Name: Coda alla Vaccinara (Roman Braised Oxtail)
Yield: Serves 6
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 1 onion, very finely chopped; 1 celery stick, very finely chopped, plus 5 celery sticks, diced; 1 large carrot, very finely chopped; 200 g/7 oz pork belly or bacon, finely chopped; 45 ml/3 tbsp tomato paste diluted in 500 ml/17 fl oz/generous 2 cups warm water; sea salt and ground black pepper; 2 garlic cloves, very finely chopped; a large pinch of crushed dried red chilli; 250 ml/8 fl oz/1 cup dry white wine; 1 oxtail and 1 ox cheek, 2.5 kg/5 ½ lb total weight, cut into large chunks

Preparation info

Serves
6

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

The Italian Regional Cookbook

By Valentina Harris

Published 2017

About

For thousands of years, until the Second World War, teams of oxen ploughed fields and pulled loads in the countryside around Rome. When they could no longer work, they were slaughtered and their skins became leather, their horns a variety of accessories and their meat was cooked in stews. The people whose jobs were to slaughter, butcher and skin the oxen were paid with skins, unwanted offal and other parts of the animal - including the oxtails. This created a style of cooking that is closel