The most abused dish in Italian cuisine is without doubt tagliatelle alla bolognese, says Coldiretti, the Italian farming union.
Dishes bearing this name are produced in hundreds of countries outside Italy but the ingredients and the taste would be unrecognisable to Italians, who are particularly perplexed by the strange cans and jars of “bolognese” sauce found on the shelves of foreign supermarkets. Indeed, some manufacturers cannot even spell the name, calling it “bolognaise” or even “boulognaise” because they presumably think the dish hails from France.
The term “sauce” is also a misnomer because the beloved “bolognese” is a ragù and every Italian cook knows there is a world of difference between a sauce and a ragù: a sauce is a flimsy, rather insignificant concoction which hardly features in Italian cuisine, whereas a ragù conjures up images of slow food, lovingly prepared, and ah, the taste! A ragù speaks of warmth and of home.
And so Sunday became “World Italian Cuisine Day Devoted to tagliatelle alla bolognese”.
The event, organised by Gvci [Gruppo virtuali cuochi italiani] was the third Idic [International Day of Italian Cuisines] and involved cooks from more than 50 countries preparing the dish at the same time to the same recipe as a protest against ersatz versions. And the recipe? It is here.
