Oxtail Soup with Tortellini

Soup:

1. Peel and dice the onions. Peel the carrots and dice them. Clean and dice the celery. Skin the garlic, chop coarsely. Rinse the oxtail with cold water, dry it and cut into pieces approx. 5 cm in size. Strip thyme from the stalks and roughly chop. Roughly pound the juniper and allspice in a mortar. Put thyme, bay leaves, juniper, allspice and cloves in a tea filter or spice strainer, close and keep ready.
2. Sear the oxtail pieces on all sides in 3 tablespoons of oil in a 5 l saucepan. Add a little pepper and salt at the same time. When they have taken on color, take them out of the pot and store them briefly.
3. Pour the remaining oil into the saucepan. Roast onions, carrots, celery and garlic in it for about 10 minutes over medium heat. Add tomato paste and roast briefly. Deglaze everything with the Madeira and let it simmer. Pour in the port wine, let it boil down again and then add 2 liters of water and the beef stock. Put the meat back in and let everything simmer gently for 3 hours at a low temperature with the lid slightly open. Remove any turbid substances that may develop on the surface.
4. Approx. Place the spice bag or sieve in the stock 30 minutes before the end of the cooking time and finish cooking.
5. Lift the meat out of the broth, detach it from the bones, cut into small pieces, remove the jelly. Remove 150 g of it (take the meat, which is no longer lumpy) and keep everything separately.
6. Pour the stock through a cloth. There should be around 1.4 liters of liquid left. Skim off the floating fat as much as possible and put the strained soup back into the pot. Now bring to the boil again and then reduce again over low heat to approx. 1.2 l. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Tortellini:

1. Make a shiny, elastic, non-sticky dough from the ingredients. (See photos for procedure). Wrap in cling film and let rest for at least 1 hour.

Filling:

1. Pluck the parsley leaves from the stems and chop finely. Skin and finely dice shallots.
2. Steam the shallots in the olive oil until translucent and fold in the parsley. Let cool down. Puree the meat and parsley shallots in a blender. Transfer to a bowl, mix with the egg yolk and crème double and season with lemon juice and salt and pepper. Pour the mixture into a piping bag with a perforated nozzle and keep it ready.

Completion:

1. Roll out the pasta dough very thinly (pasta machine level 7). Spread out the dough on a floured surface and cut out 7 – 8 cm circles. Brush with egg white and use a piping bag to put approx. 18 walnut-sized dots of the filling on top. Fold the circles together in a crescent shape and press down the edges well. Then bend the edges upwards and join the two ends in the middle and press them on. Cook the tortellini in a large saucepan with plenty of well-salted water for about 2 – 3 minutes. When they have risen to the surface, scoop out the water and store them briefly.

Serving:

1. Add the remaining, loosened meat to the ready, hot soup, let it steep briefly and then serve in large plates. Put in the still hot tortellni and serve.

Annotation:

1. The somewhat elaborate production is rewarded by the taste. A small “holiday dish” ……………..