Monday, January 10, 2011. Warming Up At Carmelo. Our weather yesterday was uncomfortably wet and cold, but most of the rest of this quarter of the country was covered with snow and shut down cold--literally. It will affect our weather later in the week, when we're due to get four days of hard freezes. I'm glad I'm down here instead of up there.
Mary Ann and I had dinner at Carmelo. They were busier than on any previous Monday we've been there, and it wasn't because of the free take-home pizza if you eat one there. They do that every week, and I hope Carmelo didn't think that's why we're there so often on Monday. The main reason is that it's the day I stay on the North Shore, and limited by the tastes of the Marys.
Cold weather creates a desire in me for soup at every meal. Today's was pasta e fagioli--a nice bowl of beans and vegetables in a chicken stock, thickened with little bits of pasta. This is the "pasta fazool" you always hear being made fun of in old movies. It's more common in the frozen Northeast than it is around here. I've always liked it, ever since Chef Andrea introduced me to the concept twenty years ago. Carmelo's version was a little on the sweet side, and we couldn't figure out why. But it certainly warmed us up.
Mary Ann is still in a panic over the few pounds she gained during the holidays, so she stopped after the soup. I went on to get something else very basic and warming: spaghetti bolognese. Pasta with meat sauce. This very basic dish is very much revered in the Emilia-Romagna province of Italy, and the people on Bologna can go on interminably about the right way to prepare it. Like makers of gumbo, chili, and barbecue, it always boils down to this: the way I (or my mamma) make it is the only true, authentic, right way to make spaghetti bolognese. All other styles are dead wrong.
Carmelo Chirico spent a lot of time at our table talking about all kinds of issues, but at least he didn't get into the ironclad rules of bolognese. (I'm sure he has some.) The dish itself was hearty and meaty--maybe even too meaty. Ground beef, mostly. Maybe there was a little Italian sausage in there, too. A little tomato, but not enough to move the color out of the brown zone. It was too big to finish, I'll say that. But the soup was not a lightweight, and I can't stop eating Carmelo's house-baked ciabatta bread. (And I didn't.)
Ristorante Carmelo. Mandeville: 1901 US Hwy 190 . 985-624-4844.
