On Italian menus you might find pappardelle chinghiale, pappardelle alla cinghiale or pappardelle al ragù di cinghiale. It’s all the same, a wide noodle with a wild boar sauce loaded with spices, a deviation from the simplicity of most Italian pasta sauces.
The ragù starts like most Italian meat sauces, with a fine mince of carrot, onions, celery and garlic, gently sautéed. The boar is added with tomato sauce, passata di pomodoro, red wine, and finally, the herbs are added, which may include bay leaves, rosemary, parsley, whole allspice, juniper berries, and pepper.
The dish is said to have originated in the Maremma historic territory of Tuscany, where the small Maremma boar is found. Today’s dish is likely to be prepared from the larger German Boar, which produces a prodigious number of offspring, the scourge of vineyards and gardens—and is now a major nuisance not only in the Italian countryside, but in the cities as well. In my village, canons go off all night in the fall to keep the boar out of the crops.
So, if you have been wanting to sample wild boar, you might be encouraged to do so considering the moral objective of ridding the countryside of a delicious pest.
The picture is from La Dispensa, a very fine restaurant in the town of Altopascio in Tuscany, found along the Via Francigena.