pappardelle con polpette al latte
pappardelle with polpette in milk sauce with wilted rocket
This is a recipe that could straddle a couple of the chapters in this book, depending on how you choose to cook it. The basic recipe as photographed is for polpette in a milky sauce, but there are also options for cooking them dry without the milk and dry but with garlic added to the meatball mix and a smokier, hotter addition of smoked paprika.
The basic recipe for polpette (pol-pett-teh) is one that’s a real throwback to my childhood, as it’s exactly how my mother, and also in fact my grandmother and presumbably my great grandmother would have cooked polpette in Italy. In the 1970s and 80s in Cardiff my mother adapted them a little to a UK meat-and-2-veg meal, serving them with mashed potato and boiled peas. I often still cook that dish to this day for my family, but for this book I’ve come up with this pasta-based version.
WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO DO
(scroll down for the full method)
gather the ingredients
prepare the bread
grate some cheese
make polpette mix
test cook for flavour
make the polpette
cook the polpette
boil the pasta
combine sauce and pasta
add rocket to wilt
pappardelle with polpette in milk sauce with wilted rocket
INGREDIENTS
FOR FOUR PEOPLE
500g 5% fat pork or beef mince
2 eggs
2-3 slices white bread minus crusts
approx 150g grated parmesan
1 chicken stock cube
2 handfuls fresh rocket
plain flour
fresh grated nutmeg to taste
salt and black pepper to taste
approx 250ml milk
PASTA
500g dry or fresh pappardelle
/ fettuccine / tagliatelle
MANTECATURA (?)
none
METHOD
Start by tearing the white bread slices into small pieces about the size of a fingernail. Soak them in a couple of tablespoons of milk in a bowl. Add to the same bowl your minced pork, about 150g grated parmesan, 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon or so of freshly grated nutmeg, and a few pinches of salt and black pepper. The best way to get the seasoning right and how much of a nutmeg taste you want is to dry fry a few 'test' tiny little patties of your polpette mix in a small frying pan. I normally do patties a bit bigger than a 50p coin and taste them. Just add slat, black pepper and possibly cheese too until you’ve got a balance you like.
Once you’ve got the mix right, you need to make the actual polpette. The ones in the photo on this page were about 30mm in diameter, which in hindsight was a little on the chubby side. Aim for 20-25mm, rolling them as close to perfect ball shape as possible between the palms of your hands. Then roll them on a plate covered in plain flour until they’re evenly coated all over. Keep going until you’ve used up all the polpette mixture.
To cook the polpette, put a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of EVO into a non-stick frying pan and warm it until it just starts to sizzle. Add the polpette carefully and let them sit on one side until you can very delicately, using 2 forks, turn them over. Keep cooking and turning them until they’re evenly, lightly browned all over. They’ll tend to get misshapen a bit, depending on how soft your mixture is, but don’t worry about that. It’s part of the charm of homemade polpette!
When they’re browned, turn the heat down and wait a minute or so until you add a 100ml or so of milk. You want to avoid the milk instantly boiling and splitting. When you've added the milk you can gently bring the heat up so that it’s barely simmering. Again, you want to avoid it boiling. Crumble a chicken stock cube into the sauce and adjust for salt and pepper if you need to. Break a couple of bay leaves in two and add them to the sauce too. What you’re trying to do us get some of the floury coating on the outside of the polpette to work as a sauce thickener. You shouldn’t need to add extra flour or cornflour to slightly thicken the milk sauce.
When the polpette sauce is done to your liking, turn off the heat and let them rest while you boil and cook the pasta. I made this dish using store bought fresh pappardelle, but I’d normally opt for dry linguine or reginelle, as they’re a little more robust and less liskely to overcook in the pasta wok. As we’ve done in previous recipes, add the almost cooked pasta to the polpette and sauce for the last minute or two only, together with a couple of big handfuls of fresh rocket, so that it can wilt.
NB Your polpette may be quite delicate so you don’t want to have to rely on the normal ‘2nd stage’ cooking/mantecatura in the Pasta Wok / Tossing Pan to finish off the pasta. Serve with lots of black pepper and parmigiano or if you’re feeling daring, small dollops of lingonberry jam or cranberry sauce on each portion.
NUTRITION per serving
KCAL: 650
Fat (g): 23.2
Sat Fat (g): 11.5
Carb (g): 52.7
Sug (g): 4.7
Fibre(g): 3.4
Prot (g): 56.7
Salt (g): 1.36
