Wednesday, September 8, 2004

Until yesterday, I never knew the true definition of Ragú, nor have I ever had the inclination to dig deeply into its etymological roots. For the past two decades, Ragú meant “sauce in a jar” to me, and God bless the people at the processing plant for mixing tomatoes with convenience. Ardent pastaphiles would likely argue, passionately and garden veggie chunkily, that refined palates should retch at the very mention of Ragú sauce.

To these people I’d offer the following two-step plan. First, you should remove the dozen cannelloni from your anus. Second, you should take a moment to ask whether I give a braised rat’s ass about your sauceology.

Would you like to know the real meaning of Ragú, gentle reader? You’ll find the following quote from Bill Buford in the recent Food Issue of The New Yorker. The article is called “The Pasta Station,” and it chronicles the making of pasta in the Old World as well as New York. This is what Buford learned at Babbo. “The Italian ragú and the French ragoût are more or less the same thing; in any language,” he writes, “the process (I now know) involves taking a piece of meat and, as it was described in the vernacular of the kitchen, cooking the shit of the fucker.”

Amen to that, brother. Maybe that’s why my Slim Jims frequently end up charred and molto nasty. Whoa, did I just speak Italian?