Don't forget to put vinegar on your chips!

Maybe the secret is not to let "them" put it on ?

On the increasingly odd occasion (despite being a 1 minute walk from our local chippy) we have something from the chippy it's always a bag of chips plain, and we will season it on the plate.

However all chippies are going the same way where they never have anything to hand if you walk in. So it can be a 15 min wait while they actually cook the fish (and sometimes chips). And I don't like freshly cooked chippy meal. I like it from the cabinets where it's had a chance to soften the batter.

Of course 80% of the output now seems to go to one of these universal delivery outfits. But at least they're served out back, not cluttering the shop up.

And many years of trying have shown it's impossible to recreate it at home. I think it's a volume of oil thing, mainly.

Until I discovered the trick, I was annoyed at the jars labelled "Bolognese" where you had to brown and add your own beef mince. (They may have said, "Sauce for Bolognese" in small letters.) Fortunately you can buy tins of actual Bolognese sauce which just have to be heated and poured on top of the spaghetti.

Occam's Razor: watered down.

Yuk.

That's so murrican....

There is no such a thing as "Bolognese". It's a term invented by Yanks cosplaying as Italians (actually Eye-talians) to recycle hospital leftovers as gourmet food to intellectually-challenged retards who would gladly eat dog faeces, as long as they are smothered in corn fructose molasses, ketchup and ranch dressing.

There is one thing called "Ragu alla bolognese" which is a variation of the French "Ragôut" and which doesn't go with spaghetti but with Fettuccine or Tagliatelle (chalk vs cheese).

If you have eaten spaghetti with some excrement-looking canned sauce, made in a rat-infested factory in Wigan, that's not Italian. It's not us. We don't do that s*it. That's proud and loud British food!

But I wouldn't expect the likes who calls beans on toast food to understand this subtle nuance.

Woss this, Enrico? Ants in your pants?

I am reminded of this wonderful clip from This Morning, back in the days of Holly Willoughby and Philip Schofield. Holly suggests doing something sacrilegious to Italian cuisine and Gino d'Acampo comes back with the perfect retort using an analogy which I believe is well known in Italy and maybe other European countries (in each country's language) but was unknown - until then! - in the UK: "if my grandmother had wheels she'd have been a bike".

Surely that's what the weasely "inspired by" is meant for ?

When it's under £5/gallon?

E'en so...

Is there another explanation for the taste being different (in the experience of Sam Plusnet)?

Indeed. Although ragu can *definitely* be found served with spaghetti in trattoria in many parts of Italy (including Toscana and Campagna), in Bologna it is served with tagliatelle. And it is served with tagliatelle here in this house too - the sauce works much better that way than it does with spaghetti. Just as pesto works better - MUCH better - with penne or fusilli than "long" pasta.

Sauces for pasta here are all home-made (not that I could do it).

There is nothing wrong with beans on toast, especially if it has an egg on top.

Mrco Polo did a good job, bringing back pasta, silk and gunpowder from China.

Remember Vesta Paella, Risotto and Chicken Supreme?

I first saw those in Jack Cohen's shop in Hounslow, Later to become Tesco.

I first bought them at the legendary McCann's in Falkner Street, Liverpool, mid-sixties. We lived in an adjacent street. At 15, I was a convert to Contintal food. And curry too, though I used to have to pick out all the sultanas before adding the water. Whose idea was that? I have never been presented with dried fruit in curry in any restaurant.

In restaurants in Boulogne you can get "Le Welsh" - Welsh Rarebit. It's long enough ago that I had one in this country that I wouldn't be able to tell whether the French one is "authentic" or not - not that I care.

Fried, poached, or boiled, Sir?

My grandad was born in the days of Raj in Darjeeling. Spoke Hindi before English. was overjoyed in the 60s when he could finally get a decent curry.

Lightly fried, of course!