Dear Julia
I am outraged. Your recipe for oxtail stew suggests a cupful of red wine. That is disgusting. You are doing nothing other than encouraging drunken alcoholism. I left the wine out before taking up your suggestion of cooking the oxtail slowly for five hours! Five hours! The meat cooked quickly. It had gone brown which surely is a sign that something’s cooked. I took it off the stove after thirty minutes.
As for the celery, I left that out too. My family are not rabbits. Also the carrots. And the potatoes got the heave-ho; they’re so unimaginative. You’d think being a popular chef on television and elsewhere that you could find something more imaginative than potatoes.
A pinch of salt! Drag yourself at least into the nineteenth century. Haven’t you heard of hardening of the arteries? I left the salt out too. And those other disgusting herbs that you wanted put in, like a bay leaf and some rosemary. Dead foliage I call them.
In conclusion I would like to say that I thought the end product was rather bland. I do wish you’d stop foistering your mediocre recipes on the gullible public. My three sons demanded proper food, so I had to open a couple of cans of baked beans.
Signed: A Proper Cook