Pappardelle with Wild Boar, Cannonau and Dark Chocolate | Pappardelle al Cinghiale, Cannonau e Cioccolato Fondente

Sep 22

11 min read

Pappardelle with Wild Boar, Cannonau and Dark Chocolate (Pappardelle al Cinghiale, Cannonau e Cioccolato Fondente)

This is the Sardinian reading of wild boar ragu, and it is a different animal from the Tuscan one in every sense. The boar is the island subspecies, smaller and leaner than its mainland cousin. The wine is Cannonau, not Chianti. And the finishing note is a small piece of bitter chocolate stirred in off the heat, a Spanish inheritance rather than an Italian invention.

The chocolate does not make the sauce sweet. Seventy percent chocolate brings bitterness, a little cocoa butter and a great deal of tannin, and all three do specific work on lean game: the tannin binds the strong flavour of the meat, the cocoa butter gives gloss a lean braise cannot produce alone, and the bitterness sets the reduced Cannonau in relief.

Everything else is slow. The boar marinates overnight in wine and macchia herbs, browns hard and dry, then spends three hours barely moving under a lid until the collagen has turned to gelatin. Only then do the pappardelle go into the water.

Yield: 6 servings. Marinating: 12 hours. Prep: 45 minutes. Cook: 3 hours 30 minutes. Total: about 16 hours including the marinade. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo piatto. Region: Sardinia, Barbagia and the Gennargentu.

The Story

Wild boar has been the meat of the Sardinian interior for as long as anyone has cooked there. The island has its own subspecies, Sus scrofa meridionalis, smaller and darker coated than the boar of the peninsula, living in the oak and macchia country of the Barbagia and the Ogliastra. Hunting runs from autumn into January, and around Orgosolo and Oliena the animal is still divided among the hunters rather than sold.

Cannonau is the other half of the dish and the subject of a long argument. It is the same grape as Grenache and Garnacha, and the traditional account has it arriving with the Aragonese crown, which held Sardinia from 1323 and passed it to Spain until 1720. Grape seeds found on the island have been dated well before that, so the question is open. The wine itself is not in doubt: high in alcohol, low in acidity, with dried herb and myrtle aromas straight out of the scrub.

The chocolate is the clearest trace of those four Spanish centuries. Cacao reached Spain from Mesoamerica in the sixteenth century and entered court and monastery kitchens, where it served as a savoury thickener long before it became a sweet. Sardinia and Sicily, the two islands longest under Spanish rule, kept that habit in their game cooking, and the Tuscan dolceforte sauce belongs to the same family. Here it is used with restraint, one ounce for six portions.

Ingredients

For the marinade

Boneless wild boar shoulder, 2 lb 4 oz (1 kg)
Cannonau di Sardegna, 3 cups (720 ml)
Yellow onion, quartered, 1
Carrot, cut in chunks, 1
Celery stalk, cut in chunks, 1
Garlic cloves, crushed, 3
Juniper berries, lightly crushed, 10
Bay leaves, 3
Myrtle sprigs or rosemary, 2
Black peppercorns, 1 tsp (3 g)

For the ragu

Extra virgin olive oil, 4 tbsp (60 ml)
Yellow onion, finely diced, 1 large
Carrot, finely diced, 1
Celery stalk, finely diced, 1
Pancetta or guanciale, finely diced, 3 oz (85 g)
Tomato paste, 2 tbsp (32 g)
Canned San Marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand, 1 cup (240 g)
Cannonau di Sardegna, fresh, 1 cup (240 ml)
Meat or game stock, 2 cups (480 ml)
Wild fennel seed, 1/2 tsp (1 g)
Fine sea salt, 1 1/2 tsp (9 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

For finishing the sauce

Dark chocolate, 70 percent cacao, finely chopped, 1 oz (28 g)
Unsalted butter, cold, 1 tbsp (14 g)
Red wine vinegar, 1 tsp (5 ml)

For the pasta and the table

Egg pappardelle, fresh, 1 lb 2 oz (500 g), or dried, 14 oz (400 g)
Coarse sea salt for the pasta water, 3 tbsp (45 g)
Pecorino Sardo maturo, finely grated, 2 oz (55 g)
Flat leaf parsley, chopped, 1 tbsp
Extra virgin olive oil, for finishing

Preparation

Step 1

Marinate the boar overnight. Cut the shoulder into pieces of about 1 1/2 inches (4 cm), keeping the fat and sinew on, and put them in a non reactive bowl with the wine, vegetables, juniper, bay, myrtle and peppercorns. The meat must be covered. Refrigerate 12 hours and not much longer, since beyond 18 hours the acidity turns the surface mealy.

Step 2

Dry the meat completely. Lift the pieces out, strain and reserve the marinade, discarding the vegetables and spices. Lay the boar on a rack, pat every surface dry and leave it uncovered at room temperature for 30 minutes. Wet meat steams instead of browning, and in a lean game braise the crust carries most of the savoury flavour.

Step 3

Brown in batches, hard. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy casserole over high heat until it shimmers, add the boar in a single uncrowded layer and leave it alone for 3 minutes before turning. Work in three batches, colouring each piece deeply on at least two sides. Filling the pot drops the temperature, the meat releases water, and you end up with grey boar and a thin sauce.

Step 4

Build the soffritto. Lower the heat to medium, add the remaining oil and the pancetta and render it 3 minutes. Add the onion, carrot and celery with a pinch of salt and cook gently 12 minutes until soft and just colouring, scraping the base as the vegetables release water and lift the browned residue. Stir in the tomato paste and cook 2 minutes until it darkens to brick.

Step 5

Deglaze twice. Pour in the reserved marinade, raise the heat and boil hard for 6 to 8 minutes until reduced by half and no longer smelling raw. Add the fresh cup of Cannonau and reduce again for 4 minutes. Keeping the two separate matters: the marinade carries the aromatics but has been dulled by the meat, and the fresh wine restores fruit the long simmer will concentrate.

Step 6

Braise for three hours. Return the boar and its juices with the crushed tomatoes, stock, fennel seed, salt and pepper. Bring to a bare simmer, cover with the lid slightly ajar and hold around 195°F (90°C) for 3 hours. One lazy bubble every few seconds is the target. Stir every 40 minutes and top up with hot stock if the level drops below the meat.

Step 7

Shred the meat and reduce. Lift out the boar, pull it apart with two forks into coarse threads rather than a paste, and discard any sinew that has not softened. Reduce the remaining liquid over medium heat until glossy and only just covering the base. Return the meat, stir and taste for salt. The sauce should cling to a spoon and pull back slowly behind a spatula.

Step 8

Finish with chocolate off the heat. Take the pot off the burner and wait a minute so the surface stops bubbling. Scatter in the chopped chocolate, the cold butter and the vinegar, and stir steadily until both melt in and the sauce turns visibly darker and shinier. Direct heat at this stage seizes the cocoa solids and leaves gritty specks. Taste again: you want depth, not chocolate.

Step 9

Cook the pappardelle and marry them. Bring 6 quarts of water to a rolling boil with 3 tablespoons of coarse salt. Fresh pappardelle need 2 to 3 minutes, dried about 2 minutes less than the packet says. Reserve 1 1/2 cups (360 ml) of starchy water, lift the ribbons straight into the warm ragu with tongs, and toss over low heat 60 to 90 seconds, adding water a ladle at a time until every ribbon is coated.

Plating

Warm the plates properly for this one, to about 160°F (70°C). A heavy ragu on a cold plate loses its gloss within a minute and the fat starts to set at the edges. Use wide shallow bowls with a rim, which hold heat better than flat plates.

Lift each portion with tongs and a turning motion so the pappardelle land in a loose nest rather than a flat layer, sitting in folds with sauce visible between them. Resist pressing the heap down: this is a coarse sauce and it looks best allowed to look coarse.

Spoon a little extra ragu over the top, grate the Pecorino Sardo at the table so it does not sink into a paste, and add chopped parsley and a thread of raw olive oil. Nothing else belongs here, and least of all chocolate shavings, which would announce the one ingredient that works best hidden.

Professional Technique

The technique that defines this recipe is using chocolate as a functional ingredient rather than a flavour. Dark chocolate at 70 percent brings three things to a lean braise. Its tannins bind the strong compounds in game meat and round off the edge that makes boar taste aggressive. Its cocoa butter, roughly a third of the bar by weight, supplies sheen a lean animal cannot. And its bitterness balances the sugar left by four cups of reduced Cannonau.

The second is the double deglaze, which solves a problem specific to marinated game. A wine marinade pulls myoglobin and protein out of the meat and ends up cloudy, faintly metallic and stripped of fruit, yet throwing it away wastes the aromatics it holds. Boiling it hard cooks those proteins out, and fresh wine on top restores the brightness the braise then concentrates.

The third is temperature control across three hours. Collagen begins converting to gelatin around 160°F (70°C) and converts best between 180°F and 195°F (82°C and 90°C). Push the pot to a real boil and the muscle fibres contract faster than collagen dissolves, which is how a braise ends up falling apart and dry at once. A lid set ajar is the simplest regulator there is.

Texture and Moisture Control

Wild boar is a lean animal and that governs everything. There is very little intramuscular fat, so all the moisture in the finished ragu comes from gelatin and braising liquid. That is why the shoulder is the only sensible cut, why the fat and sinew stay on, and why the pot never boils. Loin or leg turns to dry threads however much liquid surrounds it.

The sauce must be looser in the pot than on the plate, because pappardelle go on absorbing liquid for a minute after leaving the pan. Reduce until the sauce coats a spoon but still moves, then loosen it again with starchy pasta water during the final toss. Egg pasta sheds plenty of its own starch, so water from fresh pappardelle emulsifies better than water from dried.

The chocolate and the butter do the last of the texture work, and both depend on the pot being off the heat. Cocoa butter melts at body temperature and emulsifies cleanly into a warm sauce, while over a flame the cocoa solids tighten and go grainy. Cold butter added at the same moment sets the emulsion and gives the final gloss. Once both are in, serve within a few minutes.

Professional Mise en Place

This is a two day dish and it suits service well, because the ragu is better on the second day. Only the pasta and the last toss happen to order.

Equipment and tools

Heavy enamelled casserole with a lid, 6 quart (5.5 litre)
Large non reactive bowl for the marinade
Tall pasta pot, tongs and a spider skimmer
Fine mesh sieve for the marinade
Probe thermometer for the braise

Prepared ahead

Boar marinated and drained, the night before, refrigerated
Ragu braised and shredded, up to 3 days ahead, without the chocolate
Soffritto vegetables diced, up to 1 day ahead, kept covered
Pecorino Sardo grated fresh on the day, never in advance
Stock measured and warm, ready to top up the pot

Service setup

Ragu warm in a wide pan, covered, below a simmer
Chocolate chopped fine and butter cold, added last
Pasta water at a rolling boil and correctly salted
Plates warmed to about 160°F (70°C)
Pecorino, parsley and finishing oil within reach

Chef Tips

Make the ragu a day ahead and stop before the chocolate goes in. A night in the refrigerator lets the flavours settle and the fat rise where you can lift it off cleanly. Add the chocolate, butter and vinegar only when you rewarm it, off the heat, on the day you serve.

Choose a chocolate you would happily eat on its own, 70 to 75 percent cacao with no added flavouring. Below 60 percent brings too much sugar and milk solids, and above 85 percent turns the sauce harsh and dusty. Chop it fine so it melts before the sauce cools.

If you cannot find wild boar, use pork shoulder with a little more juniper and myrtle, but say what you have made. Farmed pork lacks the density of the wild animal and needs about 45 minutes less in the pot. Never mix the two in one braise.

Open a Cannonau you would drink. The wine is the base of the whole sauce, and a coarse tannic bottle reduced by half becomes a coarse tannic sauce. The same bottle should end up on the table beside the plate.

Common Mistakes

Adding the chocolate over the heat. The cocoa solids seize and leave gritty dark specks that never dissolve. The pot comes off the burner, rests a minute, and only then does the chocolate go in.

Using sweet or milk chocolate. Sugar and milk solids turn the sauce cloying and flatten the game flavour instead of framing it. Seventy percent cacao with nothing added is the working range.

Boiling the braise. A real boil contracts the muscle fibres faster than collagen can convert, giving meat that shreds and still tastes dry. Hold a lazy bubble for the full 3 hours.

Browning the meat wet or crowded. Both make the boar steam in its own liquid. Dry every surface, work in three batches, and leave each piece undisturbed long enough to build a crust.

Discarding the marinade. It carries the juniper, bay and myrtle that give the sauce its Sardinian character. Boil it hard to drive off the raw edge rather than pouring it away.

Using a lean cut such as loin. Wild boar has almost no intramuscular fat, so only the collagen rich shoulder survives a long braise. Loin is dry in ninety minutes and cannot be rescued.

Wine Pairing

Cannonau di Sardegna DOC: The bottle that went into the pot belongs on the table, and the logic is more than sentimental. Its dried herb and myrtle aromatics repeat what the marinade put into the sauce, while the soft tannin and warm alcohol carry the pancetta fat without adding grip to a dish that already has chocolate tannin.

Etna Rosso DOC: The choice when you want tension rather than weight. Nerello Mascalese grown on volcanic soil keeps a firm acidity and a fine grained tannin that cuts the richness of the ragu in a way Cannonau never attempts. Its red cherry and ash character picks up the bitter edge of the chocolate directly.

Aglianico del Vulture Superiore DOCG: For a table that likes structure. Aglianico from the slopes of Monte Vulture carries serious tannin and dark plum fruit, and it needs a dish with enough gelatin and fat to soften it, which this one supplies. The faintly smoky volcanic note works alongside the seared crust on the boar. Decant it an hour ahead.

Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG: The most tannic red in Italy and a gamble that pays off with game. Its enormous polyphenol load finds something to bind to in the shredded boar and the gelatin, and the bitter cocoa finish Sagrantino carries naturally mirrors the chocolate almost exactly. Use a mature bottle, since a young one flattens everything.

Conero DOCG: A gentler answer from the Marche, built on Montepulciano grown near the Adriatic. Dark cherry fruit and a supple round body with far less tannic weight than the two above, which suits anyone who finds the dish rich enough already. The slight bitterness on its finish keeps the sauce from reading sweet.

Storage & Reheating

The ragu keeps far better than the finished plate and it improves for a day or two. Store it without the chocolate and butter in an airtight container for up to 4 days, or freeze it in portions for 3 months. Chill it uncovered first so it cools fast, then lift off the set fat before sealing. Never freeze it after the chocolate has gone in, because the emulsion separates on thawing.

Rewarm the ragu in a wide pan over low heat with a splash of stock until it just steams, then take it off the burner and add the chocolate, cold butter and vinegar exactly as in the original recipe. Cook fresh pappardelle for it rather than reheating old ones.

If you do have dressed pasta left over, keep it refrigerated 2 days at most and warm it in a covered nonstick pan over low heat with 3 tablespoons of stock, shaking rather than stirring so the ribbons stay whole. A microwave dries the edges and toughens the meat. It also bakes well under Pecorino Sardo for 15 minutes at 375°F (190°C).

Nutrition

Per serving, based on 6 servings:

Calories: 720 kcal
Total Fat: 27 g
Saturated Fat: 10 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 15 g
Cholesterol: 155 mg
Sodium: 780 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 68 g
Fiber: 5 g
Total Sugars: 7 g
Added Sugars: 2 g
Protein: 46 g
Lactose: 1.1 g
Principal micronutrients: iron, zinc, niacin, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, phosphorus, selenium, magnesium