ragù di lepre
hares in papdele
Vitally important first point - if you haven’t shot much hare recently, chicken thighs are a perfectly fine substitute.
Hares in Papdele appears in ’The Forme Of Cury,’ a collection of recipes from 14th Century England written in Middle English, which was published by Samuel Pegge in 1791. The recipes are supposed to have come from “the chief Master Cooks of King Richard II.” Along with a few others, this recipe is proof that, at least at some levels of society, pasta was alive and well in medieval England and we shouldn’t treat it as merely a 19th or even 20th century import.
I’ve based my interpretation of this recipe on the idea of a rabbit stew on pasta, rather than try to follow the slightly vague original , which gives the option to “use crusts or wafers INSTEAD of pasta lozenge shapes.” Whilst ‘papdele’ would appear to be the equivalent of our modern ‘pappardelle’, from reading around the subject I get the impression that ‘papdele’ could well have been a multi-purpose discriptor for pasta in the 14th century, a little like ‘maccheroni’ was used in Italy in the 19th century to describe a range of different pasta shapes.… so my version is more of a white ragù of rabbit on fresh egg, lozenge-shaped flat pasta, which was dressed in a buttery sauce with ‘powder douce’ (sweet powder).
Powder-douce could be a spice mix of almost any sweet spices, including cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, pepper, and galangal…. My version was simply cinnamon, nutmeg and black pepper.
WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO DO
(scroll down for the full method)
WHAT YOU’LL NEED TO DO
• make the ragù
• grind the spices
• make the pasta
• rest the pasta
• roll and cut out the pasta
• make the butter & ‘sweet powder’ sauce
• boil the pasta
• combine sauce and pasta
• plate with ragù on dressed pasta
hares in papdele
INGREDIENTS
FOR FIVE PEOPLE
• 350g rabbit / chicken thighs
• 2 small carrots
• 2 onions
• garlic clove
• 1 large celery stick
• 2 tblspns butter
• chicken stock
• cinnamon
• nutmeg
• black pepper
PASTA
400g homemade fresh pasta:
• 1 egg
• 300g ‘0’ flour
• 1 tblspn EVO
• 150-200ml water
• a pinch of salt
MANTECATURA
none
METHOD
Here’s the original Middle English recipe:
Take hares parboile hem in gode broth. Cole the broth and waisshe the fleyssh. Cast azeyn to gydre. take obleys oper wafrouns in stede of lozeyns and cowche in dysshes. Take powdour douce and lay on salt the broth and lay onoward an messe forth”
…which translates, roughly, to:
Take Hares and parboil them in good broth. Cool the broth and wash the meat. Put them again together. Take crusts or wafers, instead of pasta lozenge shapes, and lay them on a dish. Add Sweet Spice Powders, salt the stew and lay it on, and serve it forth.
Begin by making the fresh pasta. You’ll really benefit from using a pasta machine for this step, or be ready for a mild rolling-pin workout.
To make the pasta, tip the flour onto a clean worktop and gather it up into a little mound. Make a well in the center and tip the white and yolk of the egg into it. Use a fork to begin to mix the egg and flour together. Begin to work the mixture with your hands and then knead for about 5 minutes. Make the pasta into a ball, cover it with cling film and allow it to rest in a fridge for between 30-45 mins.
Roll out small amounts of the dough to a thickness of around 3mm and then use a pasta machine to reduce the thickness further - on my Imperia pasta machine, I went right up to the penultimate thickness setting to produce long lengths of pasta. With a cutter or knife, cut lozenges/diamonds out of the lengths of pasta, so that they’re about 10cm high. As you cut the shapes out, lay them carefully onto a floured plate or cutting board, then cover them with a teacloth and put them back in the fridge.
Next, prepare the ‘powder douce’ by grinding the spices in a mortar - or simply combine pre-ground ones. I used just cinnamon and nutmeg, about 2 teaspoons’ worth of each.
Now, as I explained, my approach to this recipe is more in the style of a modern ragù, and including a soffritto, which you’ll notice wasn’t in the 14th century original. I also used chicken in the version on the right, rather than rabbit.
Begin by chopping the celery, onions and garlic and frying them gently in EVO, as you would for any other meat ragù. After a few minutes and the chicken thighs, still on the bone. Add a splash of wine and allow that to boil off, then pour on enough chicken stock so that the meat’s covered. Bring everything back to a gentle simmer and alow it to cook for 45-60 mins, untill the meat can be easily pulled away from the bone. Do that and discard the chicken skin, then reduce the sauce, if need be, so that it reaches the consistency of a tomato-based meat ragù.
As you boil the water for the pasta, get the butter sauce ready in a pasta tossing pan - melt 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter, then sprinkle on the powder douce with a pinch of salt. Boil the pasta (it’ll barley take 2-3 minutes) and then fish it out of the water and add it straight to the butter sauce. Toss or mix to combine, then plate each portion, add the ragù directly to the top of each one.
NUTRITION per serving
KCAL: 529
Fat (g): 15.8
Sat Fat (g): 6.0
Carb (g): 61.2
Sug (g): 5.6
Fibre(g): 4.7
Prot (g): 26.9
Salt (g): 0.47
Nutritional information is provided as an indication only of approximate values for the recipe on this page. You should make your own calculations if you have specific dietry requirements or are required to follow a strict calorie-controlled diet.
