Words by Paul Ainsworth
It doesn’t get more signature Caffè Rojano than this dish. When my wife, Emma, and I knew we were going to be launching Caffè Rojano, we went to Rome and visited lots of trattorias. Interestingly, what we noticed there was a serious amount of pasta compared to a thimbleful of bolognese! Growing up as a kid in our house, my dad was adamant that it was minimum spaghetti with a boat-load of bolognese. Here, I’ve gone 50/50.
Serves: 4
Ingredients:
2 tbsp olive oil
1.5kg beef shoulder (feather blade)
1 onion, peeled and cut into quarters
1 carrot, unpeeled and cut lengthways
1 leek, cut lengthways then in half
2 garlic cloves, crushed
4 sprigs of thyme
4 sprigs of rosemary
1 bay leaf
½ tbsp tomato purée
50ml red wine vinegar
500ml red wine
2 litres beef stock
Overnight Tomatoes
50g Parmesan
Sea salt
Cracked black pepper
For the overnight tomatoes:
14 vine-ripened cherry tomatoes, halved
2 garlic cloves 1 tbsp olive oil
½ tbsp sherry vinegar
Sea salt
Cracked black pepper
For the pasta:
3 egg yolks
2 eggs
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
225 g ‘00’ pasta flour, plus extra for dusting
For the chimichurri:
60g flat-leaf parsley, stalks included
60g coriander, stalks included
15g oregano, leaves picked
1 garlic clove, peeled
½ tsp chilli flakes
1 tsp ground cumin
80ml olive oil
60ml cider vinegar
For the pangrattato:
250g stale bread, torn into small pieces
75g unsalted butter
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped or grated
4 sprigs of thyme, leaves picked
Zest of ½ lemon
Method
Preheat the oven to 150°C fan.
To make the beef ragù, place a large casserole over a medium heat and add the olive oil. Season the beef all over with salt, then carefully place in the pan and brown all over, turning every 20 seconds until you have a lovely piece of browned meat. After about 4–5 minutes, remove the beef from the pan and place on a tray.
Leave the casserole on the heat, add the onion and carrot and cook the vegetables in the beef fat for 2 minutes. Now add the leek, garlic, thyme, rosemary and bay leaf and cook for a further 2–3 minutes. Next, add the tomato purée and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring continuously. Now add 25 ml of the red wine vinegar and deglaze all the lovely flavours off the bottom of the pan. Pour in the red wine and reduce until it has been absorbed into the vegetables. Add the beef stock and bring everything to a simmer, then return the beef to the cooking liquor. Place a piece of baking paper on top and use a small plate to help keep the meat submerged. Cover with a lid and cook in the oven for about 2½ hours.
The best way to test if the beef is cooked is by inserting a small knife through the middle. If it’s soft and the knife goes through easily, the beef is ready. Remove the beef from the oven but leave the lid on the pan until the beef is cool enough to touch. Then, transfer the beef to a plate and strain the cooking liquor through a sieve into another saucepan. Turn up the heat to high and reduce the cooking liquor until you get a thick, gravy-like sauce.
Once the sauce is reduced and thick, take off the heat and set aside to cool for 20 minutes while you pick the beef into small pieces. Now add the sauce, bit by bit, to glaze and coat the meat. It will more than likely not need all the sauce but you can use the rest for so many things and it freezes really well. Stir through the remaining 25 ml of red wine vinegar, then taste and check the seasoning.
To make the pasta, whisk the eggs, egg yolks and extra virgin olive oil together. Now add the flour and a pinch of salt to a food appliance with a blade attachment and pulse for just 2–3 seconds to combine. Turn the appliance on and slowly add the egg mixture. Stop once the flour and eggs start to form a crumb, turn the machine off and pinch the mixture together. If it forms a dough in your fingers, it’s ready. If it is still crumblike, add some more egg mixture. Once the dough starts to come together, turn the machine off, empty the contents onto a lightly floured surface and knead the dough for 4–5 minutes to form a ball of pasta. Wrap the pasta in clingfilm and leave to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Unwrap the dough and, with a rolling pin, roll it out until it is thin enough to start to roll through a pasta machine. Depending on your pasta machine, I take my pasta down a notch each time until I reach setting 3 or 4. Cut the pasta into 30-cm sheets, attach the tagliatelle cutter and roll each sheet through the pappardelle cutter. (If you don’t have a pappardelle cutter, you can cut the pasta into 30 x 4-cm ribbons by hand.) Place your pappardelle on a clothes hanger and hang it up to dry for around 20 minutes.
To make the chimichurri, add all the ingredients to a liquidizer and blitz until smooth. To make the pangrattato, add the stale bread to a food appliance with a blade attachment, or a blender, and lightly pulse until coarsely broken down. Place a large frying pan over a medium heat, add the butter and heat until the butter is golden and foaming. Add the broken stale bread, garlic, thyme leaves and a pinch of sea salt and cook until the bread is golden and crisp. Just before removing from the pan, add the lemon zest and have a final taste, adding a little more salt if needed. Transfer the crisp crumbs to a tray lined with kitchen paper to remove any excess fat, ready for serving.
Fill a deep-sided pan with water, season with salt and bring to the boil. Cook the dried pasta for 2 minutes. While the pasta is boiling, warm the beef ragù in a shallow casserole-style pan and stir through the overnight tomatoes. Once the pasta is cooked, drain into a colander and then add to the ragù, gently turning to coat the pasta in the sauce but being careful not to overmix.
Remove the pan from the heat, spoon over some of the chimichurri dressing and the toasted pangrattato, then place in the middle of the table with the Parmesan and a grater, and let people grate their own.
The night before you want to serve the dish, preheat the oven to its lowest setting – around 50°C fan. Place the cherry tomatoes on a baking tray. Slice the garlic cloves as thinly as you possibly can, then top each tomato half with a sliver of garlic. Season lightly with sea salt and cracked black pepper, then lightly drizzle the sherry vinegar all over the tomatoes. Place the tray in the preheated oven and go to bed. Wake up the next morning to the best-smelling kitchen and little red jewels of flavour.
Extracted from FOR THE LOVEOF FOOD by Paul Ainsworth(Harper Collins, £26.00 )