Coda alla Vaccinara

How to Cook Coda alla Vaccinara

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1. Soak the oxtail in cold water 30 minutes, then drain and dry it well.

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2. Render the guanciale in the oil in a heavy pot, then brown the oxtail hard on all sides, in batches, 15 minutes.

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3. Add the onion, carrot and garlic and cook 10 minutes.

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4. Pour in the wine and let it boil away almost completely.

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5. Add the tomatoes, stock, cloves, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook very gently 4 hours, until the meat pulls from the bone.

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6. Blanch the celery in boiling salted water 5 minutes, then drain.

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7. Add the celery, pine nuts, raisins and chocolate to the pot and cook uncovered 20 minutes more, until the sauce is thick.

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8. Skim the fat from the surface and check the seasoning before serving.

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Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.

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Things to Watch For

1. Four hours. Anything less and the oxtail will be chewy.
2. Blanch the celery separately so it keeps some bite.
3. Skim the fat at the end — oxtail throws a lot of it.

Ingredient Swaps

• An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
• A dry vermouth keeps for longer than an open bottle of white wine and is the closer swap than a random white left in the fridge; for an alcohol-free version, use the same amount of stock with a squeeze of lemon.

About This Recipe

Four hours is the minimum and there is no shortcut, because oxtail is almost entirely connective tissue and only long wet heat turns that into gelatine. Under four hours it is chewy; at four it slides off the bone. The celery is not a background aromatic here — a whole head goes in near the end, cut into finger lengths, and it should still have some bite when it reaches the table. And the finish of pine nuts, raisins and a square of bitter chocolate is not a modern flourish: it is the old Roman sweet-sour, and it is what stops four hours of oxtail from tasting heavy.

On the Table Alongside

Rigatoni dressed in the sauce · Bread · Cesanese

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Creamy Parmesan Polenta, Cauliflower Risotto, Ciabatta.

Keeping Coda alla Vaccinara

Refrigerated for 4 days and better on the second. Freezes 3 months.

Quick Answers

Coda alla Vaccinara Nutrition Facts

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

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