“
The local diet is about as Mediterranean as chicken tikka masala. There is mortadella, a sausage known elsewhere as Bologna, the forefather of American baloney.
Then there is Bologna’s world famous ragu, the pasta sauce known in the UK as bolognese. This is a city where meat rules supreme.
Surely this is a pure distillation of trolling? From the idea that Mediterranean food is all olives and feta (or whatever it is they think) to the concept that somehow the original Italian sausage that led to the US perversion is somehow non-Italian, to the so-baffling-as-to-be-actually-surreal attempt to portray ‘ragu’ as somehow more British than Italian.
Weird. Weird and troubling. But wait, some analysis of farming!
There is cotechino – a huge sausage they boil and serve with lentils on New Year’s Eve. Then there is zampone – similar but stuffed into a pig’s trotter.
It is a speciality of Castelnuovo Rangone – a little town near Modena which once had more pigs than people.
Yes, that is how farms work. If you have more people than pigs then your farming has gone wrong.
I have no issue with her not eating meat but being totally wrong about everything is another thing entirely.
Simonlegend
January 14, 2013 at 6:53 pm
I read this on the BBC website and put it down to either a vegetarian’s ignorance or another example of BBC dumbing down. Her account of ordering vegetarian dishes in the region reminded me of Monty Python’s Spam sketch. I’m positive that Front Of House in most establishments in that region, doubtless proud of their local delicacies, are trained to recognise dietary needs of vegetarians. Maybe she’s dining out at the wrong places.
Fanny
January 24, 2013 at 1:25 pm
‘A Magazine feature published last week raised this question, and there was a huge response from readers.’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21122072