Recipe: Pappardelle Ducali

Nonna Maria Simone’s recipes
Pappardelle Ducali
 
Serves 4 people
 
Ingredients

400 grams mixed fresh mushrooms such as portobello, pine mushroom, shiitake, oyster, enoki, field mushroom and morels, cleaned with a paper towel and sliced

4 cloves of garlic

1 bunch of Italian parsley, chopped  

1 large tin of chopped tomatoes (800 grams)

1 small onion, diced

50 grams of dried porcini mushrooms soaked in 100ml of boiling water, leave to cool and until mushrooms are soft

olive oil for cooking

Few chopped sage leaves for garnish

Ricotta salata (a dried, hard ricotta) or Parmigiano Reggiano

Ingredients for the pasta

300 grams of 00 flour  

three small free range eggs (all up about 155 grams)

pinch of salt

On a clean surface, sift the flour, salt and make a well in the middle, add the eggs and combine in to the flour either with a fork or fingers until it comes together and it forms a dough. If the mixture is too dry, add a small amount of cold water. Knead the dough for about eight minutes until it is smooth and almost silky and place in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let it sit for about an hour.

Turn out the dough on to a floured board, cut in to manageable pieces, about three, and using a pasta machine set on 1, start feeding in the pasta, stretching and rolling out the sheet. Fold in half and repeat until the sheet is roughly in a rectangular shape. Then repeat rolling at least twice on settings 3, 5 and 7 until the sheet is thin.

Using a sharp knife, cut each pasta sheet in to 15cm by 1cm pappardelle strips. Leave the pappardelle on a tray dusted with flour to use when need.

Method

Heat olive oil in a saucepan, add the diced onion and saute until translucent, add the tinned tomatoes, pinch of salt and simmer for about 40 minute until the mixture has reduced, intensified and sweetened in flavour. Take off the heat.

Heat olive oil in a large frypan, add the chopped garlic and saute for a minute without colouring it, add sliced mushrooms and cook over a medium heat until they start to wilt. Add the porcini mushrooms with its water and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the chopped parsley and the cooked tomato, stir and adjust seasoning if necessary. The sauce should be quite thick and rich.

In a large pot, bring salted water to the boil and cook the pasta. Fresh pasta only takes a few minutes and rises to the top. Drain and add the pasta to the mushroom ragu. Mix well and just before serving, add more chopped Italian parsley and few sage leaves of sage for garnish and serve from the pan with plenty of grated ricotta salata or parmigiano.