Oxtails Bourguignon

Now that's a pot of luscious real food. When I was a little kid, I loved oxtail soup, a hearty German dish that uses a rather low-class cut from the beast: the tail, the little sections of vertebrae that are stocked with chuck-like meat, lots of collagen, and some pretty good opportunities for gnawing.

In other words, heaven. And as with all forms of paradise, a struggle. Bliss is a journey--and not always easy.

Over the last year, Bruce and I have wrestled with some of the ethics of eating meat. After I went on an L. A. NPR show to talk about the ham book (here), I was besieged by some rather militant vegans who insisted that I come to terms with the ethics of being, well, not a carnivore, but an omnivore.

Unfortunately, no matter how much I tried to explain our ever-evolving position, they wouldn't listen. I hope you might. Bruce and I have come to a few conclusions over the past year.

1. We (almost exclusively) eat meat from local suppliers at farmers' markets and farms. Unfortunately, this guideline falls apart when we go into heavy recipe-testing mode. There's no way we can crank out fifteen pork recipes for a magazine only buying what our friends have on their farm.

2. I only eat meat once a day, and not always then. Bruce isn't with me on this one, but I've come to the conclusion that I feel better and am more alert if I have fewer meat moments in my day. This is a personal decision. I have NO scientific basis for knowing that I feel better. But I believe it. And believing makes it so.

3. If we're going to eat meat, we're going to eat all of an animal. This one's a little harder for most people. But we've come to the decision that it's ethically wrong to kill an animal just to eat the tenderloin and certain prime cuts. No, we need to eat as much of the animal as possible. Because for us, if we don't, a life has been wasted for silly excess. 

And so oxtails. AKA, sheer delight. One of my favorite things. Here's the recipe:

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