it on.
The meal completely hit the spot for me. Aside from the comforting taste, it was an easy dish because once the meat was browned, it just went into the oven to cook while I went back to work.
It was the perfect meal for the crazy-busy-mentally-draining week I was having.
Among other things, I embarked on the rather daunting task of reorganizing a large number of the recipe categories on the site this past week. With 120K recipes in over 3500 categories - well, you can see why that was daunting!
When I am in the midst of big projects like that I don't usually do a lot of cooking. Well, not interesting cooking anyway. Aside from the time the projects require they can be mentally taxing, and I just don't feel like cooking anything with lots of steps or time consuming procedures.
Sometimes, however, I'll really want some comfort food to ease the "pain" of whatever I'm working on. What exactly I consider comfort food varies. Many of my stress reliever favorites also double as cold weather favorites As luck would have it, we had a hard frost this last week. The nighttime temperatures got down into the low 20's, which is pretty darned cold for Austin
In situations like this I usually go for a dish that is rich, slowly braised, and anything but low fat: short ribs, shanks, or like we had this week - oxtails.
My mom cooked oxtails occasionally when I was growing up. It was always a favorite dish in our family. I don't cook them very often even though I love them still. They require a very long cooking time and can be expensive. Oxtails used to be considered "scraps" and were cheap per pound since they were primarily used in making things like stock. However, as they became a trendy culinary ingredient their price skyrocketed. I'm lucky if I a) find them at all, and b) get them for under $5 per pound, and even then they aren't usually very meaty. I find I have to buy several packages of them to get enough for a real meal.
Recently I saw my local grocery store had some very large, meaty ones available so I grabbed them. I didn't really have a plan for them at the time so I turned to my favorite recipe website to see what I could cook up.
The recipe I chose was calle brown oxtail casserole. It was similar to other recipes for things like short ribs that I've made where the meat is browned and then slow cooked with simple vegetables in broth. The directions have it cooking in the oven for 4 hours so I knew it would be good and tender
And it was
The meat was falling off the bones. The "gravy" that it stewed in was rich and delicious. I made some plain egg noodles to serve it on.
The meal completely hit the spot for me. Aside from the comforting taste, it was an easy dish because once the meat was browned, it just went into the oven to cook while I went back to work.
It was the perfect meal for the crazy-busy-mentally-draining week I was having.