How to eat: spaghetti bolognese
In this bleak Covid winter, you, like How to eat (HTE), may consider spaghetti bolognese a goto comfort food. But, on closer inspection, spag bol does not promote easy peace of mind. Instead, this bastardised Britalian creation is a running sore in Anglo-Italian relations. In 2016, Antonio Carluccio reminded Cheltenham literary festival that spaghetti bolognese does not exist in Italy, where bolognese is made without herbs or garlic, enriched with milk and served over fresh egg tagliatelle. In 1982, in an early, doomed attempt to prevent further deviation, a notarised recipe for authentic ragù allabolognese, finalised by the Accademia Italiana della Cucina, was deposited at Bologna’s Chamber of Commerce.
These two examples are typical of 40 years of pernickety admonishment. But to what end?
In the 50s, the spag bol fusion of northern bolognese and southern neapolitan ragù (hence the tomato sauce and spaghetti) was quite possibly a prime example of high-handed British chauvinism. We have form. But, in 2021, Britain would freely and happily admit that spag bol is a cut ’n’ shut wrong ’un. No one cooking it in Luton or Carlisle is making a culturally insensitive mockery of Italian culture, or making any claim to authenticity. They are just cooking tea. Thanks for the hybrid inspiration.
Could we not call a truce? Can we not accept that it is possible (as long as you don’t put peas in it) to see concurrent value in ragù allabolognese, ragù allanapoletana and spag bol, as cousins in a now-distant family? Think of it like the Simpsons, South Park and Family Guy. You can laugh at all of them while recognising there is a hierarchy of sophistication that bottoms out in enjoyable vulgarity.
Open your mind and it is possible to love all bolognese variations. Indeed, its iterations are a kind of liberation. When Heston Blumenthal rails against our abuse of “one of the great bourgeois Italian dishes” or chefs insist on fresh pasta (the historical choice of the wealthy elite), it carries an unfortunate undertone of class snobbery – a sense that we, the great unwashed, have ruined “authentic” bolognese by splicing it with southern Italian peasant cooking or, worse, the abominations of the British kitchen.
But food evolves, often out of economic necessity. Things change. Even in Italy, as southerners migrate north and where, in Bologna, ragù has been served with spaghetti since the 16th century.
“I’ve borrowed this and that from hostile parties over many years,” wrote Simon Schama in 2008 about bolognese, presumably on a quiet day at Big Thoughts HQ. But how should we use this bolognese licence, this freedom to rethink spag bol? HTE has some ideas.
Saucematerial
All sane adults will agree that cooking pasta in the sauce is a no-no. You are not a student. There is, however, disagreement about whether bolognese should be served spooned on to pasta or stirred through it, so it coats every strand, as with pesto.
HTE favours top-loaded spag bol. The dish should have two distinct elements: pasta and sauce. The pasta should offset the flavour of the sauce, in a format that allows you to choose the correct ratio of one to the other.
Mixing pasta into bolognese sauce is like baking sandwich ingredients into bread. By design, it prevents you finding a satisfying balance between the two. Plus, pre-mixed spag bol looks a right dog’s dinner.
The base
The assumption – let’s call it the pasta fallacy – that bolognese must be served only with pasta is rendered void by the potato waffle. You would not serve bolognese with mash or a jacket potato (too mushy, too worthy); but with something glistening and fried such as chips or potato waffles, it is revelatory. You need that harder, fried edge as protection from the wet sauce that waterlogs softer delivery vehicles such as toast.
In the pasta realm, HTE has nothing again fusilli or farfalle (ultimately, the correct pasta is whatever you have in), but tubular and/or hollow pastas (penne, rigatoni, conchiglie) are best avoided. You should taste the bolognese sauce first in each mouthful. It should be the primary flavour, with the pasta coming through in the finish. With holey pastas, the meat sauce often gets lost in the nooks and crannies. It ends up partially hidden. Sidelined. Stifled.
Some type of noodle is preferable, with spaghetti the No 1 choice for several reasons. Thicker ribbons of fresh egg tagliatelle, fettuccine or, in particular, pappardelle are too creamy and too filling with this rich sauce. They also – like unconvincing snakes attacking the jungle adventurer in a 50s B-movie – have a tendency to flail around uncontrollably as you transfer them to your mouth.
In contrast, spaghetti is exactly long and thick enough that, with a confident twirl of your fork, you can form it into a neat nest, which makes lifting meat sauce to your mouth easy. Moreover, in its cereal earthiness, dried wheat pasta (ratio roughly 1:3 sauce-to-pasta, by volume), is the perfect parsimonious foil to the densely savoury flavours of the sauce.
Fork lift
“As to the use of a fork plus a spoon for eating pasta,” announced the New York Times in 1982, having assembled a cast of experts to adjudicate, “all those at the table were adamant. Spoons are for children, amateurs and people with bad table manners in general.”
Thankfully, food writing has changed in the intervening years. It is less patronising. Less pompous. If you feel a spoon helps you twirl your pasta (you will need one to scrape up the last remnants), use it. Personally, HTE works with one hand, fork-only, leaning the other elbow on the table. Italian food is the last word in casual, right?
One maverick option is using scissors to trim each forkful: a solution that is inspired, ridiculous and, HTE cannot help but feel, likely to result in a trip to A&E.
It would, at least, save your clothes. No white T-shirt will survive a blithely eaten spag bol and HTE has no interest in fuelling the socially and ecologically ruinous churn of fast fashion. Therefore, there are two options. Either get your head right down over the bowl – to the extent that you might suffocate in bolognese, slurping as you go – or revive the shirt-tucked napkin: the adult bib. Yes, you will feel like a plum (or an ageing mafia boss in the gloomy back room of a New Jersey trattoria), but you will walk away unscathed. Does HTE own any serviettes? Without a full cupboard audit, we will never know. This is why God invented kitchen roll.
Grate ideas
The pasta-topping primacy of aged parmesan is strange. As you will have observed, due to its lack of moisture, tightly wound proteins and high melting point, parmesan tends to denature into phlegmy clumps, or, where there is insufficient heat, sit in a pretty, flavourdeficient snowdrift. Parmesan is great when cooked into dishes and sauces. But as a pasta-topper? It does not work. HTE is open to the idea of forgoing cheese altogether. The bolognese sauce can speak for itself. But, should you choose to top your spag bol, do so with a decent cheddar, the proteins, water and fat content of which are better suited to creating the smooth, stretchy matrix required.
Back to the sauce
This is how to eat, not cook. But, for the record: step away from the peas; using milk and cream is akin to putting a blanket inside a bass drum – they muffle flavour; and minced pork or bacon are welcome, to add depth. Sweetcorn, like Romesh Ranganathan, gets everywhere. Unlike Ranganathan, that is not remotely funny.
Time is the most important ingredient. Whether gently sweating garlic or that essential soffritto of onion, carrot and celery, let the bolognese percolate for hours on a low heat, or park it in the fridge for a few days. Like Scott Walker’s later albums, good spag bol cannot be rushed. Talking of avant-garde creations and the pursuit of flavour, HTE is minded to try this incredible recipe from the actor Jason Isaacs, which, with its 10 garlic cloves, chorizo, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, rice wine vi