Nom-Able

The first time I went to visit David in England, I stayed for 11 days; for several weeks up until that point, he instant messaged me nightly, asking what I would and would not eat, as his mother wanted to know. On my first night in England, we had the quintessential English meal: crispy, breaded and fried fish; soft, oily chips; and mushy peas from a Chinese chippy down the street. The second night, we had the meal that will somehow stand out in my mind far longer–spaghetti bolognese.

My mother had attempted something similar many times, mostly in appeasement of my father, who though his heritage is Irish and English, insists upon eating Italian food at least once a week. My mother’s idea of spaghetti and meat sauce is, however, just that: brown up some ground meat, throw it in some sauce, cook, and pour over pasta. David’s mother’s idea, however, was somewhat different.

Different in a really incredible way.

The recipe is adapted from an out of print Marks and Spencer cookbook from the 1970s that my mother-in-law keeps in a drawer, withdrawing it only in order to make ’spag bol’ or chili, and even then, it often does not see the kitchen lights on spag bol night. Oh no, she makes it so often — and so well — that she can quite successfully do the recipe from memory.

Americanizing an English recipe — espeically one that has changed over the years due to being made from memory — is more difficult than you think. First, you have to convert the measurements from metric to standard measure, which in and of itself is a pain in the butt since the former is weight-based and the latter is volume-based. Once this is done, and you’ve accounted for the fact that you’re not going to have a 300 ml. can of this or that around — but maybe you’ll have 14.5 oz and you can adjust from there — then comes the issue of how it just doesn’t taste the same.

No, really, it doesn’t.

I made the recipe several times before our last trip to England — David usually cooks the sauce, but I wanted to keep trying to get it right. In the end, we both stood in the kitchen, watching his mother add a dash of this and a bit of that (salt is not in the recipe, surprisingly, and neither is pepper — she adds both) substituting this for that, adding and subtracting bits and bobs, until it was the spag bol we knew and loved. So the recipe was tweeked, fixed, and Americanized.

David still is responsible for cooking this, however. There’s just something about the way Anglicised Italian food tastes when cooked by an actual Englishman that is so important, so crucial to getting this recipe just right. If you do not have an Englishman of your own, I suggest you hire one. Jamie Oliver would be a good choice, I bet.

My Mother-In-Law’s Spaghetti Bolognese

Ingredients

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1/2 Spanish onion, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 lb. ground turkey

2 tsbp tomato paste

1 large can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes

1 c. chicken stock

1 tsp sugar

1 tbsp red or white wine vinegar (my MIL sometimes just uses wine)

1 tsp fresh, chopped basil

1 tsp fresh, chopped oregano

sea salt

black pepper

Instructions

1. Heat 2-3 tbsp olive oil in a large cast iron skillet. Add onion and garlick and saute until tender (usually 3-4 minutes) over medium heat.
2. Add in meat and cook until browned through, about 5 minutes.
3. Add tinned tomatoes, tomato paste, and stock and bring to a boil.
4. Lower heat to a simmer. Stir in remaining ingredients. Salt and pepper to taste (we use freshly cracked/ground sea salt and black pepper). Simmer for twenty minutes, adding additional broth if the sauce becomes too dry. (We have never had this problem.)
5. Serve sauce over whole grain pasta with garlic bread.