Meet the contender for my new favourite pasta shape
A recipe for corzetti with lamb ragu and mint
This week we are celebrating the unusually cold “summer” weather we’ve been having in Brisbane with a low maintenance lamb ragu. I’ll show you how to make corzetti, a stunning hand pressed pasta from Liguria.
And before I forget - why not make this Pasta Sunday an event, and serve it with this stunning labneh side and homemade, no sourdough starter required focaccia?
no.20
Corzetti with lamb ragu and mint
Whenever it gets to this time of year, I start to really miss home. Home being London, UK for me. Born and raised in SW London, I emigrated to Australia nearly 5 years ago and so far haven’t looked back. While I adore my life here - and all of the opportunities it’s brought me - the lack of proper winters in Brisbane is something I’ve not really gotten over. Never would I have thought that I’d miss the cold, dark days and long winter nights, but I really do. Specifically went we get into the Christmas period. Maybe it’s a combination of missing mum and grief rearing its head, or the fact I’m spending yet another season apart from my brothers and dad - I just feel a little blue when December rolls around.
I like to battle that feeling of homesickness with trying to make Christmas here feel as wintery as possible, and the easiest way of achieving that is usually through food. Enter lamb ragu - an incredible low maintenance but easy-as slow cooked beauty. Lamb always reminds me of dad and the combination of lamb, carrot and celery brings back fond memories of his lamb stew, a dish he’d make often.
So we’ll start there - once the lamb shoulder is seared, in goes a mixture of celery, fennel, carrot and onion - garlic makes a late entrance before white wine and chicken stock are added. A couple of fresh herbs and the lamb nestled back in - that’s all it takes, plus a few hours in the oven, of course.
One of my favourite vessels for eating ragu or any meat-sauce for that matter, is fazzoletti/mandilli de saea - a thin square of pasta that resembles a silk handkerchief. So when my corzetti stamp arrived recently - a tool that I had on my wish list for a good couple of years that I finally decided to purchase - I thought it would make a perfect pairing due to the circumference of this shape. And I wasn’t wrong - the texture and size of those medallions of pasta work in perfect harmony with the luscious mouth-feel of the ragu. A delight! Read on for the recipe.
Serves 4-6
Ingredients
Pasta
1x batch of my master pasta dough
Lam ragu
1.4kg bone in lamb shoulder
3-4 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 tbsp salt
Extra virgin olive oil
1 large carrot, roughly chopped
1 fennel, roughly chopped
1 large celery stick, roughly chopped
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 head of garlic, halved
500ml dry white wine
650ml chicken stock
3 bay leaves
3 sprigs of Rosemary
100g unsalted butter, in cubes
Handful of chopped mint, to serve
Parmigiano Reggiano, to serve
Method
Pasta
Make the pasta dough.
Once rested, divide the dough into four pieces. Work with one at a time (keep the rest covered) - flatten the piece with your hand or a rolling pin before passing it through the thickest setting on your pasta machine. Fold the edges in to create a neat rectangle that fits the width of your pasta machine, and run it through the thickest setting again until your dough is uniform in shape
Continue passing your dough through the machine, working through each thickness setting until you get to setting 6.
Use the base of the corzetti stamp to cut circles - make sure to re-roll and use any off cuts.
Place one circle onto the bottom part of the corzetti mould - gently use your hand to press this lightly into the stamp.
Take the top part of the mould and press down on the circle of pasta to seal and emboss with both sides of the stamp.
Carefully remove the corzetti and place on a baking sheet lined with a clean tea towel, or dusted with fine semolina.
The sauce and finishing touches
Preheat oven to 180c (160c Fan/350f)
Combine flour with salt and a good crack of black pepper.
Trim the lamb shoulder of any overly large pieces of fat, then dust in the flour on all sides and shake off any excess.
Over a moderate heat, in a large pan heat 2-3 tablespoons olive oil. Once searing hot, add the lamb shoulder and brown on all sides. Remove from the pan.
Reduce the heat slightly and add the chopped carrot, fennel, celery and onion and sauté for several minutes until they have started to soften, before adding the garlic - I like to halve an entire head and place it cut side down in the pan. We don’t want this to burn, but we do want it to soften, slightly caramelise and become deliciously fragrant.
After another few minutes, add the white wine to deglaze - make sure to scrape up any brown bits from the base of the pan - and allow the wine to reduce by half.
Add the chicken stock, bay and rosemary, and finally nestle the lamb shoulder back in.
NB: If your stove stop pan is not oven-safe, transfer the veggies and liquid to an oven proof dish first before adding in the lamb.Cover the pan and cook for 3 hours, or until the lamb is falling off the bone, checking the pan occasionally and add extra stock as needed if it appears to be drying out.
Remove the pan from the oven and transfer the lamb to another dish.
Strain the liquid from the pan into a saucepan or large sauté pan (discard the veggies - I usually save them to have over rice or just eat as they are..!), and put back over heat to reduce.
Shred the lamb off the bone using a couple of forks while the sauce is reducing, then add back to the sauce.
NB: I typically allow a ladle of ragu per person, so if you are making this for two I recommend finishing these next steps with only as much ragu as needed, storing the rest of the ragu for another time.
Add a few cubes of butter to the meat sauce, tossing to emulsify.
Cook the corzetti in plenty of well-salted boiling water for approx 2-3 minutes or until al dente.
Scoop out with a spider and add directly to the ragu - toss to marry.
Divide between plates and serve with chopped fresh mint and lots of parmigiano reggiano.
If you’re interested in learning a little more about corzetti with a step by step photographic guide, getting my suggested wine pairing and Sunday soundtrack, then why not consider becoming a paid subscriber and help keep Pasta Sunday going - thank you ❤️
Corzetti
The stunning, medallion-like pasta hails from Liguria, a region in the north-west of Italy. Apparently this ancient pasta dates back to the middle ages - which sounds pretty incredible when you say it out loud.
What’s particularly appealing about this shape beyond the pure aesthetics of it, is that the embossing that the handmade wooden mould imparts on the dough is perfect for sauce catching .
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