Oxtail rigatoni (alla vaccinara) 

The rigatoni with oxtail are a first course of the poor tradition, whose origins are lost in the most humble alleys of ancient Rome. Despite the cheapness of the ingredients, it is a dish with an important preparation, which tells all the imagination in the kitchen of those who used to draw the maximum taste from a few ingredients.

Rigatoni alla vaccinara are a typical recipe of traditional Roman cuisine. In fact, this dish is nothing more than the pasta dish obtained by seasoning rigatoni with tomato sauce produced during the preparation of the famous coda alla vaccinara. The latter, emblem of traditional Roman cuisine, required a long preparation, but which was then used both as a second course of meat, and as a preparation of pasta sauce. Then complete the dish a good and abundant sprinkling of pecorino Romano, inevitable for most of the dishes of the Roman tradition.

I have revisited it a bit by replacing the lard with bacon and previously boiling the tail in order to obtain a tender and frayed meat and use its broth! A real bomb.

Ingredients

RIGATONI 400 Gr

OXTAIL 1,5 Kg

PORK LARD 50 Gr

CARROTS 1

ONIONS 1

GARLIC CLOVE 2

PARSLEY tuft - 1

WHITE WINE 100 Ml

BACON 30 Gr

TOMATO PUREE 2 Ladles

GRATED PECORINO ROMANO - 100 Gr

SALT to taste

BLACK PEPPER to taste

Preparation

First make a chopped vegetable for the sauté using onion, carrot, parsley and garlic. Heat in a saucepan about 30 g of lard and while this takes heat, cut the bacon into cubes. Add the bacon to the saucepan and immediately after the previously chopped vegetables. Sauté the vegetables and lard for a few minutes. Meanwhile, bring a saucepan full of water to a boil. When the vegetables are soft, add to the saucepan also the pieces of tail that you will have to brown evenly. Blend, then, with white wine keeping the heat of the fire rather high to quickly evaporate the alcoholic part of the wine. Add a little salt, adjust the flavor at the end of cooking. Once the wine has completely blended, add about 4 tablespoons of peeled tomatoes and about 1/2 l of hot water. Cover the saucepan and cook for about 3 hours over very low heat, checking occasionally and adding water if necessary. At the end of cooking the tail, boil the pasta al dente in salted water. While the pasta is cooking, take some sauce from the saucepan with the tail and transfer it to a pan in which you will then sauté the pasta. Put the pan with the sauce on low heat so that it can warm up, add the rigatoni once drained and sauté adding a little grated Pecorino. Serve the pasta together with the tail seasoning it with more grated Pecorino. 

Notes

The coda alla vaccinara is a key element of traditional Roman cuisine, made up of a certain variety of styles and which tells, through recipes of all kinds, the cultural melting pot that has always been the capital, since the time of its foundation, a crucial node of trade not only commercial. The oxtail represents a whole class of the people of medium-low extraction but closely linked to the universe of meat: butchers, animal traders, breeders. It is here that the oxtail finds its origin, together with other dishes made with the so-called fifth quarters, the "waste" parts such as tail, entrails, legs.