On A Farm in France (fast) - Spaghetti Bolognese (Series 001, Episode 013)

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Spaghetti Bolognese (fast) 
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Click above to listen.  You can get the mp3. here and the mp4. here (opens in a new window).

English cookery has a bad reputation, especially in France. Even though the people that we were working with, during our working holiday on a farm in France, didn’t know much about England, they had all heard about our reputation for terrible cooking.

We think this reputation is a little unfair, so, because we like to cook and we think we’re ok at it, instead of getting insulted by this attitude to our cooking, we gave ourselves the challenge of convincing our co-workers that English cookery wasn’t as bad as everyone thought. Generally everyone was impressed, all except for Alex, who took great delight in insulting our food at every occasion. Alex was however very lazy and he refused to cook, preferring to eat what we made…and then complain about it.

To start with, because we had very little food, these complaints were justified (although however bad the food is, if someone is too lazy to cook, then they can’t really complain about what they get to eat), but after our first delivery of food, the quality of our cookery improved. The food was regional and seasonal and courgettes were the main crop at the time. We didn’t really know how to cook the courgettes but we managed and even though we only had basic ingredients and equipment, we were able to make reasonably good food.

Or so we thought, but Alex could not be convinced. Our honey and mustard lamb was too sweet, our rhubarb crumble was too sour and our sweet and sour sauce… well that was too sweet, and too sour. Whether we fried the courgettes with rosemary, or grated them and served them with lemon juice, or baked them with cheese and garlic, he always found a reason not to like them. If we cooked anything ‘English’, it wasn’t good enough, and when we cooked French food, our English way of cooking would ruin it for him.

He would even insult our cooking before we’d made it, when we were just talking about making a fennel risotto he interrupted us to say how disgusting this English idea sounded, and when we told him it was Italian, he said that we’d find an English way to ruin it.

We had one success with our cinnamon swirls, he seemed to like these and even asked how we made them. They’re not difficult to make, but are quite fiddly as you need to make bread dough and follow lots of time-consuming steps, so I started to answer, saying “they’re quite easy, but…”, but before I could finish Alex interrupted me. “Ah yes, they must be quite easy if an English person can make them, it’s probably just like ‘pain perdue’.” Pain perdue in English is ‘French toast’, and it is stale bread fried in beaten eggs. It is very easy to make.

One day, our boss, Vincent, asked Alex to cook lunch for us all and so Alex made us a spaghetti Bolognese. It was fine, but it wasn’t particularly delicious, but Alex seemed to think it was amazing. “Now this is how the French cook,” he gloated. “I’d teach you how to cook like this but there would be no point because you wouldn’t be able to learn because your cooking is too…English.” He didn’t stop talking about how good his meal was and how bad we were at cooking until he left the table to have an after dinner nap, leaving us to wash the dishes and put the left-overs in the fridge.

Alex was late for dinner the next day and the food had already been served by the time that he had arrived. We were eating Bolognese again, and Vincent told Alex that I had made this Bolognese to see if I could make one that was better than Alex’s from the day before. Alex sat down to eat with the air of a restaurant critic. After spending a minute tasting it he said: “It’s not nearly as good as mine. The sauce is too sweet and there’s not enough garlic.’’ He had another forkful and added: “You’ve put the wrong herbs in; the flavour is all wrong and there’s a horrible taste of vinegar. It’s exactly what I expect from English people, in fact, I don’t think I can eat anymore”. With that, he put down his knife and fork dramatically, folded his arms, made a face and looked away in disgust.

Alex was expecting a reaction but nobody said anything. A little surprised, he turned back towards the table to find that the reason no-one was saying anything was because we were busy trying to stop ourselves from laughing. I hadn’t cooked the Bolognese. Vincent had made that up, in fact, Vincent had just reheated the Bolognese that Alex had made the day before. The food that Alex was refusing to eat was exactly the same food that he’d been boasting about making.

We didn’t tell Alex there and then why we were laughing, but the next time we cooked him something he ate it without complaint, said thank you, complimented us and even washed up, so I think somebody must have told him at some point.