Thoughts on bolognese

I made bolognese yesterday. I think for a lot of people this is an easy-peasy thirty-minute mince-and-tomato midweek supper. For a lot of other people – people like me – it is the source of debate and passion.

My mother’s bolognese recipe comes from a St Michael (that’s M&S in the old days) freezer cookbook, and uses tins of tomato puree liberally dressed with mushrooms. I’m not keen on mushrooms in bolognese and we’ve had a number of family rows about it. Why wreck a perfectly good dinner with fungi which, when cooked for an hour or so, resemble black slugs?

And then came along Matt, who threw out the spag bol rulebook by using – get this – CHUNKS OF BEEF rather than mince in his stew. This blew my mind. Not only were they chunks of beef, they were chunks of beef that he had hand-chopped to get the consistency that he wanted. I think it was this attention to detail that made me think he may be the chap for me, that plus the row of Elizabeth David cookbooks that I spied on his bookshelf on my first visit to his flat. Matt doesn’t understand spaghetti and so his bol is always served with a pasta tube of some sort. I think the Italians would approve of this.

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