Chicken Liver Ragù for a Spring Feast
This is a real peasant dish, a piatto contadino, from the farmhouse kitchens of Tuscany and Umbria, famous for never wasting a thing that is edible. Properly made, the sauce uses the livers, hearts, kidneys, stomachs, even the unborn eggs and the crests of farmyard birds (chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, and the like), trimmed, chopped, and braised in a simple tomato sauce flavored with fresh herbs—sage, rosemary, thyme, and in summer, perhaps a little basil. Often a pasta al ragù di rigaglie will be the primo, the first dish in a feast, followed by the same birds roasted in the wood-burning oven of the farmhouse. It’s the kind of food our Tuscan neighbor Mita always prepared for the celebration that followed the daylong efforts of the trebbiatura, the threshing of wheat that took place around the middle of July, but she would also make this for the great spring feast of Easter when she fed as many as fifteen or twenty people around the long farmhouse table.
This sauce is good with almost any kind of pasta, although we like to serve it over short, twisted pasta shapes.
If you keep chickens or know someone who does, you can make ragú di rigaglie with all the innards, carefully cleaned and chopped. But for most of us, we’ll make do with the chicken livers we find in any good meat counter or butcher shop. We insist on livers from organic, genuinely free-range chickens that have been raised with a certain amount of freedom.
You should have a good two cups of chopped vegetables—a reminder of the importance of vegetables in Italian country cooking. They aren’t always obvious—meat is seldom served, as it is in North America, garnished with sides of vegetables on the plate. But the vegetables are always there, often like these hiding in a sauce. Note that the passata di pomodoro should be simply pureed tomatoes with nothing added but perhaps a little salt.
SERVES 6
1 pound chicken livers, carefully picked over and trimmed
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 medium carrot, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 garlic clove
2 tablespoons diced pancetta or guanciale
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
¼ to ½ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
½ cup dry white wine
One 14-ounce can whole tomatoes, preferably San Marzano, with their juice
½ cup passata di pomodoro (pureed tomatoes)
Leaves from 3 or 4 fresh thyme sprigs
3 or 4 fresh sage leaves, torn
Leaves from 1 fresh rosemary sprig
About 1 pound (500 grams) fusilli or other shape of your choice
1 cup or more freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano, aged pecorino toscano, or other grating cheese
Rinse the chicken livers and pat dry with paper towels. Salt and pepper them generously and set aside.
Combine the carrot, onion, celery, and garlic and chop further to make a fine mixture. You should have about 2 cups of chopped vegetables
Add the pancetta and oil to a large skillet and set over medium heat. Cook, stirring, until the meat starts to melt and brown slightly along the edges. Stir in the vegetables, lower the heat to medium-low, and cook, stirring frequently, for 10 to 15 minutes while the vegetables start to soften. Stir in the parsley and push the vegetables out to the edge of the skillet.
Add the chicken livers to the middle of the skillet and raise the heat slightly. Cook the livers until brown on all sides. As they brown, crush them in the pan juices with a fork. Once the livers are brown and crushed, mix them with the vegetables. Add the wine and raise the heat again to medium or medium-high. Cook briskly, stirring the contents of the skillet as the wine cooks down and releases its alcohol, about 5 minutes. Add the whole tomatoes along with their juice, breaking the tomatoes up as you add them to the skillet. Add the pureed tomatoes, along with the thyme, sage, and rosemary. Stir everything together and lower the heat so the sauce is just simmering. Cover and cook for 1½ hours, adding, if necessary, a little water from time to time to keep it from getting too thick.
When the sauce is done, remove from the heat. It may be served as is, or if you wish, puree it just slightly, either in a food processor or using an immersion blender. It should not be a smooth sauce, but rather have lots of bits and pieces to cling to the pasta. (The sauce may be made ahead a day or two and reheated just before serving.)
When ready to serve, bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Add salt and the pasta and cook following the directions here. When the pasta is al dente, drain and turn it into a warm serving bowl. Add the hot sauce and mix vigorously, then add a little parmigiano and serve immediately, passing more cheese at the table.