. . once a guy has a "name" as s chef and/or cookbook writer, does he bother much with the recipes in his cookbooks, or just relegate that to staff?

Since I bought that big Oxtail a few days ago, I selected a recipe from a cookbook on Brazilian cuisine that looked interesting. OK, the results were very good - after I tweeked it here and there, like getting rid of the 1/2 cup of fat on top before boiling down the sauce. Well, many ethnic recipes are high in fat, because they were developed for workers in the fields, mines and mills, but not that much.

However - this is ridiculous. " . . reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 1 to 1-1/2 hours until the oxtail is fork tender". Sheesh! at 1 hour an oxtail will bend your fork, and at 1-1/2 hours it's not a lot different.

Around 3-1/4 to 3-3/4 hours is good, depending on whether you want to serve it "on the bone" or have the meat fall of the bone for further processing.

Sometimes I wonder who proof reads these things (other than a spell checker). Of course, with English cookbooks I know who does - nobody. The ingredient lists often include ingredients that aren't in the instructions, while the instruction tell what to do with ingredients that aren't on the list.

AND, the photos rarely represent anything that can be made following the recipe. Actually, I find the photographers know a lot more about cooking than the recipe writers, and I often refer to the photos for hints about how to make the recipe actually work.

Cookbooks by English person Fuchsia Dunlop and a few other ladies excepted. The hint seems to be who holds the copyright. In American cookbooks the writer always has the copyright, at least for the last 50 years or so. In English cookbooks, copyright almost always belongs to the publisher, and the contents tends to be rather sloppy. Ms. Dunlop and a few others own the copyright, American style, and the quality can be excellent.

These errors are not at all common in American cookbooks, or recipes otherwise published (except by bloggers on the Internet), and perhaps not in Australian. They do often appear in English cookbooks, along with other sloppiness, but even English cookbooks aren't as bad as Indian ones.

Since I am currently studying South American cuisines, I brought in a few new books, including three English, all from Annisse Press (Peru, Chili, Colombia / Venezuela).

They have good country background, good recipe background in the headings, few things are called by size (only really common things), there are weights and measures for most items (metric and sane) with explanations where English and American terminology are different. There is adequate background on the authors, though only on the dust jacket.

So far, I have found no conflict between the recipes and the photos or misaligned list / instruction errors. The main problem is there are so many large photos there are only 60 some recipes per book, but they seem very well chosen (all the authors are native to the countries).

Copyright is still with the publisher, but hopefully that will change too.

. . the rest of the world, including New Zealand.

"Large non-reactive saucepan" - doesn't sound like a pressure cooker to me.

Oxtail was specifically cut into 2 inch joints, as it always is.

The liquid included beef stock, a lot of tomatoes (peeled and chopped), a fair amount of onion and some herbs. After removing the finished oxtails this was to be boiled down to about 1/3, lightly thickened and used for sauce.

While oxtails aren't particularly fatty, with 4 pounds of them there was at least a half cup of fat floating on top - no mention of this. Of course, I strained the liquid out and pressed the vegetables to extract as much liquid as possible. I then defatted the liquid using my gravy separator.

I placed both liquid and solids in a saucepan and boiled it down to a little less than a third before thickening with 2 t Arrowroot - worked fine, but without defatting, the sauce would have been at least 1/3 fat - not good.

I will have my recipe up in a day or so with these corrections. It worked out very well my way.