I love Oxtail!!! If cooked right, the meat is tender and juicy, the sauce is rich and flavorful and the bones are suckable. Pair it with a large helping of Rice n' Beans and you have some of the best comfort food available to man. The down side is that Oxtail and Rice 'n Beans have to be some of the most unhealthy foods on the planet. Lots of fat, plenty of gravy and rice cooked in coconut milk. This means that in order to prevent myself from getting the nickname "Fat Bastard" I can only have this as a rare treat.
So, last week Sunday after a busy day sitting on the beach drinking Miller Lite I stop by the "Country & Western" restaurant (which is not western at all but serves Caribbean food) and pickup some Oxtail. The 5 minuet drive home is torture and I'm tempted to open the lid and get some of it's sticky goodness, but I exercise as much self control as one can after a day of drinking and wait for home.
Once home though the feast begins, pour on some Scotch Bonnet pepper sauce and I'm good to go. Once again the cooks at Country don't let me down. The meat is tender and there is plenty of gravy. I'm making my way through the meal, enjoying every fork full that goes into my mouth. When you get the right proportions of rice to gravy to meat the results can be heavenly. Then it happened, CRUNCH, CRACK, PAIN!!! What has come to disturb my heavenly meal!? A small bone has snuck into my meat-rice-gravy mix and I bit down on it. My delicious Oxtail had forsaken me. I have broken a tooth, and not just any tooth, an all important meat grinding molar. Some choice words were shouted, there was banging of my fist on the couch, there might even have been a tear.
The pain passed quickly and a jagged, sharp edge replaced my once smooth and powerful molar. What to do, it's 8pm on a Sunday night. No dentists are open. So I took 3 Advil and finished eating my Oxtail.
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