I have always longed for an Aga stove, the wonderful cast-iron invention of a blind Swedish physicist who was determined to come up with a way of making the job of cooking easier on his wife. I have two friends who own them, both of them are good cooks, and their Agas dominate their kitchens. They are strong, bold and classic. Because they are so solid in appearance and run continually, they always seem to be the heart of the house, putting out constant warmth. People are drawn to them and tend to gather around them while dinner is being prepared. I have even seen a weak poddy lamb corralled in next to an Aga serving as a kind of substitute mother.
Agas have four ovens all of ranging temperatures: a warming oven; a very slow 120°C oven; a moderate 180°C oven and then a hot 220°C. I am sure it takes time to drive them properly, and perhaps even a lifetime to perfect, but knowing your oven is one of the real joys of cooking. My friend Kerry is full of small tips and tricks, and her kitchen banter is a constant stream of Aga-wise words: ‘don’t lift the lid on the top if you need a hot oven; put the slide in if you don’t want to brown the top of the cake; use the hot one to bake blind a tart; or use the very slow oven for meringues and custards’.
Mostly I would love an Aga for long slow braises using coarser parts of the meat: oxtail, lamb shanks, breast of mutton, osso bucco, or lamb forequarter. The variations are endless: a hot pot, daube, cassoulet, pot-a-feu, or a rustic soup. Usually the cheaper cuts are best and there is a special thrill out of making something wonderful for not much money, quite apart from the warmth and aroma emanating out of the kitchen. The bones in such cuts add viscosity and body to your stew.
Braises should barely simmer on the cook top, or as Elizabeth David in her book French Provincial Cooking says ‘tremble or shudder rather, keeping the heat absolutely regular’. To me, it sounds like she had the benefit of an Aga - I imagine them to be perfect for this. Cooking like this reminds me of my camp oven in the bush. Somehow I love the basic pleasure of cooking outside, and am always surprised at how few coals and ingredients you need. A shoulder of lamb browned in the camp oven, with some onions or leeks, a splash of red wine, water or stock, some carrots, rosemary, potatoes and peas towards the end of cooking. It seems too simple or mundane, but in the bush under a stand of gum trees, served in a bowl with some good bread and a glass of wine, it is just about as good as a meal can get. Andy Bunn, the first chef at the Lynwood Café used to make the most delicious braised lamb forequarter, with roasted shallots in their skins, garlic mash and cabbage. He cooked it in a slow oven all night, and the result was meltingly tender, gelatinous and unctious. So it is achievable without an Aga.
Here is Anne Willan’s Oxtail and Barley soup recipe from Real Food. She mentions much of the pleasures of slow cooking, but notes further that the meat falls from the bone after four or five hours of simmering, at which point ‘the gelatine dissolves to enrich the sauce’. Her soup has ‘all the intrinsic flavour of oxtail and none of the inconvenience [of] the bones, which take up an inordinate amount of room in the pan and on the plate,’ and she notes that ‘the next best cut for the soup is shank or shin of beef, but neither has the mellow richness of oxtail.’
Oxtail and Barley soup
Serves 12 as a first course or 6-8 as a main dish.
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2.3 kg oxtails, cut between the vertebrae
750 gms, onions thinly sliced
375 grams carrots, coarsely chopped.
3 stalks celery, sliced
30 grams flour
2.5 litres of beef stock
600 ml fruity red wine
2.5 litres of water, more if necessary
500grams, fresh tomatoes, peeled seeded and chopped, or a 500 gram tin of chopped tomatoes.
Large bouquet garni
Salt and pepper
250 grams pearl barley
- Heat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius. In a large ovenproof casserole heat the oil. Add the oxtail pieces, a few at a time. And brown them on all sides. (note: thorough browning adds a good deal of flavour to the soup. Take out the pieces and discard all but 3 tablespoons of the fat from the casserole.
- Add the onions carrot and celery and cook gently until lightly browned. Add the flour and cook gently, stirring until it and the vegetables are well browned. Stir in the beef stock, water, tomatoes, bouquet garni salt and pepper, and bring to a boil.
- Return the oxtails to the soup, cover the casserole and cook in the oven for 4 or 5 hours or until the meat is falling from the bones. Stir from time to time during cooking and add more water if the liquid evaporates rapidly. At the end of cooking the soup should be rich and dark but not too thick.
- Let the soup cool to tepid, then lift out the oxtails and remove the meat, discarding any bones and fat. Chop the meat and return it to the soup. Add the barley, cover and continue cooking in the oven until the barley is tender: 25 – 35 minutes.
- Discard the bouquet garni and taste the soup for seasoning. Prepare the soup at least 12 hours ahead and chill it thoroughly so that the fat rendered from the meat during cooking solidifies on the surface of the soup and can be skimmed off. The soup can be refrigerated for up to 3 days, or frozen.
- Skim off all fat, and bring the soup to a boil before serving; it can be kept warm for several hours without harm.
Recipe from Anne Willan’s Real Food – Fifty Years of Good Eating, 1988, Macmillan, London.