Home-Made Pasta with Lamb Stew (Stricchetti al Ragù d'Agnello)

This week's choice of CBC  was - surprise surprise - another Pasta-Dish. It comes from the Italian region Umbria, one of the smaller regions with lots of hills, mountains and forests. Thus, the cuisine is genuine, hearty and meaty, with a strong tendency also for venison. If you ever come to Italy in the fall, make sure to spend a few nights in an agriturismo in Umbria. You can visit beautiful cities by day (Assisi, Perugia, Gubbio, Norcia, Spoleto, Orvieto, Terni....) and by night you can indulge in fabulous pasta, meat and polenta-dishes. 

Here's just one glimpse of what you could be eating (and I'm not even a very good cook)! It's: Emilia Valli "La cucina umbra in 300 ricette tradizionali"; Newton & Compton Editori, 2003 (recipe on page 76)

Home-Made Pasta with Lamb Stew (Stricchetti al Ragù d'Agnello)

Ingredients:

300gr flour 

2 eggs 

400gr lean lamb meat

2 garlic cloves

2 rosemary twigs

40gr of fat / pancetta

olive-oil

250gr of canned tomatoes (the already diced ones)

1 glass of broth

pecorino-cheese

salt and pepper

Preparation:

Spear meat with garlic and rosemary. Heat oil in saucepan or skillet and gently fry the meat from all sides together with the diced pancetta. Salt and pepper the meat (I didn't). Add the tomatoes and, after a few minutes, the prepared broth. Cover and let simmer for about 40 min. Since I tend to burn sauces and meats, I turned the heat very low and stirred frequently. When cooked, take the piece of meat out of the sauce and work it with the chopping knife (I do not know if this is the right word, however I mean this type of knife!). Return meat to sauce, put aside. 

While the meat was cooking, you prepared the pasta dough: knead together flour and battered eggs, adding a pinch of salt and a few spoons of water. Knead for quite some time, you should obtain a smooth and workable dough. The original recipe went on like this: Roll out dough very thin, cut into small rectangles of 2,5 x 5 cm and pinch them together in the middle, obtaining a butterfly-shape. However my dough wasn't made for this kind, unfortunately it was too brittle. So I decided to go for long and kinda thick spaghetti (there's an extra componetn for this on my pasta-machine, so it was quite easy!). 

Cook pasta in lots of salt-water, drain, and mix with hot sauce. Sprinkle with pecorino-cheese and freshly ground pepper.

Here's the sauce in the making, bubbling happily on the stove

and the pasta

The Mister's (rather full) plate

Close-up of my (normal) plate