Slow: Food Worth Taking Time Over

Add a little more oil to the pan if necessary, add the onion, carrots and celery and fry for 5–8 minutes, scraping up any residual meaty bits left over from browning the oxtail with a wooden spoon – this is where the flavour is. For the final minute, turn up the heat and add the halved garlic. Fry until the cut sides of the garlic have gone nice and golden, while keeping the other veg moving around the pan. Remove the garlic from the pan and set aside with the oxtail.

Next add the tomato purée and cook for a minute or two until it starts to caramelise. Add the flour, give it a good stir and allow to cook for a further minute. Transfer everything to a large casserole, being sure to give the pan a good scrape.

Heat a little more oil in the frying pan and fry the bacon lardons for a few minutes, before adding to the casserole. Pour over the stock and the wine and bring to the boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and carefully add the oxtail, garlic and herbs to the casserole. Cover with a lid and put in the oven for 4 hours.

Remove the casserole from the oven and gently transfer the oxtail on to a plate, being careful not to let it break up. Clean off any bits of vegetable, herb or bacon that have stuck to the meat, as you are aiming for a really smooth sauce. Place a sieve over a large bowl and strain all the stewing vegetables, bacon and herbs and discard them. Give the casserole dish a rinse before returning the liquid to it.

Bring the sauce to the boil and simmer gently to reduce. You are aiming for a thin sticky film to form around the meat. This should take 10–20 minutes. Check for seasoning and serve immediately with some creamy mashed potato.

Stews & Pies

Braising meat must be one of the more satisfying processes in the kitchen, often taking the more unloved cuts and investing time and care until they yield beautiful, tender delicious meat. Whichever meat you choose, the qualities you are looking for are plenty of fat, sinew and dense, collagen-rich connective tissue. In short, the very things that make the meat unsuitable for fast cooking, but ideal for a slow braise.

When it comes to beef, shin, cheek, featherblade and oxtail are the perfect cuts for braising. Many people favour chuck steak for stewing, but personally I would recommend the others as they are far more flavourful and cook to a perfect wobble, which melts away the second a fork sinks into them. All these cuts come from the parts of the cow that do the most work, which means the muscles are more exercised, the connective tissues stronger, and therefore the meat tougher. The stronger the muscle, the more collagen it contains. Given the right conditions (cooked in stock, wine or beer with stewing vegetables and herbs, slowly, at a low heat) these tissues break down and soften, resulting in beautifully moist, falling apart meat. The same principles apply to lamb; the shoulder, shank or neck respond well to slow braising, and pork, for which shoulder or cheek are the obvious choices – although in fact you can braise any part of a pig or a sheep and still get decent results.

Having leftover stew in the fridge is never a problem. It’s a well known fact that stews and ragus taste better the day after they are cooked, as the flavours have developed and intensified. Of course they are a treat eaten as they are, but why not add an extra dimension to a stew’s potential with the always-welcome addition of pastry – thus creating a pie? The following recipes create perfect pie fillings: my Steak & Kidney Pudding (see here (#litres_trial_promo)), Ox Cheeks Stewed with Wine & Beer (see here (#ucabe0d64-8931-529a-88de-da42d09ea11a)), Pork & Apple ‘Stroganoff’ (see here (#litres_trial_promo)), Braised Chicken with Shallots, Orange Wine & Brandy – though you need to take the chicken off the bone (see here (#litres_trial_promo)), Braised Lamb Mince (see here (#litres_trial_promo)), the stew from my Lamb Hotpot (see here (#litres_trial_promo)) – and, of course, my Chicken, Buttermilk & Wild Garlic Pie (see here (#litres_trial_promo)) recipe is a classic. I probably wouldn’t use my Oxtail Stew as I think this is one occasion you’d lose something by not eating the meat from the bone. Please don’t judge me but one of my guilty pleasures is sucking any remaining marrow from the oxtail bones.

Pretty much any stew can be easily transformed into a pie if you follow a few simple guidelines. First you need to ensure that you have a nice thick stew as too much liquid will make your pastry soggy, so you may need to reduce your stew a little. On the other hand, there’s nothing worse than a dry pie, so if the sauce looks a little thick, you may want to loosen it with a little water or stock.

It’s essential to chill your pie filling before it makes contact with the pastry as the key to achieving crisp pastry is keeping it cold. Depending on your preference, you can opt for either shortcrust or puff pastry. Shortcrust works best if you want the entire filling encased in pastry, and puff is better if you just want a pastry lid on top to make a pot pie. Although it’s perhaps an easier option, an American pot pie is not strictly a pie in my view. Call me a traditionalist, but I want pastry top and bottom!

To achieve a lovely glossy finish, always glaze your pastry with beaten egg. A good rule of thumb for cooking a shortcrust pie is to preheat the oven to 190˚C/170˚C fan/gas mark 5 and to cook the pie for 35–40 minutes until the pastry is golden brown and cooked through. Puff pastry requires a hotter, shorter cooking time, so I suggest 220˚C/200˚C fan/gas mark 7 for about 30 minutes.

Big Plate Chicken (#ulink_35630cc5-c276-5834-91d6-15ea0b20d776)

What first got me interested in north-western Chinese cooking was a trip to the fantastic Silk Road restaurant in Camberwell, South London which specialises in noodles, stews and dumplings originating from the Xinjiang province. There is a particular flavour spectrum that you don’t get in other Chinese cooking, that of mouth-numbing Sichuan pepper, chilli and spices such as cumin and star anise. There is a large Muslim population in Xinjiang and Muslim influences echo through the food; for example you see less pork compared to other cuisines like Shaanxi (see Xian Lamb & Cumin Hand Pulled Noodles here).

This is a warming, nourishing, soupy stew, full of aromatics, and a brilliant way to utilise my Hand Pulled Noodles (see here). I’ve suggested using between half and a whole teaspoon of Sichuan peppercorns, and while I love the sensation they provide, be mindful of just how mouth-numbing they can be. If you’re a first timer, perhaps err on the side of caution.

SERVES 8

Preparation time 30 minutes

Cooking time 1 hour 30 minutes

2 tbsp oil

1 whole chicken, cut into 12 pieces, (ask your butcher to do this)

3 onions, finely chopped

8 garlic cloves, peeled

hand-size piece of peeled ginger, about 80g, cut into thick slices

40g dried shiitake mushrooms

500ml fresh chicken stock

3 tbsp light soy sauce

½ tbsp dark soy sauce

4 tbsp Chinkiang vinegar

400ml Shaoxing rice wine

5 whole Sichuan chillies

½–1 tsp Sichuan peppercorns

1 cinnamon stick

1 star anise

1 tsp fennel seeds

1 tsp black peppercorns

3 large, waxy potatoes, peeled and cut into quarters

2 carrots, peeled, each cut in half lengthways, and then cut into four diagonally

1 portion Hand Pulled Noodles (see here (#litres_trial_promo))

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 150˚C/130˚C fan/gas mark 2. Heat a little oil in a frying pan or wok and season the chicken pieces. Fry them hard and fast in order to caramelise the pieces all over. Classically this step is missed out, but I think the chicken skin is always improved by being rendered and caramelised – though you don’t have to do it if you want to be more traditional.

Heat a glug of oil in a heavy-based casserole over a high heat, then slowly cook the onions for about 10 minutes until they soften and start to caramelise. Add the garlic and ginger and cook for 15 more minutes. Next add the mushrooms, then the chicken stock, soy sauces, vinegar and rice wine. Bring to a fast simmer. Add the chillies and spices, then top up with water (about 500ml) so that the chicken is just covered. Bring back up to temperature, cover and place in the oven for 50 minutes.

Remove the casserole from the oven and add the potatoes and carrots, then return to the oven for a further 30 minutes. At the end of the cooking time bring a large saucepan of salty water to the boil. Drop your noodles in one by one. You will know they are cooked when they float to the top, which should take only a minute or two, after which they’re ready to drain. Remove the casserole from the oven and take to the table. Serve the boiled and steaming noodles on plates with the chicken pieces and sauce over them.

Venetian Duck Ragu (#ulink_2dcd251c-794b-58d2-beef-a648da92949c)

Venetian cooking is arguably the most interesting in the whole of Italy. The city is a maze of canals and waterways that run from the Adriatic, which made it the perfect trade pathway for the Ottoman Empire. You can still see these influences in dishes like this ragu, which combine classic Italian cooking and Middle Eastern spicing. The combination of duck, red wine, orange and cinnamon, cooked long and slow until the duck falls off the bone and the fat clings loosely to the meat, create a full-bodied but gently spiced sauce that slips over pappardelle like a dream.

SERVES 4

Preparation time 20 minutes

Cooking time 2 hours

2 tbsp olive oil

4 duck legs

2 large onions, finely chopped