Amuse bouche... Spag bol

‘Mum. Mum. Mum.” “Once will be fine, Ferdia,” Orla answered from the front of the car. “Really, I’m right in front. I can hear you.”

“OK,” said Ferdia. “But Mum.” “Yes,” said Orla. “What will the bolognese be like at Ruby and Timmy’s? Will it be lumpy?”

To her relief, Orla knew the answer. She and her cousin, Claire, whom they were visiting in the course of their tour of the west, had enjoyed many conversations on the subject of spaghetti bolognese and similar.

What a pair of saddos, Orla thought. What happened to conversations about two-night benders and fat-and-sugar hangover busters?

“Don’t worry, love,” Orla told Ferdia, “Ruby and Timmy like it smooth, too.”

“No veg?” asked Ferdia, like someone asking if there would be snakes in the pasta.

“No veg,” Orla reassured; or none that Ferdia need know about, anyway. Claire was a fan of including whatever was in the fridge and then just blending the living hell out of it. A good-quality tin of tomatoes masked a multitude, she reckoned.

Orla could write a book about the variety in spaghetti bolognese recipes to be found in the west of Ireland.

She could expand it out into a series, she mused, maybe breaking the country into provinces and comparing and contrasting recipes nationwide.

Which province favoured lumps? Munster, she silently guessed. Where was the most celery to be found? Ulster, probably. Where was the smoothest? Wimpy Leinster.

And Connacht? Well, this holiday suggested that Connacht was where you found a rather dry, savoury-mince-style spag bol. Ferdia had cried buckets over a couple of them in the past week.

“He needs to toughen up,” Tadhg said to Orla from the driver’s seat. “Honestly, that was fecking mortifying in the restaurant yesterday.”

Orla tried not to laugh. It was funny in retrospect how Ferdia had freaked out when he found a mushroom in his lunch the previous day.

“Is this a mushroom?” Orla squeaked, in an indignant Little Lord Fauntleroy voice.

“Who put a mushroom in here?”

“I can hear you,” said Ferdia from the back of the car, with his headphones, which were plugged into the iPad, still over his ears.

“No harm,” said Tadhg. “Resilience is what he needs. That’s what’s wrong with the kids now, apparently. Too much mollycoddling, and the hiding veg in bolognese isn’t helping. A mushroom won’t kill him.”

“It won’t,” said Orla. “But not at Claire’s. Let’s keep it smooth tonight. Or else I’m off on a two-night bender.”