Oxtail ragu

This weekend I spent most of Sunday cooking, because I could and because I needed the release. Cooking is one of the few activities that unilaterally takes me out of my brain; banging around in the kitchen for a few hours is relaxing because I can only think about what it is that I'm doing. Everything else just falls away.

So in an ode to what I hope are the last gasps of winter, I made an oxtail ragu. It was sort of an on-the-fly recipe; first I seared the oxtails on all sides, then took those out and added some really nice, really thick chopped bacon. Then I added onions, garlic, celery and carrots; deglazed that with some white wine (Yellowtail Chardonnay, because I was trying to get rid of it), put the oxtails back in, added two large cans of fire-roasted whole tomatoes, most of a can of leftover tomato sauce, bay leaves, and assorted spices. Oh, and some pork broth. After letting it simmer down for about 4 hours, I took the oxtails out, let them cool, then shredded the meat off the bone and added it back in.

My original plan was for gnocchi; but for some reason, they fell apart in the boiling stage. So I threw a box of pasta into the ragu instead.