Worthy macaroni
TABLE TALK
IT’S true, my kids have now outgrown the mind-bending repetition of nursery rhymes, but there’s one that has always left me boggled. Have you ever wondered why it was that ‘Yankee Doodle stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni’?
By any meaningful consideration this is an absurd tale to put to music, made stranger still when you consider it was the tune sung in chorus by colonial American militias as they marched off to battle during the War of Independence against Britain.
Like so many of the world’s great mysteries, things are not quite what they seem.
Originally, the tune was not sung by the Americans, but by the British soldiers as a form of mockery against their rivals.
The key here is the term ‘macaroni’, an idea that had an entirely different meaning in London during the 18th century. In those years, well-off young English gentlemen and ladies would undertake what was known as the ‘Great Tour’. Kind of like a high-end gap year, these sons and daughters of aristocracy would travel throughout Europe, sometimes for several years, to obtain a cultural education.
Many of these travellers returned to Britain heavily influenced by what they had seen and experienced, often adopting more Continental styles of clothes, and affecting a decidedly European sensibility. Basically, they were posers.
In London, these travellers were known as ‘macaroni’, a derisive term borrowed from Italian implying that they had grown a little too big for their boots.
‘Doodle’, as in Yankee Doodle, is an old German term meaning ‘simpleton’. Hence the complete song actually meant something like ‘These stupid colonial Yankees ride ponies because they can’t afford real horses, and mistakenly think they’re a lot more cultured than they really are’. But as is so often the way, the Yankees simply adopted the song themselves, and the insult was blunted. There just might be a lesson in that for all of us.
MACARONI AND CHEESE WITH CRISPY SALAMI
SERVES: 4
Ingredients
400g macaroni pasta
140g Calabrese salami, sliced
1 white onion, finely diced
2 tsp fennel seeds, toasted and ground
1 tsp celery seeds
50g unsalted butter
2 tbsp plain flour
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup cream
75g parmesan, grated
125g mozzarella, grated
Sea salt flakes and freshly-ground black pepper
Juice of ½ lemon
1 cup peas, blanched
Basil, to serve
Method
1. Cook the macaroni in a large saucepan of rapidly boiling salted water according to manufacturer’s instructions, until al dente. Drain well. Meanwhile, fry the salami slices in a pan over a moderate heat until very crispy. Drain on kitchen paper.
2. Saute the onion and seeds in butter in a saucepan over a moderate heat for 5 minutes, until softened, then add the flour and cook until the mixture becomes crumbly. Pour in the stock and cream, bring to a simmer, whisking constantly.
3. Once thickened, fold in the cheeses and lemon juice, then season with salt and pepper. Mix in the peas and pasta, then serve with basil.