Daube is a Fancy Name for Stew

After the usual Christmas victuals, the quiet, let's-hide-out home life kicks in without general family obligations. So it's a time for comfort food. A favorite cookbook over this season is Paula Wolfert's, The Cooking of Southwest France, a book that you need if you cook and expect cold weather. I made a Daube of Oxtail to Wolfert's recipe. I have to say that this is one of The sublime dishes. It's clarity, depth and sheer richness are unbeatable. A little goes a very long way when paired with fat buttered flat egg noodles and a braised lettuce salad on the side. Unusually, I didn't mess with the recipe much except to substitute veal stock for the pig's foot which I couldn't easily find. You might ask, why? Living in a town full of carnicerias and ethnic markets that you mention frequently, why couldn't you find the ingredients? The answer is simple: Los Angeles is a hard place to navigate quickly even when you know it well due to the distances involved in this vast city and also the abundance of hidden sources that really always need to be personally indexed. So far I haven't been able to devote time to this pursuit. Fun thing is that "stew" is an umbrella name for a multitude of dishes usually thought of as some nondescript wet mass, often with the inaccurate adjective "Irish" attached. This stew, a daube, was one of the greatest I have ever cooked. There was very little extra liquid but that fully flavorful and a knockabout to the meaty bones. Truth is, as I shared the dish with others, in thanks, they put me on track to sainthood as a result!