Hey weakling! Yeah you. What are you cooking? I am cooking a tail. The tail of a cow.
Butchered oxtail
This has been a bit of an endevour. The cooking time for Coda alla Vaccinara is two days, which is at the upper end of my 30 second attention span.
While the main ingredient for this one is obviously Oxtail, it is also a pork fest, including pancetta and pork rind (coteca), which means you can really show off at the butchers. Pork rind? Yeah, I’m the sort of bloke that cooks dishes with the main ingredients of a dog chew.
Sliced coteca
Most recipes for Coda alla Vaccinara say you need about 2lbs of meat. This is because a tail weighs about 2lbs. Get the butcher to cut it to about two finger deep chunks.I have based this recipe on one by Anna Del Conte.
Ingredients (serves 5-6)
2lb of 0xtail
8oz of pork rind
2oz of pancetta
25g of pork fat/or lard or goose fat
2 cloves of garlic, handful of chopped parsley
1 chopped onion, 1 chopped carrot (or two)
2 tbsps of tom puree diluted with 2 cups of meat stock
1 glass of white wine
2 cups of celery (8oz), salt & pepper
Boil the oxtail and pork rind to soften (5 mins), then drain and refresh under cold water. Put the fat, diced pancetta, onion, carrot, parsley and garlic into a stew pan, and fry off until soft. Add the oxtail and rind and fry for a couple of minutes, then add the wine, and boil off on a high heat for a couple of minutes. Add the diluted tomato puree and meat stock and sling it in an oven (160c) for 2 hours or so, keeping an eye on it by stirring and turning the oxtail every 30 mins. After the cooking period, let it cool and put it in the fridge overnight to improve the flavours. The next day you’ll need to scrape off the excess fat which has congealed on the top of the stew. You’ll only need to heat it through on the stove top for 20 mins, but before you do, add 2 cups of thick sliced celery. Serve with any starch – we like well seasoned Polenta. The next day, I finished the leftovers by stripping the meat from the bones, served as a sauce on some wholewheat penne.
Coda alla Vaccinara
A bit of dinner 