Pasta Presto Night and Oxtail Sauce with Pasta

This is my first Pasta Presto night. This event is hotsted by Equal Opportunity Kitchen I decided to make a completely new pasta dish that I had never made it before. As I have been trying to do, my goal with this dinner was to use ingredients that I already had on hand.

For the past couple of years, we have gotten a side of beef. With the side of beef comes the oxtail. I finally decided to cook the oxtail. After searching and searching for a recipe, I found one that Emeril wrote called Homemade Pasta Squares with Oxtail Sauce.

There were a lot of steps for this recipe – as there often are with Emeril’s recipes. This was the first time I have eaten oxtail and was quite surprised how long it has to cook. The entire dinner took over three hours to prepare. It was, by no means, a difficult dinner to cook, it just took a long time. Since I don’t have a pasta maker, I didn’t make the pasta. I found some egg pasta at the store and used that instead.

Having never had oxtail before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The pasta was somewhat greasy, and I can only attribute that to the oxtail, as there wasn’t much else to make the dish greasy. I really liked the flavor of the sauce – I love pancetta and garlic, and the oxtail added a different beefy taste – I really can’t describe the flavor. It is just different from, say a steak or a roast.