Slow cooked ox cheeks

I've been meaning to try cooking some ox cheeks ever since I had some really excellent ones at Bravos on Cotham Hill.  I went out on Saturday morning to pick up some coffee and stopped off at the local butchers for some bacon as well and on the off chance asked them if they had any ox cheeks.  After they'd finished looking confused the got some out of the freezer for me and agreed that they would order some more and some oxtail as well, I'm really looking forward to doing something interesting with that.

Ingredients

• 2 ox cheeks
• 2 carrots
• 3 stalks of celery
• 750ml beef stock
• 500ml red wine
• flour
• 4 shallots
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 star anise
• 1tsp dried thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 2tbspn tomato puree
• salt and pepper 

So I took the ox cheeks, cut them in half and trimmed off the excess fat and rendered it down.  I used this to fry off the ox cheeks which I had rolled in seasoned flour until they were browned all over.

I removed them from the heat and put to one side, then I softened the diced shallots, celery and carrots before adding the rest of the ingredients and bringing to the boil.  Return the ox cheeks to the pan, cover and put in the oven for 3+hours at 150 degrees.  Half an hour before serving, turn the oven off and leave the meat to stand.

This was one of the most mouth wateringly tender dish that I've ever made.  The meat fell to pieces under the weight of a fork.  Two ox cheeks would easily feed four people.

I served with wilted spinach and crushed new potatoes, and red wine.  As it was a gorgeous evening, we got to eat in the garden as well.

Easter Treats

It's taken me absolutely ages to write this one up.  <insert generic excuse about busy life style and RTA here>

I've been quite obsessed with making bread recently, so it seemed only right to give some Hot Cross Buns a try for Easter.  This was my second attempt at them, and I had to do a fair bit of fiddling with the recipe to get it to work properly.

Ingredients

• 300ml whole milk
• zest orange
• 50g butter cubed
• 500g strong white flour plus 140g for the crosses (I found that the dough was far too wet and ended up added almost an additional 100g)
• 1 tspn cinnamon
• 85g golden caster sugar
• 7g dried yeast
• 1 large egg plus an egg to glaze
• oil for greasing 
• 100g mixed fruit (I doubled this to 200g the recipe can easily take it)

-warm the milk and zest together until steaming and then remove from heat. Stir in the butter and leave to cool until hand temp.
- mix the flour, cinnamon (I threw in some nutmeg as well) sugar and yeast together in a bowl with a pinch of salt and then add the milk mixture.
- once these are combined add the egg and knead until smooth and elastic, then return to an oiled bowl and cover
- leave to prove until it doubles in size
- remove from the bowl and knock back, add the dried fruit and knead until it is totally combined.
-split into 12 individual buns and space evenly on a baking tray
- cover and allow to rise again.
- when the buns have doubled in size, make a paste of plain flour and water and put the paste mix in a plastic bag.  Snip off a corner and use this to pipe the crosses on the top of the buns.
-glaze the buns with a beaten egg and bake for 15-20 minutes at 180c

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