One of my good friends who is also a good cook lives out in the desert, and every time I visit we play the same game: she will go grocery shopping for a mix of insane things we might find inspiring so we can play Chopped Challenge at her kitchen table, each of us adding an ingredient for consideration until the concept starts to solidify into something that sounds like almost a good idea. This time, the hero ingredients were a packet of pappardelle and a leg of lamb from Costco. A glass of day wine later and “Greek braised lamb but like a ragù” was born.

What sounded like a foolproof concept very quickly spiraled into executional chaos. Mistake #1 was attempting the sauce freehand without a plan, calling out ingredients as I thought of them in the wrong order and not measuring them (no time). Mistake #2 was the damn Costco lamb leg, huge and partially frozen and unwilling to cooperate even after 1.5 hours of cooking time in the Instant Pot, from which it somehow emerged still tough and intact and completely unusable at 7:30pm.

We had no other option, so we did what all who find themselves on marches towards lost causes do: we committed hard and didn’t look back. We put the problem lamb back under pressure and took a walk around her neighborhood to kill the remaining 30 minutes while the pink sky blackened over the cactus-studded mountains behind her house. When we got back we halfheartedly tossed a salad—just arugula and lemon and parm, nothing fancy—and drank the rest of the white wine leftover from the sauce, which gave us just enough mental lubrication to embrace some gut decisions we might not have otherwise rationally made: broiling the shredded lamb on a cookie sheet, blitzing the lumpy orange (?) sauce with a stick blender into a velvety purée, tossing it all with pasta water and a little cheese on the stove, and then dumping the entire salad on top of the finished dish at the table because we didn’t feel like digging out more plates.

Some things just aren’t meant to last beyond the moment of their creation, like stars that are born and die in the same cosmic minute. We blacked out what we did as soon as we did it, never to be remade. So we let it go. We talk about the lamb pasta a lot, but our only concrete memory of it for a long time was that it was really good.

Now, seven months later on what may be the final weekend of cool-at-night weather for this kind of thing to be appropriate, I’ve finally measured, streamlined, and written down what might be one of my favorite, most personal, and most original recipes I’ve ever created.

White ragù is not uncommon in Italy and is often made with game meats like rabbit, but I don’t see it much on menus, and have never personally had it with lamb prior to attempting it that night. That said, the formula isn’t rocket science. Here’s how I went about constructing it.

The base: onions, carrot, celery, and a lot of garlic. Quartered onion and garlic are part of the base for my Greek lamb, and they naturally cross over with ragù anyway; I added carrot and celery to bring it fully in line with every other ragù technique in the world. Like the recipe it’s built on, this one has a lot of garlic: six big cloves, smashed before you throw them in.

The sauce: a lot of white wine, lemon juice, and just a little tomato paste. I clearly can get behind a red wine lamb ragù in the winter, but red wine doubles down on what lamb already is: funky, earthy, barnyardcore. Citrus-y flavors of lemon and white wine do the opposite, softening lamb’s aggressive personality into something more neutral, more friendly, more able to blend in with the other kids at the park. But I was worried it wouldn’t have enough depth or savory-ness (is this a word?) without at least a little bit of some kind of tomato product, and so this ragù isn’t completely white—there is 1 tbsp. of tomato paste in there, and as a result the finished sauce is actually surprisingly orange.

A mix of woodsy herbs: rosemary, oregano, and bay leaves. These are the same herbs I use in my Greek lamb, so I repeated them here. Don’t mess with success.

Reverse-searing the lamb. I do not like searing lamb before I braise it if I can avoid it. It makes the floor greasy and the house smell weird. But because we are cooking with pressure, we can skip that step completely: we throw in the lamb uncooked, add the rest of the ingredients, seal it, pressure-braise it, and then move the falling-apart meat to a foil-lined sheet pan to take a trip under the broiler. (At this point, it is also really easy to pick off the fattier pieces and toss them, as they will have separated from the good stuff.) Broiling the meat after cooking has the same effect as searing it prior, giving you crispy edges that get soft again in the sauce anyway but retain their caramelized flavor. It sounds counterintuitive because it is, but I promise you it works.

Blending the sauce. This is the catch. The sauce is virtually unusable out of the pot: mushy, lumpy, and very orange, with a layer of separated fat sitting on top. In order to make it worthwhile, we decided to blend it, which forces the fat to emulsify with the softened vegetables and gives us a rich base that can be combined with starchy water and cheese into a silky sauce. Unfortunately it will be very painful if you try to transfer hot lamb braising liquid into a blender, so in good conscience I can only recommend you attempt this recipe if you have an immersion blender you can use right in the pot.

You’re serious? The salad goes on top? Yes. Tossing the peppery greens with the pasta off the heat keeps the arugula fresh and green and unwilted, while the lemon acid cuts through the richness of the sauce. It may have happened by accident, but this dish just isn’t complete until they’re combined. Bonus: you get to eat a vegetable!

recipe

A spring-y white wine ragù featuring tender braised lamb and a rich slow-cooked sauce with pappardelle, tossed off the heat with peppery lemon-dressed arugula and fresh parm.

Makes enough for 1 1/2 lbs of pasta; I make the entire batch and freeze it

YOU NEED

The ragù

2 1/2-3 lbs lamb shoulder
1 1/2 cups dry white wine
1 small chopped onion
1 chopped carrot
1 stalk of chopped celery
1 tbsp. tomato paste
6 cloves of peeled and crushed garlic
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
2 bay leaves
Fresh pepper
Juice from 1 lemon

For 2 portions

8 oz. sturdy pasta, like pappardelle
1 cup of blended braising liquid
1/2 cup freshly grated parm
1/2 cup pasta water
A few handfuls of arugula
Half a lemon worth of juice
More parm, for serving

MAKE IT

Put everything in your Instant Pot. Dump all of the ingredients from the ragù list into the pot. That’s it. Seal and cook on high pressure, 1 hour 10 minutes. Go do something else while that cooks.
Do some miscellaneous prep. Allow the IP to depressurize naturally for 10 minutes. During this time, start water to boil for pasta and heat your boiler on high.
Manually release the remaining pressure and unseal the Instant Pot. You will have tender meat and an orange sludgy sauce. Turn off the Instant Pot.
Broil the lamb. Line a sheet pan with foil. Using tongs, carefully remove the lamb shoulder from the Instant Pot and put it onto the sheet. It is going to fall apart as you lift it; this is fine—just pull it out in pieces if you need to. Discard any big pieces of fat or bits you don’t want, and shred the entire thing with a fork and your tongs into bite sized pieces. Put this under the broiler for 5 minutes until the edges are crispy and browned and the lamb is sizzling.
Put in the pasta while the lamb broils. Cook for 2 minutes under al dente on the package. Your lamb will likely finish broiling while the pasta cooks; just leave it alone on the stove til you’re ready to assemble.
Dress the greens. Throw a few handfuls of arugula into a bowl and squeeze the lemon over. Toss with tongs. Let this hang out for a minute to marinate.
Blend the sauce. Remove all stray lamb bits and bay leaves from the sauce. Then, using an immersion blender, blend the entire pot until you have a velvety smooth puree.
Combine the pasta with sauce. Drain the pasta; save 1 cup of pasta water. Add the crispy lamb to the pasta pot, then 1 cup of the blended braising liquid. Add the pasta, 1/2 cup of reserved pasta water, 1/2 cup of grated parm, and cook over low heat until the pasta is properly al dente (another 1-2 minutes) and the sauce is nice and glossy. Add more pasta water if the sauce is too dry and more cheese if it’s too wet.
Finish and serve. Use tongs to serve some pasta into each bowl, then top with the lemony arugula. Use tongs to toss each bowl together lightly, combining the arugula with the pasta. Top with more grated parm, fresh black pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil.

braised white lamb ragù with lemony arugula [instant pot]

recipe

YOU NEED

MAKE IT