Il ragù di Cinghiale

Wild boar ragout

A simple recipe to share with your family

Ingredients for 4 people

400 gr egg pappardelle or your favorite pasta such as pici

What you need for the marinade

500 gr wild boar meat

1 red onion, better if from Certaldo

1 carrot

1 celery rib

10 bay leaves

5 juniper berries

1 tablespoon black peppercorns

Tuscan red wine

What you need for cooking

1 rosemary sprig

1 garlic clove

1 glass red wine

400 gr peeled blended tomatoes

Extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper

Let's start cooking

Clean the wild boar meat of fat and filaments, put it in a container, and add the onion, carrot and celery coarsely chopped, bay leaf, crushed juniper berries, peppercorns and cover with red wine.

Mix everything together and leave to marinate covered in the refrigerator overnight.

Drain the meat from the marinade (the wine from the marinade and the vegetables should be thrown away) and cut it into small cubes, place it in a pan with high sides over medium heat, without adding anything. This operation is essential, we must eliminate, in several times, all the water that comes out of the meat.

In a separate container brown a chopped celery, carrot, onion, garlic, and rosemary, I also like to add bay leaves.

When all the liquid has been removed from the boar we take it and add it to the container where we have browned celery, carrot, onion etc. .... we mix and brown well for another 5/7 minutes

Add the wine and when it has evaporated, add the tomatoes, salt and pepper and cook, covered, over low heat for about 3 hours. If during cooking tomato tends to be too dry, add a glass of water from time to time. In the final phase add the olives and adjust the sauce with salt if necessary.

(a little trick is to prepare the entire dose that I recommend, let it cool, then divide it into many single doses pouring it into glass containers or plastic bags, and then freeze it, so in the future you can eat it when you want without wasting anything....and I recommend that once frozen you consume it before 3 months)

We cook the pappardelle in plenty of salted water, and once cooked we drain them retaining a glass of cooking water, and add them to a pan where we have heated the wild boar sauce hot. My advice is to saute or stir the pasta with a lot of energy, so that the pasta loses its starch to create a nice creamy pasta, if you need to soften the pasta pour a little 'hot water from cooking pasta.

When the pasta is nice and creamy our "pappardelle with wild boar ragout" are ready to be served hot...and I recommend to match it with a good Chianti wine!