Italian Penne with White Lamb Ragù, Pecorino and Marjoram | Penne con Ragù Bianco d'Agnello, Pecorino e Maggiorana
A white ragù is named for an absence. There is no tomato in it, and once the tomato is gone every other decision changes: the meat carries the colour, the wine carries the acidity, the fat carries the perfume. Lamb shoulder, cut by hand rather than minced, cooks slowly in white wine until the pieces collapse at the edges and hold at the centre. What leaves the pot is pale gold, and it tastes of animal and herb rather than of sauce.
Penne suit it precisely because the sauce has no body from tomato. The quills are ridged and hollow, so a loose meat sauce packs into the tubes and grips the outside at once, and every piece arrives carrying sauce instead of sitting beside it. Smooth pasta lets a sauce this fluid slide to the bottom of the bowl.
Pecorino and marjoram finish it, and both are working rather than decorating. The cheese brings salt and a sheep milk tang that answers the lamb, and it emulsifies the sauce into something glossy. Marjoram is the softer cousin of oregano, floral where oregano is medicinal, and it goes in off the heat so its perfume survives the plate.
Yield: 4 servings. Prep: 30 minutes. Cook: 2 hours 15 minutes. Total: about 2 hours 45 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo piatto. Region: Abruzzo, the Gran Sasso highlands and the tratturo country.
The Story
This is shepherd cooking from the high plains of Abruzzo and it comes out of transhumance. For centuries flocks walked the tratturi, the wide grass roads running from the summer pastures of Campo Imperatore down to the winter plains of Puglia, and the men who walked with them cooked lamb because lamb was what they had. Tomato reached those altitudes late and mattered little to people who moved twice a year with a copper pot. The ragù that survives from that world is white because it was always white.
The cut tells the same story. Nobody on a tratturo was eating rack of lamb. Shoulder, neck and shank were what a shepherd could spare, and the method matches the meat: a slow wet cook in wine and broth, lid ajar, until the connective tissue turns to gelatin and thickens the sauce without flour. Villages in Abruzzo still call it ragù bianco or sugo d'agnello, and in some houses the same sauce dresses maccheroni alla chitarra instead of penne.
The pecorino belongs to the same landscape. Abruzzo makes pecorino di Farindola on the eastern slope of the Gran Sasso, famously the only Italian sheep cheese set with pig rennet, sharper and grassier than the Roman style. Marjoram grows wild on those limestone slopes and dries well, which is why mountain cooking leans on it far more than on basil. Lamb, sheep cheese and a hillside herb: one pasture in a bowl.
Ingredients
For the white lamb ragù
Boneless lamb shoulder, well marbled, 1 3/4 lb (800 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Yellow onion, finely diced, 1 medium, about 5 oz (140 g)
Carrot, finely diced, 1 small, about 2 oz (60 g)
Celery, finely diced, 1 stalk, about 2 oz (60 g)
Garlic cloves, lightly crushed, 2
Dry white wine, 1 cup (240 ml)
Light chicken or lamb broth, hot, 2 cups (480 ml)
Bay leaves, 2
Fresh rosemary sprig, 1 short
Fine sea salt, 1 1/2 tsp (9 g), divided
Freshly ground black pepper, 1/2 tsp
Finely grated lemon zest, from 1/2 lemon
For the pasta
Bronze die penne rigate, 14 oz (400 g)
Water, 5 quarts (4.7 liters)
Coarse sea salt, 2 tbsp (35 g)
For finishing
Pecorino, aged 6 months, finely grated, 2 1/2 oz (70 g)
Fresh marjoram leaves, 2 tbsp, loosely packed
Unsalted butter, cold, 1 tbsp (14 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preparation
Step 1: Hand cut the lamb shoulder
Trim the hard surface fat but leave the soft intramuscular fat, which is what keeps a white ragù from tasting lean. Cut the meat into pieces about 1/4 inch (6 mm) across with a sharp knife, never a grinder: a grinder smears the fat and gives a uniform paste. Hand cut meat keeps its edges and stays in identifiable pieces in the finished sauce. Season with half the salt and all the pepper.
Step 2: Build a slow soffritto
Warm the oil in a heavy pot over medium low heat and add the onion, carrot, celery and crushed garlic with a pinch of salt. Cook 12 to 15 minutes, stirring often, until soft, translucent and sweet. Do not let it colour. Scorched onion has nowhere to hide here: its bitterness sits on top of the lamb for two hours. Remove the garlic.
Step 3: Sear the meat in two batches
Raise the heat to medium high and add the lamb in two batches, each spread in a single layer and left alone for a minute before stirring. Crowding drops the pot temperature and the meat stews grey in its own water. You want roughly half the pieces lightly golden and the rest still pale, the balance that gives savour without turning the sauce brown. Return the first batch and stir everything through the soffritto.
Step 4: Deglaze with white wine
Pour in the wine at once and scrape the base with a wooden spoon while it bubbles hard. Reduce until the pot smells of wine rather than alcohol and the liquid has fallen by about two thirds, 4 to 5 minutes. This is the only acidity in the dish, so use a bottle you would drink and do not cut the reduction short. Underreduced wine leaves a raw sharpness that cheese will not cover later.
Step 5: Braise low and slow
Add the bay, the rosemary and enough hot broth to come two thirds of the way up the meat. Bring it to the barest simmer, set the lid slightly ajar and cook 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours, adding hot broth whenever the surface threatens to dry. It is ready when the lamb pulls apart under a spoon and the liquid has turned slightly sticky with gelatin. Remove the herbs, stir in the lemon zest and correct the salt now, before any cheese appears.
Step 6: Cook the penne and read the water
Bring the water to a rolling boil and add the coarse salt: it should taste clearly seasoned, not like seawater. Drop the penne, stir for the first 30 seconds, and cook them 2 minutes short of the time on the box, then taste: a firm white core should still be visible when you snap one, because the pasta finishes in the pan. Before draining, lift out 1 1/2 cups (360 ml) of the starchy water and keep it hot.
Step 7: Mantecare the pasta into the ragù
Move the ragù to a wide sauté pan over medium heat, loosen it with half a cup of pasta water and add the drained penne. Toss constantly for 90 seconds to 2 minutes, adding water a splash at a time, until the sauce clings to the pasta and coats the inside of the tubes. Off the heat, add the cold butter and the olive oil and keep tossing until they melt in. The movement is what emulsifies fat, starch and water; a pan left standing separates in seconds.
Step 8: Add the pecorino and marjoram off the heat
With the pan off the heat and no longer bubbling, rain in two thirds of the pecorino while tossing, then the marjoram, torn rather than chopped so it bruises instead of oxidising. If the pan is too hot the cheese proteins tighten and the sauce turns stringy and grainy, which cannot be undone. Loosen with a last splash of pasta water, grind over pepper and serve at once, the remaining cheese at the table.
Plating
Warm the bowls, and warm them properly. A white ragù holds less residual heat than a tomato sauce because it holds less water, and it stiffens visibly on cold china within half a minute. Wide shallow bowls with a rim, heated in a low oven and dried, keep the sauce fluid long enough to eat it.
Serve with a spoon, lifting from the bottom of the pan so the settled meat comes up with the pasta. Finish each bowl with whole marjoram leaves, a fine dusting of pecorino, a thread of olive oil and one grind of pepper, then go straight to the table.
Professional Technique
The controlling technique is partial searing, and it belongs to white ragù alone. In a tomato ragù you brown the meat hard, because that roasted depth has to fight through an acidic red sauce. Brown lamb that hard here and the sauce turns beige, the fond overwhelms the wine and the pale herbal character that is the whole identity of the dish disappears. Searing roughly half the meat gives enough Maillard flavour to stop the sauce tasting boiled while leaving the colour and perfume intact.
The second technique is gelatin management, since without tomato solids nothing else thickens this sauce. Lamb shoulder is rich in collagen, and collagen converts to gelatin only above about 160°F (71°C) held for a long time, which is why the braise runs nearly two hours at a bare simmer. A hard boil drives off the water before the collagen has converted and leaves dry meat in thin liquid. A slow simmer with the lid ajar dissolves the collagen while the liquid reduces gently around it, and that body is what lets the sauce cling to a ridged penne.
Texture and Moisture Control
The final minute is an emulsion problem. Rendered lamb fat, olive oil and butter sit on one side, starchy water and gelatin on the other, and they do not stay combined alone. Starch leached from the penne is the binding agent, which is why the cooking water is precious and why the reserved jug must stay hot. Cold water dropped into a hot pan shocks the emulsion and the fat beads out immediately.
The ragù should look looser than seems right before the pasta goes in, because it tightens noticeably in the pan and again in the bowl. Aim for something that just flows when the pan is tilted, and hold back a splash of water for after the cheese. The pasta is pulled early for the same reason: 2 minutes short in the water and 90 seconds in the sauce means the tubes absorb ragù rather than water, and the bite stays firm at the centre without a chalky line.
Professional Mise en Place
The ragù is a long job and the assembly is a two minute job, so keep them on separate days whenever you can.
Equipment and tools
Heavy based braising pot with a lid, 4 to 5 quarts
Sharp boning knife and a large board for hand cutting the meat
Wide sauté pan big enough to toss 14 oz (400 g) of penne
Large pasta pot, spider or colander, heatproof jug for the pasta water
Microplane or fine grater for the pecorino and the lemon zest
Prepared ahead
Lamb ragù braised up to 2 days ahead, cooled fast and refrigerated
Soffritto vegetables diced and stored covered, up to 1 day ahead
Pecorino grated on the day, kept covered so it does not dry out
Broth measured and ready to be brought up to temperature
Marjoram picked at the last moment, never chopped in advance
Service setup
Ragù warm in the sauté pan over the lowest heat, loosened with broth
Pasta water at a rolling boil and already salted
Reserved pasta water hot in a jug within arm's reach
Bowls warming, butter and oil portioned, pepper mill open
Marjoram, pecorino and the oil bottle lined up for the finish
Chef Tips
Braise the ragù the day before and refrigerate it overnight. The fat sets in a clean layer, so you can decide how much to keep instead of guessing while it is hot, and the flavour rounds out as two hours of cooking never manages alone. Lift off about half the fat and stir the rest back in as it rewarms.
Taste the pecorino before you commit to a quantity. Sheep cheeses vary enormously with age and producer, and a sharp Abruzzo pecorino at eight months is nearly twice as salty as a mild young one. Grate a little, taste it alone, then salt the ragù with that number in mind.
If only dried marjoram is available, use it differently: into the braise at the halfway point, where it has time to rehydrate, never at the end where it stays dusty. Add extra lemon zest at the finish to replace the lost floral note.
Save the bones if you bought a bone in shoulder. Roasted for 30 minutes and simmered with an onion and a bay leaf while the ragù cooks, they give a lamb broth far better than the chicken stock this recipe falls back on.
Common Mistakes
Using ground lamb instead of hand cut shoulder. Commercial mince is cut too fine and mixed too warm, so the fat smears and the meat braises into a uniform paste. Pieces of about 1/4 inch (6 mm) hold their shape for two hours and give the sauce something to chew.
Adding the pecorino with the pan still on the heat. Sheep cheese proteins tighten fast and the sauce goes stringy and grainy above about 175°F (80°C). Take the pan off, wait until it stops bubbling, then add the cheese in stages while tossing.
Throwing away the pasta water. Without tomato there is nothing else to bind fat and liquid into a sauce, and the starchy water is the emulsifier the dish depends on. Reserve more than you think you need and keep it hot.
Putting the marjoram in at the start of the braise. Fresh marjoram is almost entirely volatile aromatics, and two hours of simmering leaves only a vague green bitterness. It goes in off the heat, torn, in the last ten seconds.
Wine Pairing
Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo DOC: The most local answer and, for many Abruzzesi, the only one. A serious Cerasuolo is a deeply coloured dry rosé from Montepulciano grapes with real weight, sour cherry fruit and a savoury almond finish. It has the acidity to cut lamb fat and the body for pecorino, without tannin that would jar against a sauce holding no tomato.
Offida Pecorino DOCG: The white made from the Pecorino grape just north in the Marche, and a natural partner to a pasta finished with sheep cheese. It is firm and structured for a white, with green pear, aniseed and a flinty edge, and its acidity scrubs the palate clean between forkfuls.
Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Colline Teramane DOCG: The serious red of the region, from the hills behind Teramo where these flocks once wintered. Its tannin is round rather than gripping, which matters when no tomato acidity is there to soften it, and the dark plum and dried herb notes land directly on the rosemary and bay of the braise. Serve at around 61°F (16°C).
Verdicchio di Matelica DOC: The mountain Verdicchio, grown in a cool inland valley rather than near the coast, tighter and more saline than its Castelli di Jesi cousin. That salinity picks up the pecorino while the bitter almond finish echoes the marjoram, and the wine stays lean enough to keep a heavy plate feeling light.
Cesanese del Piglio DOCG: The red of the Lazio hills, a short way down the old drove roads, and an unusually aromatic one. It smells of rose, black pepper and sour red fruit, and that peppery lift flatters lamb where heavier reds flatten it. Low tannin and bright acidity sit comfortably with a sauce bound by gelatin and cheese. Serve it slightly cool.
Storage & Reheating
Store the ragù and the pasta apart whenever possible, because dressed penne keep badly and plain ragù keeps beautifully. The sauce holds in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 4 days and improves for the first two. It also freezes for up to 3 months, before any cheese goes near it: freeze it flat and thaw it overnight in the refrigerator, never in a microwave, which splits the fat out.
Rewarm the ragù in a saucepan over low heat with 2 to 3 tablespoons of broth or water stirred in, since it sets firm when cold and scorches if heated dry. Bring it just to a bare simmer and no further. Only then should it meet the pasta, with the pecorino and marjoram going in exactly as on the first day.
Leftover dressed pasta keeps sealed in the refrigerator for up to 2 days. Reheat it in a wide pan over medium heat with a splash of water and a little olive oil, tossing for about 2 minutes until the sauce loosens and coats again. Do not microwave it: the penne go rubbery at the edges and the emulsion breaks into oil and grains.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 servings:
Calories: 810 kcal
Total Fat: 36 g
Saturated Fat: 14 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 20 g
Cholesterol: 135 mg
Sodium: 980 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 76 g
Fiber: 4 g
Total Sugars: 5 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 46 g
Lactose: 0.4 g
Principal micronutrients: vitamin B12, zinc, iron, selenium, phosphorus, calcium, niacin
These figures are estimates. Most of the salt in the pasta water is discarded rather than eaten, and the numbers move with how much lamb fat you lift off.
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