If there’s one thing I have learnt in five years of recipe-perfecting for this newspaper – apart from the joy of a decent dishwasher – it’s that some people get very, very angry about food. Jamie Oliver found this out the hard way last week, when he managed to unite the entire Spanish nation against his chorizo-spiked paella. Now, it’s the Italians turn to jump on the bandwagon, this time over crimes against bolognese.
The celebrity chef Antonio Carluccio told an audience at the Cheltenham literary festival that no such dish as spaghetti bolognese exists in Italy, where ragù alla bolognese is served over tagliatelle, and made “without any herbs whatsoever”. He’s not the first to find the uniquely British notion of “spag bol” leaves a bad taste in the mouth – indeed, the Italian Academy of Cuisine published an official recipe as long ago as 1982 to try to prevent such culinary outrages – but if he thinks a couple of millimetres of missing pasta are the worst we can do to bolognese, he needs to get out more. (But eat first Antonio. Definitely eat first.)
Even Jamie Oliver, who might well attract Carluccio’s ire for his use of rosemary and sun-dried tomatoes, looks tame compared with the former enfant terrible of British cookery, Marco Pierre White, who slips in a “tasty twist” of chocolate and chilli for a bolognese that’s “guaranteed to get the family asking what you’ve done differently” – and then, no doubt, for a bowl of cereal instead.
Sainsbury’s got knickers in a twist last year by suggesting customers add instant coffee granules to bolognese, on the basis that it “cuts through the natural sweetness of the tomato-based ragu”. Why anyone would want their dinner to taste like 1983 is beyond me, but still, that recipe looks sane compared with that of Australian nutrition guru Sarah Wilson, which she claims offers “double the healthy comfort – tomato-free bolognese and a sweet Thai dish in one”. That’s right, it’s a red curry bolognese, served with pasta.
But just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, I stumbled upon a totally raw, vegan, gluten-free version from chef Stephanie Jeffs: the noodles are made from courgettes and the “Parmesan” from cashews and nutritional yeast flakes, an ingredient I suspect to be all the rage in Bologna. Meanwhile, instead of beef, there are chia seeds, walnuts and portobello mushrooms. In fact, the tablespoon of “Italian herbs” may well be one of the few ingredients in there that Carluccio would recognise. Suddenly that abominable spaghetti doesn’t seem so bad, eh, Antonio?
