A lamb sauce that will be perfect with tagliatelle or other long-stranded pasta: Just the thing for a crisp early spring day. To serve 4, you'll need:
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 2 hours, 00 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 pound (500 g) ground lamb
- 1 medium-sized onion
- A 4-inch stick celery
- A 3-inch piece carrot
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 ounce (30 g) Pancetta
- 1 large clove garlic
- 4 leaves sage
- The leaves from a 3-inch sprig of rosemary (about 1 teaspoon, chopped)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 pound (450 g) canned plum tomatoes, put through a food mill
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 1 teaspoon flour
- 1/2 cup cold water
- 1 bouillon cube
- Pepper
- 1 pound (500 g) tagliatelle, fettuccine, linguine, or similarly shaped egg pasta.
- 3/4 cup grated Pecorino
Preparation:
Finely dice the onion, carrot, and celery, and set them in a pot. Mince the garlic, sage and rosemary leaves, dice the pancetta, and add them to the vegetable mixture with the oil and the butter. Gently sauté the mixture for about 6 minutes, stirring occasionally; do not let it brown.Add the ground lamb and increase the flame; brown it for about 5 minutes. Stir in the wine and continue cooking over a lively flame; when it is almost completely evaporated sprinkle in 1 teaspoon of flour, stirring to keep lumps from forming, then stir in the tomatoes and water, and crumble in the bouillon cube into the sauce. Season lightly with pepper, bring to a boil, reduce the heat to a slow simmer, cover, and cook for at least an hour and a half, adding more hot water if necessary to keep the sauce from drying out.
When the sauce is almost done, boil water for the pasta. Stir the sauce into the pasta and serve it with the grated Pecorino. As a 1-course meal with a tossed salad this will serve 4; I'd suggest an Aglianico del Vulture or Mastroberardino's Mastro Rosso, a light Campanian interpretation of the grape.
As is true for Sugo alla Bolognese, you can expand this recipe and freeze some for later.
