Low Cost Delicious - Pappradelle and Pork Ragu

It doesn't get much cheaper than four country style "pork ribs", a can of tomatoes, a carrot, an onion, a celery stalk, a cup of red wine, flour, eggs, olive oil, water and salt.

I know I have mentioned before that I am a cookbook freak. I love all of the beautiful pictures and I really do thumb through each and every page for inspiration even though I rarely use the recipes--exactly.

There is a wonderful Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Italian cookbook that I have had for a while now and one recipe just stuck in my head. It was Papparadelle with Pork Ragu. The photo in the cookbook looks succulent for lack of a better description--it just makes your mouth water. Williams-Sonoma's website does have a pappardelle with beef ragu recipe but not the pork.

Saturday was our trip to Fiesta to see what was on special. Country style pork ribs were on sale for $.99 per pound. Now you can't beat that price no matter what you plan to do with the pork.

It is a fairly standard recipe. After browning the "pork ribs" in a Dutch oven, you braise them with a mix of sauteed chopped onion, carrot, celery, some red wine (Spanish Tempranillo) and tomatoes, cooking everything for about 2 hours until the meat falls off of the bone and then shred the pork back into the sauce.

I also made a batch of fresh egg pasta dough from the W-S cookbook--2 1/2 cups of flour, 4 eggs, 2 tbs of olive oil and I added a couple of grinds of salt. This was a great dough recipe. The key to the papparadelle was letting the pasta dry for about 30 minutes before dropping it in a pot of boiling water.

We topped the platter with tons of fresh grated Parmesan and there was enough to feed 6-8 adults. My photos don't really do it justice and I was just too hungry to stage a plate, but I can tell you we all agreed that it was succulent.

Nothing but good days,

B