fighting words

January 29, 2021 10:30 AM

How To Eat is a regular column at The Guardian. Today, they took on spag bol And there is no chance that could end well. The links are good, though. Sauce of controversy, THE SPOON QUESTION, OR HOW TO EAT PASTA LIKE AN EXPERT, and more

do read the comments

posted by mumimor (39 comments total)

I'm sure I've read Tony Naylor fess up to the How To Eat column being cynical, naked click bait - intended to provoke angry comments and drive pageviews. View all contrarian opinions about parmesan not being a good match for a pasta dish through that lens.
posted by bifter at 10:33 AM on January 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

absolutely, bifter, and some days it is just more entertaining that others.
posted by mumimor at 10:51 AM on January 29, 2021

For once, I don't think the parmesan thing is (just) contrarian. He knows who he is appealing to, and it is people like me who learnt of pasta (and thus italian food) via spag bol in the 1980s and sure as hell did not have fresh parmesan on it. We had weird dry pregrated parmesan in sprinkler tubs which was disgusting, or we had grated cheddar, which was melty and delicious.

I have grown into the sort of person who may or may not have 3 different types of fancy imported parmesan available at any one time but I'd still put cheddar on spag bol every time.
posted by AFII at 11:08 AM on January 29, 2021 [5 favorites]

I read this over breakfast this morning, then had to have spag bol for lunch. My version had peas and carrots in it, and a huge mound of cheddar cheese on top. Utterly delicious.

Since moving to the US I've realized that this is the British comfort food I crave about all others.
posted by EllaEm at 11:19 AM on January 29, 2021 [5 favorites]

I'm pastagnostic (the British are always going to be food heretics in any case), but the part that REALLY makes me angry is where the article mentions

the spag bol fusion of northern bolognese and southern neapolitan ragù

Really, Tony Naylor? REALLY? Bologna and Napoli are PLACES. They pay you a goddamn Guardian columnist's salary and you can't be arsed to capitalise PLACE NAMES? Would you write "chicago style pizza" or "london broil?" This is a newspaper, dammit, not the suburbs of Wordpress.

It would be satisfying to think that all the subeditors hate this guy so much they let him go to press with his lower-case arse showing, but the truth is that papers have mostly fired their subeditors/copy editors and replaced them with grammar/syntax/spellcheck software which DOESN'T WORK.

Honestly, the day the Guardian updated its style guide to "leftwing", "rightwing" and "thinktank", I died a little inside. That shit is James Joyce levels of annoying.
posted by Pallas Athena at 11:21 AM on January 29, 2021 [13 favorites]

Also, I have definitely eaten it spooned onto buttered white bread before. But chips? I never thought of that before, and now I really really want to try it....
posted by EllaEm at 11:22 AM on January 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

Can't tell if you're British and don't want to patronise you EllaEm, but if you are USian and weren't aware let me educate you about the carb on carb on carb pub grub classic of lasagne with chips and garlic bread. Genuinely can't be (b)eaten.
posted by bifter at 11:26 AM on January 29, 2021 [10 favorites]

Bifter, sorry, but yes it can. Lasagne, chips and garlic bread.
posted by Balthamos at 11:34 AM on January 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

Bifter, I am half of each these days - from the UK but now in the US. As it happens, I have introduced my husband to that particular British delicacy. It went down very well. People talk about the US as being the land of excess, but honestly their paltry comfort foods cower in fear in the face of British pub classics. "Toasted cheese? But where are the other three carbs?"
posted by EllaEm at 11:36 AM on January 29, 2021 [6 favorites]

Having recently started eating various leftovers combined and placed in a flour tortilla topped with shredded cheddar, a food stuff my wife has christened the "COVID Burrito" (usually pronounced with the cadence of Parry Gripp's "Breakfast Burrito"). I can unhesitatingly tell you that cheddar is delicious on spag bol, especially when topped with a generous helping of nanami togarashi and rolled up in a tortilla.
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:46 AM on January 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

I think that I object to the abbreviation "spag bol" more than anything else in the article.
posted by octothorpe at 11:59 AM on January 29, 2021 [29 favorites]

I think that I object to the abbreviation "spag bol" more than anything else in the article.

would you have preferred "noodles and squeak"?
posted by Dr. Twist at 12:03 PM on January 29, 2021 [5 favorites]

Any Brit who is totally in the know refers to the dish as "Spag BOG". The person writing this is clearly not conversant with true British Culinary terms!


It is Australians who call it 'Spag Bol'.... wanders off muttering 'Vegimite or Mightymite are NOT Marmite'... Fighting words indeed! NOTE: I did read the comments and one of the first ones refers to the very subject.
posted by IndelibleUnderpants at 1:32 PM on January 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

I must admit I only came to this post to see if Mefites were fighting about spag bol vs. spag bog.
posted by betweenthebars at 4:00 PM on January 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

Is this what we Americans might call meat sauce? We have our own tradition of brutalizing food and what we've done to bolognese has driven many a pasta empire.
posted by fiercekitten at 4:44 PM on January 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

Bifter, sorry, but yes it can. Lasagne, chips and garlic bread.

I got in so much shit on italian food twitter when I obliquely referenced Oscar Madison's favorite food, Lasagna and French fries when someone was posting about Tesco's lasagna sandwich. I called them chips (french fries) because it was about tesco.
posted by mikelieman at 4:48 PM on January 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

fiercekitten, those are amazing links, each in their own way.
I can't imagine eating anything on that old spaghetti menu. But it is really interesting that it exists.
And the bonappetit link is a rabbit hole I look forward to exploring.
posted by mumimor at 5:10 PM on January 29, 2021

Seeing "spag bol" just brings to mind the genius of James Acaster. I'm going to bed now (no more jobs!), but funnily enough, I already had a full re-watch of his Repertoire on the docket for tomorrow.
posted by cardioid at 8:08 PM on January 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

Any Brit who is totally in the know refers to the dish as "Spag BOG". The person writing this is clearly not conversant with true British Culinary terms!

...and in which little corner of these Isles do the only true culinary Brits reside then? Because in over 15 years of being here, living and cooking with people from all over the UK, I've not once heard anyone say "spag bog" (except perhaps when exceedingly drunk, such that every consonant after the first in an utterance all become a weird halfway house between b and g) whereas "spag bol" has been effectively universal.
posted by Dysk at 8:18 PM on January 29, 2021 [6 favorites]

Sphag Bog

Yum
posted by Mr. Yuck at 11:26 PM on January 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

I've only one word to say to Tony Naylor on that article. Yes.
posted by glasseyes at 5:43 AM on January 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

Speaking from a deeply reassuring freezer full of batch-cooked sbog, mind.
posted by glasseyes at 5:44 AM on January 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

Spag bog is absolutely a thing.
posted by ominous_paws at 6:00 AM on January 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

Sure, but where? I've literally never heard it in the UK. Wiktionary (hardly an authoritative source I know, but the only reference I could find to a region for the term) claims it's an Aussie/NZ thing with no mention of the UK, and far and away most Google results for the term are Aussie as well...
posted by Dysk at 6:40 AM on January 30, 2021

I don't have strong opinions on how to eat spaghetti bolognese, but I do feel pretty strongly that there is no commonly used phrases for foodstuff less appetizing than the words "spag bol."
posted by synecdoche at 6:44 AM on January 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

Is this what we Americans might call meat sauce?

It's what most Americans call "spaghetti," since it's pretty much the only way we eat that particular kind of pasta.
posted by Brachinus at 7:55 AM on January 30, 2021

Yep, Dysk, I've lived in Britain all my life, and the first time I've ever seen spag bog was in the first comment on the Guardian article. But on the other hand, while carrots are for me essential, I'm really surprised to see that people are putting peas in it.
posted by ambrosen at 8:58 AM on January 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

there is no commonly used phrases for foodstuff less appetizing than the words "spag bol."

Shit on a Shingle?
posted by Dr. Twist at 9:45 AM on January 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

Why do Brits have to give everything a twee nickname
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:43 AM on January 30, 2021

I do feel pretty strongly that there is no commonly used phrases for foodstuff less appetizing than the words "spag bol."

How do you feel about 'spag bog'?
posted by biffa at 1:49 PM on January 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

Further clueless questions from the US: does one pronounce "spag" to rhyme with "bag" or "bug"? And if the former, do you...pronounce "spaghetti" that way too?
posted by eponym at 2:36 PM on January 30, 2021

Brown 12% - 15% fat beef mince in more corn oil or veg oil than a westerner would usually use, add enough celery carrots onion and garlic that's been through a food processor to count as your veg for the meal, 3 cloves, 1 inch of a curl of cinnamon, half a star anise, all these spices in a bag or something you can fish out afterwards, add salt and cook the whole thing down for 3 or 4 hours, maybe add 2 tbsps sundried tomato paste at the end if you feel like it. Don't cook it with the tomato for longer than 10 minutes, it will burn. It's not part of my foodways - I wouldn't bother making it for me - but it's aromatic enough and everybody here eats it including the little'uns. As I said, there's a supply in the freezer some of which Offspring took home today. The most onerous bit is blitzing the veg. Grated cheddar when serving perfectly acceptable though not for me. Oh, add a heaped teaspoon of ground ginger when it's frying down and splashes of water if it gets too dry during the long cook.

What, people say spUghetti? Hang on I think they do sometimes. Accents are various. Nobody says spug bol though
posted by glasseyes at 2:49 PM on January 30, 2021

It's cheap, tasty, simple (if long winded) easy to make a large amount of, contains loads of veg by default and, with pasta, combines the major food groups. If you're a meat eater. It would probably be just as tasty with tofu, but we're not there yet as a household. You would still need to cook the veg and spices down for hours and add tofu maybe 15 minutes before the end.
posted by glasseyes at 2:58 PM on January 30, 2021

This is where the pressure cooker shines. Actually, now when so many people have instant pots, Bolognese sauce is something they could really easily improve on. But why should they?

I'm a picky eater and/or a food snob, and I've focused for 30 years to perfect my Bolognese sauce after having an amazing version once in an Italian restaurant. The web has helped a lot. It has milk and cream, some pork along with the beef, white wine, chicken stock, and very little tomato and oregano. And normally I serve it mixed up with tagliatelle or pappardelle or lasagne using freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano like one should. But even I can get nostalgic for the version of my childhood, both in England and Denmark, with the sticky spaghetti served separately from the too-tomatoey sauce. I don't miss the cheese in a box with sawdust in it that tastes of vomit, so yes to the cheddar if we are heading in that direction.
posted by mumimor at 3:50 PM on January 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

Spag rhymes with bag.

Spaghetti is pronounced more like “sp’getti”, but if i was enunciating clearly, then yes it is definitely “spag-etti” not “spug-etti”. In my accent, anyway.
posted by tinkletown at 3:56 PM on January 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

That does sound nice mumimor. Mind you my mother's pressure cooker was so alarming - i understand they've changed since the 60s - I've not dared to use one since.
posted by glasseyes at 6:05 PM on January 30, 2021

It's a joke in my family how much I love my pressure cooker. They all love the results, though.
posted by mumimor at 6:27 PM on January 30, 2021

Ah, Spag bol. Or Spag Bog as it was called in my house when I was a kid, before I became a spelling pedant.

I'm Australian, but my mum's English, and this was on regular rotation in our house until the mid 90's (when my dad took over the cooking, and all of a sudden the menu was full of stir fries and curries). A perfectly decent meal that I ate with as much cheese as I was allowed (grated tasty and/or powdered "parmesan").

But the best part of Spag Bol were the left overs. Mum made it in bulk, and we'd have as spag bog jaffles for days. Jaffle iron, not just a sandwich press, is required. The mince needs to be sealed inside the bread, or it oozes out the back and burns your hands/lap/curious cat. Best on a rainy day for lunch in front of the fire.
posted by kjs4 at 8:11 PM on January 31, 2021 [1 favorite]

Australia, represent: End of Days Bolognese. Warning - may cause feelings of being a champion. (Also swearing. Maybe don't play without headphones at work, unless your workplace is into this sort of thing, in which case got any jobs going?)

Also, the correct pronunciation of "spaghetti" is "b'sgeddy".
posted by some little punk in a rocket at 8:54 PM on January 31, 2021 [1 favorite]