Growing up as a kid in Taipei, hamburgers and spaghetti was my childhood idea of what Americans eat every day. Every morning, my mom would take me to a nearby food stand to eat the Taiwanese bastardized version of the “American” burger for breakfast. The patty came in pork or beef versions, and shredded carrots would be mixed in the patties, and inside the buns would be some thinly sliced cucumber. Til this day, this food stand still exists, and if you have the opportunity to visit Taiwan breakfast joints that’s how burgers are still made today.
Mei Er Mei is a famous Taiwanese breakfast chain, I ate this stuff all the time growing up
My childhood understanding of spaghetti was similar to the hamburger. Before arriving in the US, my oldest brother Rick used to love his version of the spaghetti Bolognese. He used only ground pork since beef wasn’t allowed in the Kuo household, and instead of canned tomatoes, he used ketchup for the sauce and some chopped ginger. As a kid I loved it, my brother still makes it to this day, I want to vomit when I see it now.
My love for spaghetti was completely destroyed when I moved to San Francisco at the age of 11. My dad got into some legal trouble in Taiwan and fled to the US and I was sent there to reunite with him. To help me adjust to the new life my dad enlisted his friend's help, I can’t remember her name now, but her and her husband (Sunny) were very nice to me and wanted to help me assimilate to the American culture. I slept over their house for a weekend, went to a family BBQ with Sunny’s company – he was a car mechanic, and they showed me what a real working class immigrant family assimilated into the American society looked like. I played football for the first time and got knocked on my ass and we watched baseball on TV at his house cheering for the SF Giants – those were good days with Will Clark, Kevin Mitchell and Matt Williams hitting 3, 4, 5. The lovely couple asked what my favorite food was and of course I said spaghetti. So off we went, to a real authentic Italian restaurant where the pasta was handmade. When the steaming plate of pasta with meat sauce came, I was shocked! I couldn’t recognize this, there’s basil, probably had thyme or oregano, aromatics that I didn’t recognize, then a pile of grated cheese.
““WHERE’S THE KETCHUP?” - I kept thinking to myself”
I was devastated…
I couldn’t finish the meal. I was hungry and Sunny’s wife tried to make me feel better by offering ice cream. My favorite flavor was, is, and always will be vanilla, but I didn’t know how to say the word vanilla, so I settled for strawberry as that was the only word I recognized.
I wanted to cry…
As time went by and I got assimilated to the American lifestyle, spaghetti Bolognese remained the bedrock of my definition of Americana. It was the first dish I tried to cook in college after watching an episode of the Emerald Lagasse show. It was so bad that when I showed to it my Italian friend Tod, he said “I don’t know what the fuck that is, but that’s not Bolognese”. It’s a dish that throughout the years I’d keep on failing in taste and never consistent until I found the Foodwishes Chef John’s recipe. So this is exactly, the recipe from foodwishes.com except for one little difference. Chef John has a little neat trick that he uses which is he adds a little anchovies in his marinara sauce to boost the umami flavor. Lately I’ve been on this Thai food kick, making Pork Krapow, using a lot of fish sauce. And since Fish sauce is just the juices from fermented anchovies and salt, I figure it would work right?
The result, it worked really well, except the smell. Fish sauce was way too pungent….next time definitely use less fish sauce and a little more salt,
Definitely a crowd pleaser for dinner parties, looks good, easy to share and nobody hates Bolognese pasta....