The Pasta - Sauce Combo That Shouldn't Be?

In which I explore the next of the Argentine tomato-based pasta sauces, the boloñesa.

I have rarely gotten into hot water with my writing. Mostly it’s food, wine, and travel, and doesn’t cause much controversy. Though, there was the one screed I wrote over my objection to the word “queer”, which triggered one of the word’s embracers, and also clearly placed me in the camp of The Boomers. The only other piece I can think of that engendered a backlash was my discourse on the “spag bol”, i.e., spaghetti bolognese. I’m going to repeat that here, as I think I covered it well then.

Let’s start with the simple part. Spaghetti alla bolognese isn’t an Italian dish. It’s a British dish that’s been imitated in various other parts of the world, kind of like the American dish of spaghetti and meatballs. It isn’t that spaghetti doesn’t exist in Italy, it does. It isn’t that bolognese sauce doesn’t exist in Italy, it does. But the two together, just not happening. You see, spaghetti is a southern pasta, virtually always a dry pasta that’s then boiled up to an al dente texture. And Bologna, the city to which alla bolognese refers, is the capital of Emilia-Romagna, in the north. Keep in mind that Italy didn’t exist as a unified nation until just a century and a half ago.

Let’s stay with the sauce for a moment. Bolognese is a type of ragù (note the reversed accent from the way most people spell it – spell it ragú and it needs to be capitalized as it’s a commercial sauce brand) which more or less means “sauce”, specifically a meat-based sauce. But, it’s a relatively recent term, as, prior to Napoleon’s invasion in 1796, and the introduction and influence of the French term ragoût, which means “to stimulate the appetite”, there are no historical references to the local meat based sauces under that term. What we think of these days as sauces were not served with pasta, rice, or over any other starches, but were offered up as simple stews.

The first recorded instance of combining the two was in the late 1700s, when Alberto Alvisi, chef to the cardinal of Imola, served a local meat stew over maccheroni (which in the vernacular is simply a generic term for pasta, not the little elbows we’re familiar with as macaroni). By the 1830s meat sauces as pasta toppings were becoming all the rage in Emilia-Romagna, and by the late 1800s, with Italy newly unified, the concept spread to other parts of the country.

In Bologna, to make a point, bolognese is simply referred to as ragù, because why refer to it as the sauce made in the style of the Bolognese in its hometown? The sauce is classically served with only two pastas, over tagliatelle or layered with lasagna noodles in that classic baked dish. And in both cases, always fresh pasta, never dried. But spaghetti? Dried spaghetti? A southern staple? Not a chance.

I apparently triggered several British expat women in the community to write letters to the editor when that was published in The Buenos Aires Herald twelve years ago. They accused me of appropriating, on behalf of their country-folk, an icon of Italian cooking, me having declared that pasta was invented by the British, and that so was bolognese. Of course, reading the above, I made neither claim, but they hadn’t, it appears, read past the opening three sentences. I wonder if Stanley Tucci got similar backlash when he declared much the same thing in his Searching for Italy episode on the region (which I wrote up), going so far as to even assert that no tomatoes are to be used, whatsoever.

Here in Argentina (as in many places), pre-set combinations of a particular pasta with a particular sauce, is not a common approach in restaurants. Generally, menus are setup with a list of pastas and a list of sauces, and you pick and choose your own pairing. And the pricing is separate too, you pay for the pasta and you pay for the sauce.

But let’s get on to the sauce. In truth, the Argentine version of boloñesa, as it’s spelled in Spanish, is probably not that different from what a family might throw together for a quick version of the sauce in Emilia-Romagna. It just falls short of the complexity of a “real” bolognese that nonna prepares for Sunday dinner. It’s a bit more tomato-heavy than what I think of as the classic, but much of that probably comes down to personal tastes and recipes. Many people make bolognese almost without tomato in Bologna - more of a salsa bianca, with only a bit of tomato paste in it, or even not that. And, of course, likely paired with a wider (tagliatelle, fettuccine, pappardelle), more substantial pasta, or layered into lasagna.

A can of whole, peeled tomatoes with their juices, a roughly equal amount of ground beef, onion, garlic, bell pepper, carrot, salt, pepper, oregano, bay leaf (crumbled or ground). In my version of the Italian classic, I’d use celery, not bell pepper, fresh tomatoes if they’re in season, a mix of meats - pancetta, ground beef, a good Italian sausage, mushrooms, wine, milk, thyme, nutmeg, and maybe a pinch of chili flakes.

In a little olive oil, sauté the chopped vegetables until soft and starting to color.

Add the ground beef and break it up, continuing to sauté until browned.

When it looks like this…

…add the tomatoes, breaking them up as you go (or you can just either use a can of pre-chopped tomatoes, or pulse these in a food processor).

And add in the herbs and pepper as you cook this down until fairly thick.

Put your spaghetti or other pasta into boiling salted water. Once there’s some starch released into the water and you can see it’s a bit cloudy with it, add a ladle or two of the pasta water to the sauce and continue cooking down.

When the pasta is two minutes short of its official cooking time, move it to the saucepan and add more pasta water as needed to finish cooking it in the sauce and make the sauce nice and clingy with that starch.

It should end up more or less like this. I probably cooked it about a minute more from this point, just to make sure it wasn’t too liquidy.

And, serve!

Don’t forget to add your grated parmigiano!

I like the Argentine version for a quick and easy meal. The sauce takes only about 15-20 minutes to make, versus the hour and a half or so that the classic takes. Still, there’s so much more that could be done to perk it up and make it a more flavorful sauce. Let’s just say, in both traditional and modern senses of the word, it’s “basic”.