Barbie’s bolognese: remembrance of things pasta
Spaghetti bolognese is an idea ever morphing, inspired by Italy but loved just about everywhere.
“Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti.” - Sophia Loren.
February 14. Sunday. Tomorrow, if you’re reading this hot off the press, or Retina screen.
A commercial hype-fest built around a saint I’d never heard of growing up, and whose day was certainly not celebrated by anybody I know before the people in greeting card marketing got hold of it.
My daughter’s birthday.
And equally important, the anniversary of my mother’s death, 20 years ago. And whichever way you cut it, there’s something rather poignant about your firstborn, a soft, pink bundle of infinite potential, turning one the same day the other major female presence in your life, the one who had always been there, pegs out.
She gave me a million things, my sweet, funny and very forgiving late mother. One just happens to have been a lifelong lust for spaghetti. And lamb loin chops. Now, there will always be barbecued lamb chops, and they will always be a defining flavour of an Aussie childhood, but there will never again be Barbie’s bolognese; her recipe was never actually committed to record.
That might not be such a bad thing; it probably didn’t really rate, on a culinary level anyway, but we didn’t know that then, me and my brother, who grew up to prove beyond any doubt that a diet of white bread toast and smooth peanut butter for the first 15 years of human life has no long-term ill effects.
To me, however, the “Italian” sauce mum made with minced beef to go with boiled spaghetti was a weekly joy; we had those green dispensers of sickly Kraft pre-grated “parmesan” too, and the vomit-smelling powder would be shaken all over the steaming mound of pasta and sauce for an authentic touch. Noice.
Maybe this inspired the old man to buy an Italian car?
And if she told me once, she told me a hundred times how she’d learned the recipe from the Italian lady next door in a working class bayside suburb — now the preferred locale of former state premiers and other left-leaning intelligentsia, if that’s not a tautology — in the early 1960s.
A WASP of the highest order from a farming family in Tasmania, Barb probably hadn’t met too many Italians before she found herself sharing a fence with some. And Roman Catholics, too. I’m pleased she did. If only I’d paid more attention when she was actually cooking it …
I remember olive oil (an early adopter by Aussie standards), onion, browned mince and tomato paste. I remember tinned tomatoes and bay leaves. And cloves. Definitely cloves.
I remember standing in the kitchen talking while she stirred. Sometimes I’d stir. It’s my earliest cooking memory.
Enough of that: to the inevitable discussion of what Sydney restaurateur Lucio Galletto, in his book The Art of Pasta, calls “Australia’s adopted national dish — spag bol.”
Purists say spaghetti bolognese has nothing to do with Italian culinary culture. It has been said (by those who should know) that “Spaghetti alla bolognese” never existed.
“Spaghetti is dry pasta from southern Italy, in Bologna, we have tagliatelle, freshly homemade, al ragù bolognese”.
Some, according to the website Spaghetti Bolognese, think it happened during War World II, when American (and British) soldiers, passing through Emilia, ate tagliatelle al ragù and liked it.
“Back home, they asked for the dish and Italian restaurateurs created the dish we know today, with spaghetti. There is no evidence but the story could well be true. When American and British came back to Italy as tourists they asked for their beloved Spaghetti Bolognese and Italian restaurateurs gave it to them.”
So is there — can there actually be — an authentic recipe for bolognese sauce to go with spaghetti, my preferred pasta with the minced meat sauce, regardless of what purists in Bologna say? No, spaghetti bolognese is an idea, an ever morphing, regionally adaptable concept for a delicious meat sauce inspired by Italy but loved just about everywhere.
Matt Preston puts some soy in his; I like a scoop of miso paste. Some say beef only, others beef and veal, others veal and pork. Garlic? Tomato? They have serious proponents, and denigrators. I really don’t think there is a right or wrong on this one.
Me, I’ll be making it for tomorrow’s dinner with a kind of mongrel combination of ingredients that reflect both nostalgia and the advice of experts, like Galletto. There will be porcini, homemade pancetta and chicken livers, a la Lucio. The old lady would turn in her grave.
And there will be minced beef, pork and some Italian sausage too. White wine. And tomatoes. Sorry Lucio. I have to have pomodori.
And there will be a glass of something bubbling and Italian to remember mum and the 65 good years she had. She gave me so much … She gave me spaghetti.