Add the onion, carrot, and celery and cook until soft, deglazing the pot as you go. Add the pancetta to the pot and cook until mostly crispy and the fat has rendered do not drain the fat. Remove from the pot and place in a bowl.Ģ. Lightly season the oxtail pieces with salt and pepper. Heat the olive oil in a large Dutch oven, then brown the oxtail pieces, turning them on all sides. Rigatoni with Oxtail Sauce (con Coda alla Vaccinara)ġ large carrot, finely diced (or coarsely grated)ġ large (28 oz./800 grams) can peeled Italian tomatoesġ. But omit the cinnamon if you prefer, top with Parmesan or Pecorino Romano instead–this dish is yours to interpret. And following on the advice of Alessandro Volpetti (and I’m happy to take the word of anyone at Volpetti’s), I topped the Coda with grated Ricotta Salata cheese, one of my favorites. So here is the resulting recipe, a hearty interpretation perfect for autumn and winter. NO.” But I say “Yes.” In addition to cloves, cinnamon very frequently appears in recipes for Coda, which is meant to have a warm-scented, delicately sweet undertone. However, I did not escape looks of shock and dismay on the faces of two Italian friends when I mentioned I had added a pinch of cinnamon to the stew. Large pieces of celery are de rigueur, but in a rebellious break from tradition (and knowing I wanted to turn the entire stew into a sauce), I finely diced all the celery and survived to tell the tale. Some people make it with red wine instead of white, some add water, some forego the carrot, some add raisins. In Coda alla Vaccinara, the oxtails are braised in a sauce made with pancetta, lots of celery, onions, carrots, tomatoes, wine, and spices, though the stew is open to interpretation everyone I asked prepares the dish in a slightly different way.
![coda alla vaccinara coda alla vaccinara](https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/bf/67/04/coda-alla-vaccinara.jpg)
Their wives rose to the challenge and created dishes that made the most of the available ingredients. In previous times, the slaughterhouse workers of Testaccio (the vacccinari) were given offal and oxtails to pad their slim salaries.
#Coda alla vaccinara how to
One of the pleasures of being in a new place is tasting local dishes and then trying to figure out how to make them. In Italy, part of the fun lies in consulting butchers, greengrocers, cheese purveyors, wine merchants, and really, any Italian who eats, because they are all happy to offer advice. As soon as the days grew cooler, I knew what I wanted to make: Coda alla Vaccinara (Oxtail Stew) served over rigatoni–an old-style dish appearing on many Roman menus.