Fennel and Minced Meat Sauce with Tagliatelle

Put the flour together with the eggs and a pinch of salt in a bowl and knead to form an elastic dough. If you notice that it should get too dry, add a little water, or that it is too moist, just add a little more flour.

Then wrap the dough in cling film and let it rest for at least 30 minutes at ROOM TEMPERATURE, better longer. Then roll out the dough thinly with the pasta machine and cut into tagliatelle with the tagliatelle attachment (or with the knife). Then cook the tagliatelle in sufficiently salted water until al dente.

Remove the green from the fechel tuber, cut into small pieces and set aside. Then cut the fennel bulb into cubes.

Heat some olive oil in a saucepan and fry the minced meat until it is hot and crumbly, add the cinnamon stick and fennel seeds. When the minced meat is nice and crumbly and has drawn color, add the diced fennel, shallots and garlic, fry for about 5 minutes, turning several times.

Then deglaze with the orange juice and the pureed tomatoes, bring to the boil once and then turn the stove on to the lowest possible level. Now add the vanilla pod, the rosemary and the thyme, put the lid on and let it simmer for at least 2 hours. The longer, the better - for me it was only 4 hours today. Stir occasionally.

Season with salt, pepper and Espelette pepper from time to time. Shortly before the end, remove the vanilla pod, the cinnamon stick and the rosemary and thyme, season to taste again and fold in the fennel green and the orange zest.

Drain the tagliatelle, collecting about 100 ml of pasta water, then add this to the sauce - this will make the sauce thicker and the pasta will absorb the sauce better. Arrange the tagliatelle on a plate and pour the sauce over it. If you want, you can rub an old pecorino over it.