Oxtail potjie and sadza lunch

Still no opportunities for riding, the weather has been terrible and when there has been good weather I have had to work! I started the bike's engine the other evening just to keep the battery up and there was a slight hesitation, I need to ride. Now our family is with us for three weeks so there's still not much time to ride, oh well summer's just around the corner.

The first rally that I know about is the Beaver in Montagu in early November, Frank and I are going to attend that one and I am going to help organise the next Polar Bear run with Des for the end of August, so there are some bike jols coming up.

In keeping with (part of) the theme of this blog I did an oxtail potjie today for lunch and we drank lots of beers, it was raining this morning when I started but that's why I bought the gas braai, so that even when the weather is bad I can still cook outside. This is in reference to the way that I got crapped out by my buddies when I bought it!

 I started at about 07h30 this morning by browning the meat in a very hot pot for about half an hour and then removing it from the pot and setting it aside. At this stage I flavoured the meat with a good amount of Aromat, braai spice and mixed herbs.

To the beef flavoured sauce left in the pot I added some cooking oil and then chucked in five small onions and two green bell peppers which I had rough chopped along with a good tablespoon of crushed garlic and cooked them until they were soft and translucent.

The meat then went back in along with a large cup of red wine into which I mixed a packet of "Rich Oxtail soup" powder and a beef stock cube,

the contents of a bottle of the best beer on the market went in next and then it was time to simmer for at least four hours over a gentle heat.

Time to add the hard vegetables, in this case potatoes and butternut, salt and pepper to taste and then simmer some more.

Test the potatoes and the meat with a sharp knife after about an hour to make sure that they are close to ready and then add chopped mushrooms and cabbage, close the lid and bring the heat up a little more, in the meantime I went into the kitchen to make the "sadza".

 Once everything is ready get the family to have a feed, my son in law helps himself from the pot and above my daughter and my son tucking in.

 I personally cannot resist the old "Rhodesian" way of rolling the sadza and dipping it into the gravy, if the sadza is made properly you can roll it without it sticking to your hands and we would stand around the pot for quite a while eating like that.

 There's the plate of skoff, oxtail, vegetables, sadza, gravy and avocado, a meal fit for a king washed down with some good red wine. Tomorrow morning I will be making "Stuffed sadza balls" with the leftovers for breakfast, I show you those a bit later.