Main course

Ragú di stinco con pappardelle

There are very few London restaurants that focus so intensely on value for money as Trullo. Run by chef Tim Siadatan and Jordan Frieda, Trullo delivers seasonal Italian dishes where a customer can order gnocchi for £4, ask for tap water, and walk out (after queuing for quite a while) having spent £5 on lunch inclusive of VAT. Siadatan says of that philosophy:

“I don’t know anywhere that’s doing that for the same quality.”

When we bear in mind that Siadatan was among the early cohorts of young cooks to come out of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen concept, and that he later went on to work for Fergus Henderson at the 1-Michelin star St John in Farringdon, then you get the picture: Siadatan is going to give you a very, good lunch, and you are going to feel very good about paying for it.

Tim Siadatan of Trullo

This dish of slow-cooked beef shin is right on trend this winter. Trullo have it on their web site as a ‘signature’ menu item. Sadly, the Trullo recipe is not in Siadatan’s 2017 restaurant cookbook, so a keen cook has to work out how it is done based on the sole clue:

“Our signature dish, eight hours in the making. Pappardelle with beef shin ragú.”

Beef shin ragú on the Trullo web site

If you are used to Italian cooking, then there is enough there to go on. Here follows our recipe for beef shin with pappardelle that just follows common sense and borrows from many other Italian dishes we enjoy week in, week out.

Pappardelle prep

Trullo can be found at 300–302 St Paul’s Road, London N1 2LH. Reservations are now possible via https://www.trullorestaurant.com/reservations. Trullo has a sister restaurant Padella at 6 Southwark Street, London SE1 1TQ (no reservations).

It is worth signing off by adding that it was my brother who bought me Tim Siadatan’s book. My brother (also a Tim) is a huge fan of Trullo, and I hope he takes me there one day.

Ragú di stinco con pappardelle

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Serves: 4
Cooking Time: 7.5h

Ingredients

  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 500g beef shin joints (roughly 4 boned cross cuts)
  • 1 onion, roughly chopped
  • 2 carrots, roughly chopped
  • 2 sticks of celery, roughly chopped
  • 1 clove of garlic, minced
  • 450g canned chopped tomatoes
  • 300ml red wine
  • 300ml beef stock
  • 1 large sprig of rosemary
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 400g pappardelle (see this link for our basic pasta recipe)
  • Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

1

Set an oven to 150˚C.

2

Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven and fry the shin joints until lightly browned. Set aside.

3

Add the carrots, onion and celery to the pan and fry on a medium heat until the onion is nicely softened. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Add the beef back to the pot.

4

Pour in the stock and wine and bring to a simmer. Add the tomato, bring back to a simmer, season and add the rosemary and bay.

5

Cover the Dutch oven and place in the oven for at least 7 hours.

6

After 7 hours, the sauce will be quite well reduced. Lift the meat out into a bowl and shred it with a fork. Fish the rosemary stalks and bay leaves out and discard. Put the remaining sauce in a blender, and then pass it through a sieve to create a smooth sauce. Add the beef back to the sauce and warm up.

7

At this point, you may have a nice, sloppy stew of beef, or it may be a little on the dry side. If it is a bit too dry to smother the pasta, this matters not as the pasta cooking step can save the day.

8

Cook you pasta either according to the packet or boil for 2 minutes in rolling 'mild seawater' if using fresh, homemade pasta. Use a ladle of the pasta water to loosen the sauce if needed.

9

Drain the pasta, put it back in the pan, and combine with the sauce so that the sauce covers every ribbon.

10

Serve immediately with a sprinkling of parmesan.

Notes

Some commentators have suggested adding a splash of cream or milk to this to finish it. The photo from Trullo indicates that this may well be an element of the original recipe. Add it if you like.

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7 Comments

  • Reply
    Frank T
    16/05/2020 at 9:13 am

    Hi Andrew/Nigel

    Lovely recipe (as mentioned on twitter I made this with short rib bones, really cheap cuts but render down beautifully).

    There’s no garlic in the list of ingredients but is used in the recipe steps. Also, you forget to mention adding the browned beef back to the pot before putting tit in the oven. Crucial to successfully cooking it.

    Otherwise, incredibly tasty dish. Thanks.

    • Reply
      Nigel Eastmond
      16/05/2020 at 10:31 am

      Thanks Frank. Fixed that.

  • Reply
    Cerys
    17/11/2020 at 4:50 pm

    Hi Nigel,

    Is the oven temperature for fan ovens or conventional? Just wondering whether I would need to reduce it by 20 degrees for my fan oven.

    Can’t wait to make it.

    • Reply
      Nigel Eastmond
      08/12/2020 at 9:59 pm

      Hi Cerys, it is one of those recipes where this does not matter,. I used a fan oven at that temp.

  • Reply
    Matt
    15/01/2021 at 6:04 pm

    Fantastic dish. Also works really well (if not better) with beef cheek, which adds even more unctuousness to the ragu. Out of impatience I tend to use a stovetop pressure cooker for this recipe rather than the oven, preparing the veg in the pressure cooker, reducing the stock (or using a cube) as you need less liquid, browning the meat in a pan and adding to the pressure cooker, then deglazing with the wine before it goes in the pot. 45mins or so at high pressure is enough to approximate to an age in the oven. Sure lazy and fast (though not too fast). But good enough if you need to turn it around on a weekday evening.

  • Reply
    Donnie
    05/02/2021 at 4:52 pm

    Great dish, very comforting.
    I’ve eaten this at Trullo and Padella and both seemed to have cream added, especially the Padella version. Maybe they were running low on ragu that day and needed to bulk it up.
    I do find the chunky shop-bought Pappardelle a bit much with the chunky meaty ragu, they serve it very thin at both these restaurants.

    • Reply
      Nigel
      06/02/2021 at 5:45 pm

      Yes. Probably does have a little cream. Or even milk.

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