The World Table

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Andalusia · Main

Rabo de Toro al Vino de Montilla

  • Advanced
  • 45 min
  • roughly 3 of 4 for cost

warm-spiced · gently hot · aromatic · sweet-edged Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, a warm current of chile, trailing gentle sweetness.

Ingredients

  • 1.6 kg oxtail, cut through the joints
  • 300 ml dry oloroso or amontillado
  • 2 onions, diced
  • 1 carrot, diced
  • 1 green pepper, diced
  • 4 garlic cloves, sliced
  • 2 tomatoes, grated
  • 600 ml beef or veal stock
  • 60 ml olive oil
  • 40 g plain flour
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 6 black peppercorns
  • 1 clove
  • salt

Equipment

Grater / zester

The skills inside

Reducing a sauceSweating aromatics: soft, never brownedFrying the paste until the oil splitsThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · alcohol

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Salt the oxtail an hour ahead, dry it, dust it thinly with flour and brown it hard in the oil until every face is deep mahogany with no pale patches, then lift it out.
  2. Soften the onion, carrot, pepper and garlic in the same fat until the onion is tawny and the pan base is sticky brown, then add the grated tomato and cook until it darkens and the oil runs clear at the edges.
  3. Pour in the sherry and scrape the base clean, reducing until the sharp alcohol smell has gone and what rises is nutty and raisined.
  4. Return the tail with the bay, peppercorns and clove, add stock to two thirds up the meat, and hold it at a bare tremble with the lid ajar for three hours, until a skewer meets no resistance and the meat has pulled back from the bone.
  5. Cool overnight, lift off the set fat cap, then reduce the sauce until it coats a spoon and warm the tail through in it.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Reducing a sauce 95 recipes

  • A steady simmer with the surface moving, never a rolling boil that throws it up the sides and scorches what is left on the base.
  • Judged by behaviour rather than the clock: it coats the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
  • The drop in volume is visible against the side of the pan: there is a line to see, not a guess about whether anything has happened.
  • Seasoned at the end and not the beginning, because salt concentrates at exactly the rate everything else does.
  • Nothing is catching underneath: a spoon drawn across the base comes up clean, with no browned film building where the heat is fiercest.

Where it goes wrong It was seasoned at the start and then reduced by half. The salt concentrated along with everything else, so the sauce reaches perfect body and is too salty to serve. And the only remedy is to dilute it and reduce it all over again.

Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes

  • It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
  • The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
  • The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
  • The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
  • Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.

Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.

At the Table

The Pour
Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec
Also Right
Tempranillo (Rioja Reserva)
From the Taps
Amber ale
Zero-Proof
Sparkling water, make room

Tannin binds to seared protein and fat: each bite softens the wine, each sip resets the palate: the steakhouse equation.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Rabo de Toro al Vino de Montilla Technique: Reducing a sauceThe skill inside this recipe The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Andalusia kitchen