I heard about oxtail soup since I was very young, when Chinese people can only buy meat with their allocated quota. I guess my Mom and Dad used to go out eating in some Western-styled restaurants quite a lot before my sister and I was born, and I assume that their salary must be quite good to afford this kind of luxury.

Anyway Mom and Dad always talk about oxtail soup and even now they actually go to a special place in Beijing to buy oxtail (some sort of shops that sells imported foreign food ingredient). To be honest I have never tired oxtail in my life until today, but all the talking for so many years makes me fancy it a lot.

So I decided to pick a tray of oxtail from the deli shelf today. The price was not bad and I didn’t see there were many real westerners interested in this sort of boned-in meat. They are only interested in eating chicken breast, big chunks of beef steak and skinless fish fillets (without bones). They won’t look at chicken feet, salmon fish heads, lamb necks, beef tongue and other weired stuff, so here you go, oxtail soup can be done with a reasonable price.

I went for the light version of the recipe by only adding in button mushrooms and leaves of wombok instead of the heavy version of mix of carrots, tomato, onions and potatoes. The soup actually had turned out very nice and has a very special flavour that I can’t really say what caused it. There wasn’t much fun eating oxtails themselves at all, just like how I feel about eating chicken necks. It takes a lot of nerves and courage to finish it, but I admit that it’s always been the highlight of drink meat soup for me

However the most important part of trying oxtail soup was, I feel that this whole eating was like to fulfill a childhood fantasy and to complete a unfinished business. I have no doubt that I would cook it again if I don’t care how my husband feels about it. But with him, a no-meat-soup person, and had never been happy with any sort of meat soup, I am just not sure.