Last Night at Chez Bart: Pappardelle with Short Rib Ragu

Pappardelle with Short Rib Ragu

Another recipe from Giada de Laurentiis' Everyday Pasta. I knew I wanted to cook this the second I saw it. It just sounded like the perfect wintery dish: slow cooked short rib in a wine/beef broth sauce. And to top it all off, shaved chocolate to plate??? Yes please!

Store Notes: This dish is surprisingly cheap to make, especially for the amount of effort it entails. Two and a half pounds of short ribs usually costs around ten to thirteen dollars, and you don't need expensive wine. While Mario Batali would probably prefer simmering this with $100 barolo, I cooked it with a $10.99 bottle of "Ali" Sangiovese di Toscana with excellent success.

The one thing this dish does call for, and I feel that every chef should have one, is a food processor. One might be able to prep the sauce with a blender, but it most likely will not come out consistent. So either buy a cheap one, or see if Mom wants to upgrade hers. Trust me; it's well worth it!

Prep Notes: This dish requires many steps, but can easily be bifurcated into two main parts: sauce prep, and meat prep.

Sauce prep: basically chop up the carrots and onion, and add it to the food processor along with the tomatoes, garlic and prescribed herbs. Pulse until it is a nice thick consistency; DO NOT over-process the sauce, otherwise the sauce will come out too soupy.

Meat prep: chop the pancetta and set aside. Next, salt and pepper the short ribs, then dredge in flour. Once they are coated with flour, you are ready to begin cooking.

Now, people may read this and wonder why I separated these into two distinct steps. The reason is, once one start cooking the meat, the average chef just does not have the skill to blast away at vegetables without overcooking the meat. And in this dish, which is predicated on slow cooking, overcooked meat can be disastrous.

Browning the ribs; interestingly, I am using my
crock-pot insert instead of a soup pot.

Cook Notes: In a large heavy soup pot - a 4 quart soup pot should work - with plenty of oil to cover, sauté the pancetta. Next, remove the pancetta and place the short ribs in the pot to brown. Whatever you do, DO NOT cook the ribs all the way through!!! This will result in tough meat later in the cooking process, making shredding it practically impossible. Remember, the whole point is to slowly cook the meat so it is tender and imbues flavor into the sauce.

Here, the ribs are simmering nicely in the sauce.
While it looks soupy now, a few hours of simmering
reduces the liquid to that of a nice sauce consistency.

Brown the ribs, flipping so both sides get a good golden color: just a couple of minutes per side. Next, pour the contents of the food processor into the pot. Add wine and beef stock, as well as the pancetta, and bring to a boil. Once boiling, drop the heat to that of a rolling simmer and cook with the lid on for an hour and a half. Then, take off the lid and cook for another hour and a half. 

Remove the ribs, and discard the bones - this should not be difficult, as the meat should be super tender. Shred the meat and place back into the sauce. Serve with pasta (see previous posts for my take on preparing pasta), and plate with shaved bittersweet chocolate!

I usually under-cook the pasta slightly in the boiling water,
and instead, toss the pasta (with a bit of the pasta water)
with the sauce still on the stove. The heat should finish
it off nicely!

Tasting Notes: This dish is, without a doubt, one of the best that I have ever made. It is extremely flavorful; my palette just exploded with the richness of the slow-cooked rib combined with the saltiness of the pancetta, sweetness of the chocolate, and the savoriness of the herbs in the sauce. It is also very rich and heavy. I was filled to the gills with only a medium-sized portion. 

Libation Notes: While the preparation of this dish might not require expensive wine, the actual partaking of this dish does. Because of the explosion of flavors, this dish truly deserves to be paired with exuberant red wines: Barolo and Brunello di Montalcino are two Italian wines that come to mind. Of course if you wanted to get away from the Italians, a tasty Bordeaux or red Burgundy from France, or a spicy Malbec from Argentina or Chile would pair quite well.

Overall: This is the perfect wintery-weekend dish to serve. Prepare all the ingredients after lunch, start cooking around 2pm, and you will have a rich and decadent meal that tastes many times the effort it requires by 5pm. It sticks to your ribs, warms you up, and just assaults your taste-buds with both sweet and savory flavors.