Pappardelle with Wild Board Sauce

This is one of my favorite dishes, it’s extremely delicious. The one presented here is my personal recipe, often this kind of dish is served in cottages in the mountains. I ate also a very good one at the shelter Crispi on the Madonie mountains.

Ingredients

For the boar sauce:

• 2 onions;
• 1 carrot;
• 2 sticks of celery;
• 2 garlic cloves;
• half kilo of wild boar meat – use a part that is not too fatty and not too lean;
• 1 bay leaf;
• 1 tablespoon of sweet paprika;
• 1 teaspoon of chili;
• 1 glass of tomato sauce;
• 1 glass of red wine – dry!
• 1 glass of milk.

For the pappardelle:

• 200g hard wheat semola flour;
• 100ml water.

Sauce Preparation

Chop the onions, carrot, and celery into small pieces. Cut the meat in chunks, not too big; smaller chunks require shorter cooking time and they will get tender more easily.

Sauce Cooking

Cook the chopped vegetables in olive oil or lard, or both; here I used pork lard. Use a large pot; I used a cast iron pot, but I only recommend it if you are confident that it is seasoned well, otherwise it will leave an unpleasant iron aroma on it.
You need to make the onions soft, so cook them for about 10 minutes in medium low heat and stir. Get the meat into the pot and increase the heat a bit and stir until all the meat is browned. First add the sweet paprika and chili, then the tomato sauce, the wine and the bay leaf. Get the heat to the minimum and let it cook for at least 3 hours with closed lid. Lastly add the milk and let it cook until it’s a bit thicker. It should not be very thick but it is also not supposed to be a soup.

Pappardelle Preparation

Mix the semolina flour with water – water should be half the amount of flour and knead until you form a ball. Roll the ball to stretch it into a fine sheet; the best tip I have is to roll towards the angles so you will be able to make a rectangle and each of the pappardelle will be even. Spread flour on the pasta sheet and fold it rolling it into a cylinder. Keep spreading flour to make sure there is no direct contact between the layers of the pasta sheet, otherwise it could stick. Cut it into 2-3 cm parts and then unfold them to reveal the pappardelle. Fold the pappardelle together into a nest.

Cooking the Pappardelle and Finishing

Boil a large pot of water and salt it. Once boiling put the pappardelle in; they will be ready once floating on the water. Put them on a pan with a bit of cooking water, and then pour the boar sauce, and sauté to blend the sauce well onto the pasta.

It takes a while to make this dish but the result is outstanding. Plate it and serve it with some pecorino cheese.

Enjoy and best wishes!
George