Pappardelle with Rabbit Ragù

This was so ridiculously easy. It was one of those weeknight magic. This is basically a left over from Country-style Rabbit Casserole

But first the absolute laziest way to make pappardelle:

Go off to your local supermarket and buy a pack of ‘fresh’ lasagna sheets. Hey it was Tuesday night – there is no making of pasta on week nights thank you very much. Cut the pasta sheets into pappardelle – which are about 1-2 inches.

I think this is entirely up to you, so it depends on how wide you think pappardelle should be. Personally, I reckon it should be about1.5 inches wide. So I cut them into quarters. We only needed about 1/4 of a pack per serve.

Back to our leftover casserole. I got Josh to pick the rabbit meat off the bone and shred them into tiny pieces. I heated up a frying pan with a little bit of butter and added a spring of rosemary. I picked out all the pickling onions from the casserole and add the rest of the casserole in. I loosened the mixture with a little bit of white wine.

I added zest of half an orange into the ragu. Seasoned it with pepper and just a little touch of cream. The idea of the creamy wasn’t to make the sauce creamy. But rather to round off the flavour because I was using fresh pasta. If I were using dried pasta, I probably would have drizzled extra v olive oil on instead.

I then turned the heat off and rested the sauce. I brought a saucepan of water to boil and added the pappardelle and cook for about 2-3 minutes. I then spooned some of the ragu in a separate frying pan and heat up the sauce. I used a slotted spoon to transfer the cooked pasta onto the sauce. I added a little bit of the cooking water to the pasta to loosen it.

And that was it. I grated some more orange zest on top and sprinkled chopped fresh parsley on the pasta. It was lovely. I have the say the rabbit improved a lot after sitting in the fridge for a couple of days. I even made another serve and packed a lunchbox for Josh.

Fresh pasta doesn’t really do well sitting around but you know, lunchbox expectations were never high! So he loved it the next day too.