
Italian or British? Writer solves riddle of spaghetti bolognese - cruisestacy
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/24/italian-or-british-writer-solves-riddle-of-spaghetti-bolognese
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pmontra
Lol, everybody in Italy has had "spaghetti bolognese". We call them "spaghetti
al ragù" and learn the name "spaghetti bolognese" the first time we are
exposed to international gastronomy, possibly the first vacation abroad.

The issue here is about spaghetti not being the proper kind of pasta for the
"ragù" sauce, tagliatelle is the traditional one. Ok, noted, but ragù is still
a common sauce for spaghetti and maccaroni. Maybe not in high priced
restaurants but definitely at most people's home. Basically you use what you
have.

Now back to Python vs Ruby vs Node... :-)

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agmcleod
Haha yep. This was a bit of a funny side joke in a Top Gear special, when they
went through the Italy.

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contingencies
So if the official research states that you can vary the sauce to include
oregano, basil, and garlic, optionally adding various cheeses, and you can
vary the pasta between _tagliatelle_ (fresh egg pasta) and dried _spaghetti_
(and you can vary the name between _spaghetti al ragù_ , _spaghetti bolognese_
or _spaghetti alla bolognese_ ) then that's really a pretty wide range of
dishes.

Interesting that _restaurants focused on serving the dish with tagliatelle, in
part because fresh pasta cooked faster_ ... fast food, not high cuisine. White
tablecloths eat your heart out!

In the same spirit, I wonder if we will create a _tagliatelle_ version for
Infinite Food one day? [http://8-food.com/](http://8-food.com/)

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megablast
Only in Italy, where slightly different shaped pasta magically means a
completely different meal.

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contingencies
Hehe, that's some well placed cynicism. I've been looking in to what makes a
noodle dish (normally a noodle soup) from various parts of
Burma/China/Laos/Thailand/Vietnam/Japan unique, and it's been fascinating. I
would say there's far more variety in Asia than in Italy.

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russellbeattie
I've always found it interesting how native American foods (tomatoes,
potatoes, peanuts, chilis, corn, strawberry, pineapple, etc.) have been
integrated into "traditional" cuisines around the world. Italian spaghetti
sauce or Thai peanut sauce, etc. have only been available for a few hundred
years max... Still a lot, but some other traditions go back millennia.

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frostburg
A lot of really old recipes, say, those dating to the roman era or even only
the renaissance, are very unpalatable for modern tastes.

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vollmond
Do you know of any good repository of (as far as we know) accurate recipes
from that sort of time? I'd love to be able to cook a Roman dinner one night
or something.

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maw
Having spent very little time in the Roman Empire I can't vouch for its
authenticity, but
[http://www.passthegarum.co.uk/](http://www.passthegarum.co.uk/) looks like an
interesting source of recipes.

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gotofritz
> Controversy surrounding the dish resurfaced last month, when Antonio
> Carluccio became the latest in a long line of chefs to complain that one of
> Britain’s favourite “Italian” dishes did not, in fact, exist in Italy

Food snobs like those really get on my nerves. I mean, it's one thing when one
starts adding cream to carbonara (or make it with _just_ cream, like they do
in the UK) but swapping spaghetti for tagliatelle is hardly a crime. And like
the article said, people in Italy are not _that_ anal about the type of pasta
- ragù is one of the universal sauces you serve with anything. I grew up
eating Spaghetti al Ragù on sundays in my local trattoria.

Besides, _ragù alla bolognese_ is only ONE type of ragù. There are others,
even if we just to stick to the traditional ones, which are eaten with all
sort of pasta shapes: hare ragù (pappardelle), sicilian ragù (eaten with small
ring pasta), neapolitan ragù (maccheroni or rigatoni), lamb ragù, pork ragù...

And throwing a hissy fit for adding a bit of garlic, surely, it doesn't go
well with the sauce, but it's hardly a crime against humanity.

~~~
andreapaiola
I definitely agree.

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trumbitta2
BTW, in Italy we call them spaghetti _alla_ bolognese

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smegel
Which means what exactly?

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andreapaiola
alla = "a type of seasoning/condiment/cooking"

Examples:

Pasta alla carbonara

Pizza alla marinara

Trenette al pesto

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gkya
Let's note that grammatically 'alla', 'al', etc. is 'at/in/towards' \+ 'the',
but in this idiomatic use gives the meaning in the parent comment.

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jaclaz
Yes and no, it is "worse" than that.

In this particular use (for bolognese or pescatora, amatriciana, etc.)
"a/al/alla" means "in the style of", BUT when it is pasta al ragù (al pesto,
al pomodoro, etc., i.e. other main ingredients) the "a/al/alla" means "with".

And we have also our own exceptions, one says "Pappardelle sul cinghiale"
(pappardelle is yet another type of pasta), literally "pappardelle _on_ the
hog", BUT you don't have the "a" in "spaghetti aglio e olio (e peperoncino)".

As a side note a "ragù" has nothing to do with the (usually horrible) tomato
sauce that is used for "spaghetti bolognese" outside Italy.

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andreapaiola
Never heard "pappardelle sul cinghiale"! Sort of slang, maybe.

Mai sentito parlare prima di pappardelle sul cinghiale, è un uso abbastanza
dialettale mi sa.

Ovviamente non si può non concordare sul ragù. ;)

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jaclaz
Well, they are typical of an area, and they are called like them there, so it
is maybe _somehow_ a "dialect" but I would rather say an "idiom":

[https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pappardelle_sul_cinghiale](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pappardelle_sul_cinghiale)

[https://books.google.it/books?id=M_vYmUgN3e0C&pg=PA289&lpg=P...](https://books.google.it/books?id=M_vYmUgN3e0C&pg=PA289&lpg=PA289#v=onepage&q&f=false)

you won't find, in any restaurant or "trattoria" in the area written on a menu
"al" cinghiale.

It is typical - I believe - of "pappardelle", they are also sometimes (less
common recipes) "sulla lepre" or "sul papero".

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Tade0
Where I come from we have this dish called "fish greek style" which apparently
is known in Greece as "fish russian style" and not known in Russia at all. Or
so the urban legend says.

I happen to currently live in Bologna, I've had the local tagliatelle al ragù
and all I can say is that it makes so much more sense to have it this way
instead of using spaghetti - it's simply better.

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IlPeach
I thought the whole issue was around the spaghetti meatballs, not the
bolognese which is well known in the majority of Italy. Duh.

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tomp
Even if not Italian, why on Earth would spaghetti bolognese be British? I've
eaten them in many countries around Europe...

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joeminichino
that's right, they are american. Sicilian immigrants could barely afford beef
in their native Sicily, so when they started having a little more money in
their pockets in America, they started adding beef to everything. Which is
where spaghetti with meatballs comes from as well. No italian has ever had
spaghetti with meatballs.

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Symbiote
America isn't the only country to have had lots of immigration.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italians_in_the_United_Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italians_in_the_United_Kingdom)

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dghf
Viz. Peter Capaldi, current Dr Who. Something like 1.5% of the Scottish
population has Italian ancestry.

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drtse4
A riddle? Did someone ever really think that this was a british dish and that
no one in Italy could come up with a tomato+meat sauce?

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dghf
Simplifying somewhat, most Britons believe it's a genuine Italian dish, and
most Italians believe it's a horrible British parody of their cuisine.

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xutopia
This article is such click bait.

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woliveirajr
> What he discovered was that spaghetti has been consumed and produced in
> Bologna and in the neighbouring countryside since the 16th century.

It's funny to read about someone denying eating some kind of food. But, then:

> Italians’ rigid adherence to cooking traditions, Valdiserra said, is linked
> to the false belief that they have not changed much over centuries.

So it becomes a matter of pride and tradition. I'm curious what future
generations will think about our habits: raw foods _vs_ processed ones,
vegetarian _vs_ meat farms, diversity _vs_ individually tailored according to
genetic profile and needs.

