The versatility of Cold Oxtail – part 3

Continuing my flirtation (that’s becoming more of an obsession) with the cold offals, is the last chapter in the suggestions I came up with for things to do with a cold ox tail. This recipe also put me in the new territory of baking bread (don’t judge too much). I guess it’s also a kind of Americana too …

So, in the words of Katherine Hepburn “Hot Dawg!”, this was good.*

To bring anyone new up to date, I have recently been bemoaning the fact  that you can’t find ready made offal sandwiches in Leeds. This has caused me to get experimental with cooking and cooling my own offals. The legacy of which began in posts one and two and continues now.

I welcome you to the Inaugural Presentation of the Ox Dog. That’s right. An Ox Dog. A hot dog, filled with ox tail. Ox dog. Ox dog. Ox. Dog.

The real inspiration behind here was a post from RockSalt about making hot dog rolls, which you can find here. I trust Carol Anne and believed when she said how simple they were to make. They are. I’m no bread baker, but even I managed to make some presentable rolls.

This is them before they got ovened. The recipe is super simple, so please do have a look and have a go. Basically you add yeast to water, let it bubble, then add egg, flour and salt. You don’t knead it very much. They take ten minutes to bake. The whole process is forty minutes – what’s not to love? Mine are all yellow because I used canola oil in the batter, which is orange to look at! I think they look sunshiney, or jaundiced, depending on your outlook on the world.

Whilst my rolls were getting doggy (?) in the oven, I made my filling. I took the now dwindling bowl of cold oxtail out of the fridge and added it along with some sliced peppers to a pan and gave them a good frying. The peppers and the oxtail go all sticky in the pan together.

Once it all looks suitably delicious, turn the heat off and if ten minutes have gone by since you put your rolls in, get them out too. Then either wait and fill your rolls once they’ve cooled, or don’t wait, get indigestion from hot bread and eat straight away. I put some cheese on top and grilled them.

I should point out, my grill is very fierce and you probs shouldn’t actually burn them. However, this was a lovely snack, made from stuff I had already (using up ends of peppers). This was probably the fifth meal from my oxtail, which is pretty good going considering I was working with pure meat and stock.

I would definitely make these again – I would even cook an oxtail especially for these – Halloween here I come!

 

*That is also a clue. And it is the Katherine Hepburn portrayed by Cate Blanchett in the Aviator, not any other KH – in case you were confused and couldn’t remember her saying that in the African Queen.