Pappardelle with Pork Ragù - It's What's For Dinner

Today I finally started to feel a little better (either that or it's just the DayQuil talking), so I decided to make a fabulous dinner for my husband. I found a couple of really great looking recipes to try out. I made pappardelle with pork ragù and zucchini with olive oil and garlic.

The Final Presentation

You start the dish with a soffritto - this is basically the base of any yummy Italian dish. It is basically celery, onion and carrot cooked in olive oil. There is something about these three ingredients that is so delicious. The entire house smells delicious and I was ready to eat this on it's own. Here's what my soffritto looked like:

Yummy Soffritto

I wanted to incorporate a vegetable side dish, so I decided to take some zucchini and cook it with garlic and olive oil. It was fantastic!

Zucchini With Garlic And Oil

Pork Ragù Recipe:

1.5 pounds of meaty pork spareribs, cut into individual ribs
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
1/2 cup dry red wine
2.5 pounds fresh Roma tomatoes, peeled, seeded, chopped
1 pound fresh pasta dough

Pat the ribs dry with paper towels and sprinkle them with salt and pepper. In a Dutch oven or large heavy pot over medium-high heat, warm the olive oil. Add the ribs and cook, turning as needed, until nicely browned on all sides, about 20 minutes. Using a slotted spoon transfer the ribs to a plate.

Add the onion, carrot, and celery to the pot, reduce the heat to medium and cook stirring frequently, until tender and golden, 10-15 minutes. Add the wine, bring to a simmer and deglaze the pot, scraping up the browned bits from the pot bottom. Cook for 1 minute to cook off some of the alcohol. Add the tomatoes, 1 cup of water and a pinch each of salt and pepper, and bring the mixture to a simmer. Return the ribs to the pan, cover, reduce the heat to low and cook until the ribs are very tender and the meat comes away easily from the bone, about 2.5 hours.

While the ribs simmer in the sauce, make the pasta dough.

Using a slotted spoon, remove the ribs from the sauce and let cool slightly. Remove the meat from the bones and shred it. Return the meat to the pan and cook, uncovered over low heat until the sauce has thickened, about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to boil and cook the pasta. Drain and add to the sauce, tossing gently to coat evenly.

The pasta is very easy to make - take two cups of flour, four eggs and two teaspoons of olive oil and blend them up in a food processor for 10-15 seconds. Take that dough and knead it for a couple minutes on a lightly floured surface. Then take that ball, let it rest under a bowl for about 30 minutes. I use my Kitchen Aid pasta attachment to roll it out into thin sheets and then cut into about 1 inch by 4 inch strips. Since it's fresh pasta, it only takes about 2 minutes to cook.

Homemade Pasta

The nice thing about this dough is that it's a basic egg noodle dough - you can make it into whatever shape you want to!

This dinner was absolutely fantastic! Mike and I both loved it. The one thing I would do a little differently is cook down the Roma tomatoes a little bit before I added them in... I would have liked to have them be a little more incorporated.

Enjoy!