Name: Penne: Sauce from the Oxtail (Penne al Sugo di Coda)
Yield: Serves 5 as a main
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 1 kg oxtail, cut into its joints; 100 g lard (or 4 tablespoons olive oil plus 80 g diced prosciutto fat); 600 ml tomato passata, or 600 g fresh tomatoes, puréed whole; Parmesan to serve; a sprinkling of cocoa powder (optional); 1 medium onion, finely chopped; 2 sticks celery, finely chopped; 1 clove garlic, chopped; 2 bay leaves; 375 ml white wine

Preparation info

Serves
5
as a main

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

The Geometry of Pasta

By Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy

Published 2010

About

This is an unusual recipe to list as a sauce: here we make an oxtail stew (coda alla vaccinara, but with a bit more tomato), and serve the cooking liquor over pasta, much like ragù Napoletano, leaving the meat to serve as another course, or another meal. Almost any trattoria worth its salt in Rome will make oxtail, and many will serve pasta with the resulting sauce as well.

Kitty Travers, the researcher for this book, gave me h