What’s for dinner tonight?

If it’s Wednesday and you’ve just watched the classic American TV ad above, for the first time or thousandth time, you know it’s spaghetti day. And if your heart beats for pasta, like Anthony Martignetti, its 12-year-old hero, I would expect you to run, not walk, to the inaugural SpagWednesday pop-up on February 23th. Francesco Mazzei of London’s L’Anima will be preparing his definitive version of spaghetti alle vongole.

The Prince Spaghetti ad was shot on location in Boston’s North End in 1969, when the old neighborhood was still the old neighborhood, which is to say, thoroughly Italian. The Prince brand was founded there in 1912 by three Sicilian Immigrants at a store at 92 Prince Street.

“Anthony! Anthony!” a mother yells out her apartment window.

Her scream was loud and long enough – the spot ran nationally for 13 years – to, as Billy Baker noted in a wonderful Boston Globe article marking the ad’s 40th anniversary, place “Anthony!” alongside “Stella!” from A Streetcar Named Desire, “Elaine!” from The Graduate and “Adrian!” from Rocky in the American pop pantheon.

Whenever I hear anyone shout the name Anthony I know it’s nearly time for spaghetti. It doesn’t matter which one: Anthony Trollope, Anthony Hopkins, Mark Anthony – they all make me hungry. Likewise, the spaghetti doesn’t have to be from a Prince box. Truth is that as much as I loved the Prince ad my mother never cooked with any of its pastas in our Queens, New York apartment, back when the old neighborhood was still the old neighborhood. Prince Spaghetti, Prince Charles, Prince Charming – she wouldn’t open the door to any of that lot.

Sadly, one response was a few characters too long and a few days late for consideration. It arrived in a Facebook message from Marcella Hazan, the high priestess of Italian cooking in American kitchens and a few British ones, too. Fergus Henderson cited Marcella and her Essentials of Italian Cooking as one of three food writers and books which greatly insired him: “Life in the kitchen changed with the arrival of Marcella Hazan’s classic Italian cuisine”.

So tell us, Marcella, why do you love linguine vongole?  

Dear Daniel,
 

I am sorry I haven’t been able to respond sooner. I have grown weary of rapturous and adjective rich food prose. How do you communicate the thrill of a sunset on the Gulf of Mexico to someone who has never seen it? Linguine ( I prefer spaghettini) with vongole is one of the pinnacles of culinary wizardry. To understand it you need to know the sweet, peppery, tender, tiny clams from either of Italy’s main seas, the viscosity and depth of central Italian olive oil, the firmness of high quality Italian pasta, and you must have experienced the light sure hand of a Neapolitan cook in the dosage of garlic and peperoncino. When you already know all these things, all you need to do to stir raging longings is to pronounce the words, linguine (I prefer spaghettini) con le vongole.
 

Buon appetito.

Marcella

I had a great time at this year’s Taste (18-21 June), if not for all the same reasons as the good people at Channel 4 sales.  They were enticed by an “upmarket, aspirational consumer event” with a “strong ABC1” audience. Fearing sensory overload I mostly ignored the high managerials and low cleavages, which you can find in abundance at any happy hour near Liverpool Street Station, and instead pursued body overload, with select noshes from amongst 40 of London’s better restaurants. This you cannot do – and should not attempt to do –  in the immediate vicinity of Liverpool Street Station.

Taste fulfills its promise of providing open-air access to a wide variety of dishes from acclaimed restaurants that only the A’s within Channel 4’s coveted ABC1 audience can afford to frequent with any regularity. Most impressively, the kitchen staffs perform at a high level while serving 100 covers per hour in claustrophobic conditions. The festival appears to be a big deal for the star chefs, which makes it a big deal for the public.

Glorious Regent’s Park is no level playing field for Michelin-starred cuisine. Perceptions of foods change when consumed in a standing or walking position from plastic tableware. Fussy foods lose out to finger foods. Hot soup is almost always a bad idea; chilled soup, invariably a good one (e.g. the elegant pea velouté from Jocelyn Herland, executive chef at Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester). And flaunted luxury is in all instances a plus. Having endured endless queues, the festival foragers need to see they’ve waited for something rich.

This partly explains how chef Jean-Philippe Patruno of Quo Vadis stole the show with grilled rib of 48-day Hereford beef. This was steak and this was beautiful. Though many requested slices cut from the rib eye, Patruno preferred the portion nearer the bone, protected from the blazing heat by the rib eye’s rim of fat. “The meat slowly melts,” noted Patruno, using the sort of words that win food festivals. “It’s like a confit cooking in its own fat.” Who is going to say no to that?

The foie gras burger presented by L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon proved to be the perfect festival dish: a popular barbecue sandwich with a precious main ingredient and scrumptious accessories. Served on a brioche bun, the mini-burger was seared to a delectable crisp, with verjus-marinated roast peppers and ginger glaze providing saucy notes of condimental pungency.

Croque Gascon didn’t hide foie gras directly beneath the bun of its terrific duck burger; it shrewdly served slices of it (in terrine form) directly beside it. I may have been the only person in Regent’s Park who was less distracted by the foie than the “crazy salt” sprinkled over the duck-fat frites. If Croque doesn’t begin selling that mix of Fleur de Sel de Guérande and Piment d’Espelette in jars soon I promise that I will.

Playing the conspicuous luxury card, celebrity chef Giorgio Locatelli chose to charm his adoring audience at the Refettorio booth with a hand grater and summer truffles. Rising star Francesco Mazzei of L’Anima did the same, as if he were emulating his charismatic countryman. He scattered the truffle shavings rather generously over fettuccine with wild mushrooms.

Mazzei and I somehow got to talking about linguine vongole: instinctively he identified this as one of my weaknesses. He noted how the starch from the pasta water was required to transform the vongole sauce into an emulsione with emozione. That sounded good to me.

Mazzei and I parted with this wager: If, when I visit L’Anima, his linguine vongole is not the best in London, he pays. If I concede that it is the best, I pay double.