Agnolini

Mantuan stuffed pasta with amaretti in the filling, served in broth.

Pork, Beef, Egg. Not vegetarian — contains Grana Padano made with calf rennet, beef, pork.

Ingredients

• 600 g beef shin, in one piece
• 100 g pancetta, diced
• 200 ml dry red wine
• 1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 celery stick, diced
• 6 amaretti biscuits, crushed
• 100 g grana padano, grated
• 1 egg
• nutmeg and cinnamon
• 300 g plain flour and 3 eggs, for the pasta
• 1.5 litres clear beef broth, to serve
• 1.5 teaspoons salt

Method

1. Brown the beef and pancetta, add the vegetables and wine, and braise covered on the lowest heat for 4 hours until the meat shreds with a fork. Let it cool in its liquid.
2. Chop the meat very finely, do not blend it, and mix with the grana, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon and a little of the braising liquid.
3. NOW CRUSH THE AMARETTI IN. Almond biscuits in a beef filling sound wrong and are the point: without them this is just meat-filled pasta, and the faint bitter almond is what makes the broth taste of something other than beef.
4. Make the pasta, roll it thin enough to read through, and cut 5 cm squares.
5. Put a hazelnut of filling on each, fold to a triangle, and bring the two long points round a fingertip to meet.
6. SERVE THEM IN BROTH, as a soup, twenty to a bowl. This is not a sauced pasta — cook them 3 minutes in the broth itself and bring the bowl to the table with the broth in it.
7. A spoonful of dry red wine stirred into the bowl at the table is the Mantuan habit, and worth trying once.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes