The ingredients of Spaghetti Bolognese

Once, in a plane, sailing high above the ocean, through the dark night to a meeting about detergent or nappies (I don’t remember), I watched a cooking show about Spaghetti Bolognese.

Normally, we don’t ruminate on those cooking shows we watch on planes when we’ve exhausted the entire Bourne franchise and every episode of Friends that was ever made. But, this one stuck. Because the chef in question was Heston Blumenthal. Crazy, experimental, Heston with more stars than the Michelin Man himself. And here he was, on my tiny flickering screen, like a gastronomic Plato, on a quest to find the objective Spaghetti Bolognese.

Smash the words spaghetti and Bolognese together, and almost everyone on the planet would know what you mean. Spagbol is the Coca-Cola of dishes. It’s comforting in its recognisability and easy to make. Best of all, its flavours and texture taste like a long hug with a satisfying slap on the shoulder at the end.

It’s so much part of everyone’s idea of home that it has injected itself into so many cultures. In Belgium, where I live these days, many churches, schools and sports clubs host spaghetti evenings as fundraisers. Massive strings of pasta, boiling up next to huge pots of pale ragu brings the benefactors to the yard. And once, I caught a clip of a woman in Bristol being interviewed about European food…