Traditional Italian Abruzzese Guitar Cut Pasta with Lamb Ragu | Maccheroni alla Chitarra con Ragù d'Agnello
Maccheroni alla chitarra with lamb ragu is the Sunday plate of inland Abruzzo, and it works because two textures were made for each other. The pasta is a firm egg sheet pressed through a strung wooden frame until it falls as strands with four square sides. The sauce is lamb shoulder cut small with a knife and braised for two hours with red wine and tomato.
Two decisions separate a good version from an ordinary one. The lamb is diced, not minced, because ground meat surrenders its texture within twenty minutes while a quarter inch dice holds its shape for two hours. The other is the dried sweet pepper of Abruzzo, whose fruity depth paprika only approximates.
This is the version cooked in the province of L'Aquila, adapted for a home kitchen with a chitarra or a thick bladed pasta cutter. Nothing is thickened artificially: the body comes from the lamb, the shine from starch in the pasta water meeting the rendered fat.
Yield: 4 generous servings. Prep: 50 minutes. Rest: 45 minutes. Cook: 2 hours 20 minutes. Total: about 3 hours 30 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo piatto. Region: Abruzzo, the Gran Sasso and the drover roads of the interior.
The Story
Abruzzo ate lamb because Abruzzo moved sheep. For roughly five centuries the region was the northern anchor of the great transhumance, and every autumn hundreds of thousands of animals walked south along the tratturi, the wide grass roads running from the plateaux above L'Aquila to the plains of Puglia. That traffic made lamb and castrato the ordinary meat of the interior and fixed the flavours the region still cooks with: mutton fat, wild herbs, dried peppers and pecorino.
The chitarra is a household object rather than a professional tool. A beech frame strung with steel wires takes a sheet of egg pasta, and a rolling pin driven over the top pushes it through so it falls already cut. The strands are square in section, which is the whole point: four flat faces and four sharp edges hold a meat sauce as no round extruded strand will. In the Teramo dialect they are maccheroni, in the Aquilano often spaghetti.
The sauce belongs to feast days. A ragu needing a shoulder of lamb and two hours on the stove was never weekday food, and in the Peligna and Sagittario valleys it appeared at Easter, at weddings and on the patron saint's day. The pepper that gives it colour is the peperone dolce grown around Altino in the province of Chieti, strung in ropes under the eaves through the winter. Pecorino finishes it, never Parmigiano, because the cheese came from the same animals as the meat.
Ingredients
For the chitarra pasta
Durum wheat semola rimacinata, 2 cups (300 g)
Soft wheat flour type 00, 3/4 cup (100 g)
Whole eggs, large, 4
Egg yolk, large, 1
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Semola for dusting, about 1/4 cup (40 g)
For the lamb ragu
Boneless lamb shoulder, trimmed, cut into 1/4 inch dice, 1 1/2 lb (680 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Yellow onion, finely diced, 1 medium
Carrot, finely diced, 1 small
Celery stalk, finely diced, 1
Garlic cloves, crushed, 2
Fresh rosemary, 1 sprig
Bay leaf, 1
Dried sweet pepper of Altino, torn, 1, or sweet paprika, 1 tsp (2 g)
Dry red wine, 3/4 cup (180 ml)
Canned San Marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand, 1 3/4 cups (420 g)
Tomato paste, 1 tbsp (16 g)
Light lamb or chicken stock, 1 1/2 cups (360 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1 1/2 tsp (9 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For cooking and finishing
Water for the pasta, 5 quarts (4.7 l)
Coarse sea salt for the water, 2 tbsp (36 g)
Pecorino Abruzzese, finely grated, 1/2 cup (50 g)
Unsalted butter, cold, 1 tbsp (14 g)
Flat leaf parsley, finely chopped, 1 tbsp (4 g)
Preparation
Mixing and resting the dough
Mound both flours on a board, make a well and break in the eggs and the yolk with the salt. Work them with a fork until the mass holds, then knead firmly for 10 to 12 minutes. A chitarra dough must be drier and tighter than a tagliatelle dough, because a soft sheet stretches instead of cutting and jams between the wires. Rest it wrapped for 45 minutes.
Rolling the sheets and cutting on the chitarra
Cut the dough into four and keep three wrapped. Roll each to about 2 mm, thicker than for filled pasta: the sheet must be at least as thick as the gaps are wide or the strands come out flat. Trim it to the width of the frame, dust it with semola, lay it across the wires and push a rolling pin over with steady even pressure, two or three passes. Tap the frame, then toss the strands in semola and shape loose nests.
Cutting and browning the lamb
Trim the shoulder of hard sinew but leave the soft fat inside the muscle, where the flavour lives, then cut it into 1/4 inch dice by hand. Heat the olive oil in a heavy casserole until it shimmers and brown the lamb in two batches, about 6 minutes each, without stirring more than twice. A crowded pan steams the meat grey instead of building a crust. Lift each batch out and keep the juices.
Building the soffritto and the pepper
Lower the heat to medium and cook the onion, carrot and celery in the same fat for 10 to 12 minutes, until soft and just colouring, scraping the base so the residue from the lamb lifts into them. Add the garlic, rosemary, bay leaf and torn dried pepper for 2 minutes, then stir in the tomato paste and toast it a full minute until it darkens and loses its metallic edge.
Deglazing with red wine
Return the lamb and its juices, raise the heat and pour in the red wine. Let it bubble hard, scraping the base clean, until reduced by about two thirds, roughly 4 minutes. Leave the pot uncovered. Wine that has not reduced properly leaves a sharp alcoholic note that hours of simmering soften but never remove.
The slow braise
Add the tomatoes, stock and salt, bring to a bare simmer and set the lid ajar. Cook for 2 hours on the lowest heat that keeps a bubble breaking every few seconds, stirring every 20 minutes. Around ninety minutes the fat separates and floats; stir it back in rather than skimming, since it carries the aroma. It is ready when a cube of lamb crushes under a spoon and the sauce coats its back. Remove the rosemary and bay leaf and grind in pepper.
Salting the water and cooking the maccheroni
Bring the water to a rolling boil and add 2 tablespoons of coarse salt, about 7 grams per litre. That is deliberately less than for dried pasta, since fresh egg pasta is already salted in the dough and cooks in a fraction of the time. Drop the nests in, stir once and cook 2 to 3 minutes, testing from 90 seconds. They are ready when the floury centre has gone but the edges still feel firm. Reserve two ladles of water.
The mantecatura
Warm two thirds of the ragu in a wide pan and lift the pasta straight from the pot with tongs so it carries a little water with it. Toss and fold for about 60 seconds, adding reserved water a spoonful at a time. Off the heat, drop in the cold butter and half the pecorino and keep tossing until the sauce turns glossy and clings to every strand. Adding cheese off the heat is the only way to stop pecorino seizing into strings.
Plating
Warm the bowls, and warm them properly. Lamb fat sets faster than any other fat in an Italian kitchen, so a cold plate turns a glossy ragu dull and waxy within a minute. A shallow wide bowl held at about 140°F (60°C) is the right vessel.
Lift a portion with a carving fork and a ladle and turn it into a loose twist in the centre, high rather than flat. Spoon the remaining third of the warm ragu over the top so the meat is visible rather than buried. Finish with grated pecorino, a pinch of parsley and one turn of black pepper. No oil drizzle, no herb sprig, no crumb. Carry it out at once: the window between perfect and merely good is under two minutes.
Professional Technique
The defining technique here is the dice. Minced lamb has been forced through a plate that ruptures every fibre, so within twenty minutes of simmering it releases its water, tightens and breaks into a fine suspension. A 1/4 inch cube cut by knife keeps its structure, survives two hours and softens from the outside in. The result is discrete pieces of meat in a sauce with body, because collagen dissolved into it slowly rather than meat disintegrating into it.
The second is heat management across three stages that want different things. Browning wants a pan hot enough to build a crust and empty enough not to steam, which is why the lamb goes in two batches. The soffritto wants medium heat, because vegetables coloured too fast taste roasted instead of sweet. The braise wants the lowest heat the burner holds, since a true simmer whips the fat into a hard emulsion that turns the sauce cloudy. Only two thirds of the ragu then goes into the pan, since a pan overloaded with sauce has more fat than starchy water to bind it.
Texture and Moisture Control
Chitarra pasta has a rough porous surface because the dough is mostly durum semola and because the wires tear rather than slice. That roughness is why the sauce holds, and it also means the strands drink liquid fast. Cook them 30 seconds past the point where the white core disappears and they turn soft in the bowl, since they keep absorbing in a warm sauce. Pull them at 2 to 3 minutes with a bite in the edges.
Fresh egg pasta sheds far more starch into the water than dried pasta does, so this cooking water is thicker and more useful than usual. Two ladles held back let you correct a sauce that has tightened, in small amounts with the pan moving. Half a cup at once drops the temperature, breaks the emulsion and leaves a watery film that no tossing brings back together. Lamb fat also sets at a higher temperature than butter, so keep the ragu warm but never boiling while the pasta cooks.
Professional Mise en Place
The ragu is prepared ahead and improves overnight, while the pasta is cut fresh that day or frozen raw. At the pass only three actions are left: boil, toss and plate.
Equipment and tools
Chitarra frame, or a pasta machine with a thick spaghetti cutter
Heavy casserole with a lid, 5 quart capacity or larger
Tall pasta pot, 6 quart minimum, and a pair of tongs
Wide sauteuse for the mantecatura
Sharp chef knife and a board kept for raw meat only
Prepared ahead
Lamb ragu, cooked complete, up to 3 days ahead and refrigerated
Lamb diced and held covered on a cold tray, up to 12 hours
Soffritto vegetables cut fine, up to 1 day ahead in a sealed box
Pasta nests on a semola dusted tray, up to 8 hours at cool room temperature
Pecorino grated and covered, parsley chopped at the last moment
Service setup
Ragu warm at about 175°F (80°C), stirred back together before each portion
Pasta water at a rolling boil, salted, tasted once
Two ladles of pasta water reserved in a jug beside the stove
Bowls warmed to about 140°F (60°C) and dried
Cold butter, pecorino, parsley and the pepper mill within reach
Chef Tips
Ask the butcher for shoulder, not leg. Leg looks like the better cut but has almost no fat inside the muscle and little connective tissue, so after two hours it is dry and the sauce has no body. Shoulder costs less as well.
Cook the ragu the day before if you can. Overnight the flavours settle, the wine finishes integrating and the fat rises so you can judge it in the morning. Rewarmed slowly it tastes rounder, and no amount of extra simmering achieves that.
With no chitarra, the thick spaghetti cutter on a pasta machine beats a knife, though the strands come out rectangular rather than square. Roll the sheet a shade thicker to compensate. Do not fall back on dried spaghetti, since this sauce needs a porous egg pasta to hold on to.
Taste for salt only at the end. A sauce seasoned confidently at the start is aggressive once it has lost a third of its volume, and the only way back is dilution, which costs you everything else.
Common Mistakes
Using ground lamb. It breaks down into a uniform paste within half an hour and the sauce loses the contrast between tender meat and glossy liquid that defines this ragu. Cut the shoulder into 1/4 inch dice instead.
Rolling the pasta sheet too thin. A sheet thinner than the gaps between the wires drapes and tears instead of cutting, and what falls into the box is a tangle of ribbons. Roll to about 2 mm, thicker than for any filled pasta.
Letting the braise reach a real simmer. A visible simmer is already too hot. It agitates the meat and whips the lamb fat into a heavy cloudy emulsion. You want one bubble breaking every few seconds and nothing more.
Adding the pecorino over the heat. Sheep milk cheese seizes fast, and pecorino stirred in over the burner turns into strings and a gritty film. Pull the pan off, add the butter and cheese, and toss.
Serving in cold bowls. Lamb fat sets at a higher temperature than butter, so a cool bowl dulls the sauce within a minute and leaves a waxy coating. Warm the bowls before the pasta goes into the water.
Wine Pairing
Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Colline Teramane DOCG: The region's most serious red and the reference bottle here. Longer ageing and lower yields than the wider Abruzzo appellation give real tannic grip over dark plum and dried herb depth, which is what two hours of lamb fat asks for. The savoury herbal edge lands on the rosemary in the pot.
Tintilia del Molise DOC Rosso: Molise was part of Abruzzo until 1963 and shares the same mountain pasture and the same sheep. Tintilia grows high, ripens late and keeps a peppery spiced character over firm acidity. That acidity cuts the rendered fat while the spice runs alongside the dried sweet pepper.
Aglianico del Vulture Superiore DOCG: For a table that wants more structure. Grown on volcanic soil in Basilicata, it brings firm tannin, sour cherry fruit and a smoky mineral edge, and needs fat and protein to show well. Open it an hour ahead and pour at 64°F (18°C), since a cold Aglianico reads as nothing but tannin.
Conero DOCG: The Marche version of the same Montepulciano grape, grown on limestone within sight of the Adriatic. Rounder and more perfumed, with ripe black fruit and a softer tannic frame that suits a ragu finished with a generous hand of pecorino. Choose a bottling without heavy oak.
Storage & Reheating
Keep the ragu and the pasta apart and never refrigerate the dressed dish, which sets overnight into a block. The sauce keeps in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 4 days and is better on day two. It freezes for up to 3 months in a flat sealed container, since the collagen and fat protect the lamb from freezer drying. Thaw it overnight in the refrigerator.
Raw cut chitarra keeps on a semola dusted tray, loosely covered, for up to 8 hours at cool room temperature. For longer, freeze the nests solid, bag them for up to 1 month and cook from frozen with 1 minute added. Do not refrigerate raw egg pasta uncovered, since it dries unevenly and the strands crack.
Rewarm the ragu in a wide pan over low heat with 2 tablespoons of water, stirring until the separated fat goes back in. For leftover dressed pasta use a saute pan over medium heat with a splash of water and a knob of butter, tossed for 2 minutes. A microwave overcooks the strands and splits the emulsion.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 generous portions:
Calories: 890 kcal
Total Fat: 38 g
Saturated Fat: 14 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 22 g
Cholesterol: 300 mg
Sodium: 980 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 82 g
Fiber: 5 g
Total Sugars: 7 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 52 g
Lactose: 0.4 g
Principal micronutrients: iron, zinc, vitamin B12, selenium, niacin, phosphorus, calcium
These figures are estimates. Most of the salt in the pasta water is discarded rather than eaten, and the fat depends on how closely the shoulder was trimmed and how much pecorino reaches the table.
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