bolognese

My dad used to make bolognese. It wasn't traditional. There was no recipe. I'm not even sure it can really be called "bolognese" — a more apt name might be a tomato meat sauce. It was my favorite thing that he would make, which is almost a surprise, because it had so much flavor and when I was a kid, I was rather flavor-averse — I would even pick the flecks of parsley off plain pasta. But I would eat his bolognese by the bowlful.

I wish he had written out a recipe, though, because when he died, that bolognese died with him.

I didn't think about this for a long time. Losing my dad was immense even without losing my favorite food. Then one day, I ordered a vegetarian "bolognese" at a restaurant. It was made entirely of mushrooms but the flavor was somehow the same. It was as though that bite was a time machine. The sauce brought me right back to that little, yellow kitchen in London. I could see my dad standing at the stove, stirring his pot of meat sauce and asking me how my day was.

I haven't been able to go back there and I still can’t make bolognese.