spaghetti bolognese is the warmest color

by Petit Riz

guest post by Sarah Souli

photo (6)

Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos in Blue

Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos in Blue

I had been reading about Blue is the Warmest Color for months before I actually saw it in theaters: the lengthy narrative (I had to get up once in the three hours for a drink of water); the infamous lesbian sex scene (no nervous giggles from the über-hip and P.C. crowd at BAM); the epic story of love and heartbreak (can’t we all relate?).  All of that was there, of course, in Abdellatif Kechiche’s exquisite film, but what I found most arresting were the food scenes.

Mr. Kechiche cast his Adèle after seeing Adèle Exarchopoulos eating a sandwich in a café. She is a spectacular eater. I don’t normally like watching people eat–too intimate, too animalistic, too much like sex–but I couldn’t take my eyes off Adèle. Mr. Kechiche trains his camera on her face, absorbing the mess of spaghetti bolognese, oysters, gyros, candy bars, buttered toast and brick à l’oeuf being inhaled into her fleshy mouth.

The spaghetti bolognese is featured prominently, to the point that it becomes a character on its own. The red, beefy noodles are eaten almost every night for dinner at Adèle’s house; they are her father’s specialty. Easy to make and pedestrian: it’s a bit heavy-handed, but spaghetti represents the lower class.  In one scene, Adèle’s parents feed them to their daughter’s bourgeoisie girlfriend, Emma. Later on in the film, Adèle makes a deep bowl for a party full of Emma’s bohemian friends.  Their pretentious pandering on the meaning of art and female sexual pleasure ceases, and the screen fills up with beautiful, thin artists greedily slurping pasta.

I left the cinema with serious plans to make spaghetti. The following weekend, I visited a friend who works on a farm in the Hamptons. She had also recently seen Blue, and she also happened to have a bag full of pasta flour that a friend’s mother had brought her from Italy. It was decided: we would make spaghetti by hand while the Bolognese simmered on the stovetop and we discussed the film.

Spaghetti bolognese might be a working class dish, but it relies on fresh ingredients and a significant amount of time. In the party scene, someone asks Adèle how she made the dish. “Fresh tomatoes?” he asks. “Yes, from the market,” she replies. He nods in approval, “You can tell.” Earlier, we see Adèle sweating over the stove, her hands fluttering from the chopping board to the pot.

Harvesting in the fields

Harvesting in the fields

When you’re on a farm and it’s a Saturday, you are inevitably blessed by fresh ingredients and a lazy, lingering afternoon. We harvested our own carrots, onion and celery for the mirepoix and added tomatoes that were canned by my friend from the summer harvest. A cup of Hamptons wine boiled down to nothing. We used ground venison in place of beef; a local hunter had shot a free-roaming deer with a bow and arrow. The sauce, in all its Pollan-esque glory, simmered away for three hours.

We formed a small mountain of flour and cracked farm fresh eggs onto its summit–the yolks were a glowing yellow. When my father was little, his father used to make him eat a raw egg, and then he filled the shell with olive oil. I always shuddered at this, imagining the factory farmed chicken eggs that have to be boiled to oblivion to be “safely” consumed. I would have gladly eaten a dozen of these farm eggs, raw.

It was everyone’s first time making pasta, and there was no pasta machine. We mixed the eggs with the flour and kneaded it for ten minutes, forming springy golden balls of dough. We rolled them out by hand (not entirely thin enough) and then hung them to dry on the backs of the kitchen chairs. When the sauce was in its final minutes, we brought a large pot of salted water to a boil, and dropped the noodles in. They were much too thick, and came out looking like lo mein–but they were delicious nonetheless, and we were too hungry and proud of ourselves to complain.

making pastapasta flour

Spaghetti Bolognese

For the sauce:

We used The Godmother’s recipe. Marcella Hazan’s sauce is very specific, and calls for milk, wine and nutmeg. We added more vegetables and venison instead of beef, and you can take small liberties with the recipe.

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons butter
1 onion, chopped
3 carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 bay leaf
1 pound ground venison (or beef)
1 cup whole milk
Nutmeg (whole)
Salt
Pepper
1 cup dry white wine
1 pound canned tomato, with juice
Parsley, for garnish

Directions:
Coat a roomy cast iron pan with the olive oil, and add the butter, turning the heat down to medium. Add the onion, carrots and celery and cook till softened and golden brown in some spots, stirring often, for about 10 minutes. Add the bay leaf.

Add the ground venison and a large pinch of salt. Crumble the meat with a wooden spoon and cook until it has fully browned. Add the milk to the pan and let simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has evaporated. Sprinkle in a small grating of fresh nutmeg.

Add the wine and let it simmer till evaporated, like the milk. Add the tomatoes and their juice and stir to combine the ingredients. At this point, it will look very strange and you will think to yourself, “This is never going to come together.” Patience!

Cook uncovered and on a very, very low simmer (“the laziest of simmers”) for three hours, stirring from time to time (or whenever you remember). If the sauce starts to look too dry, add a little bit of water. Taste and add salt and pepper as necessary.

For the pasta:

You do not have to use handmade pasta, of course, but it does cling to the sauce much more nicely than store-bought Barilla.

Simple measurements: for every cup of flour, use two eggs.

Ingredients:
1 cup of flour (all-purpose flour)
2 fresh eggs (room temperature)
Salt
Olive oil

Directions:
On a flat, clean surface, make a small mound with the flour and form a crater. Add the eggs to the flour and mix to combine. I am not a nonna, and this quickly became a gigantic mess, with the eggs running off their flour mountain, and flour getting into my hair, but just keep mixing and it will eventually come together.

The dough will feel sticky and tacky once the egg is combined. Knead until it is smooth and springy- this takes about ten minutes. You may need to use a little extra flour if it is still too sticky, but not too much! Divide the dough into two equal balls, and allow it to rest for about 15 minutes.

At this point, if you have a pasta machine, lucky you! You either have a large enough kitchen with room for these once-a-year devices, or you just got married. Read the directions. For the rest of us single cooks living in tiny spaces, get out your rolling pin.

Roll the dough gently- this is a gradual process, and will keep the dough tender. Roll it till it is paper-thin (we did not, and ended up with thick, Chinese-style noodles). We used a pasta cutter wheel to cut the dough into ribbons, but you could just as easily use a fork or a knife. Just be sure to press down heavily to form separate noodles. Carefully move the strands of pasta and dry them for about 30 minutes. You are supposed to do place them on paper towels or clean tea towels; we draped toilet paper over a few chair backs, and it worked fine.

While the pasta is drying, bring a large pot of water to a boil, salting it liberally. You can add a bit of olive oil so the spaghetti won’t stick.  Carefully lower the strands of pasta into the boiling water, and cook for about two minutes- when it’s ready, it will rise to the top of the pot.

Drain and toss with olive oil. Serve immediately with the sauce and garnish with parsley. Slurp in silence and think about love.

pasta drying