Rumblings: You can do better

Before there was bucatini all'amatriciana, there was tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce.

The pasta-in-a-can appeared around World War 1, feeding Italian soldiers' longing for mamma's kitchen. The amatriciana is probably older, peasant food. But in my pasta world, the tin came before the cured pork cheek.

And a lot came in between. There was macaroni and cheese, Indianised with spicy tomato sauce. Then there were pizza chains that offered lead-heavy penne in gloopy mushroom sauce, defying Italian simplicity like a delinquent child.

Later, as a student waitressing at Durban's famed Aldo's Italian, I got a glimpse of the real deal. Nonna served up aglio olio e peperoncino (garlic, olive oil and chilli), spaghetti alle vongole (clams), arabiata and proper carbonara, always made with silky beaten egg, never, ever flour.

Food lessons came with language lessons; the menu and clientele were equally Italian. You had to know your fragola from your fagioli ... strawberries versus beans, dessert disaster. Aldo inspired a food adventure to Italy a decade later, and in Rome, the bucatini all'amatriciana, tradizionale.

Bucatini, the love affair between macaroni and spaghetti that resulted in a long, thicker spag with a hole running through it to steal more sauce for the next mouthful. Amatriciana, delicate guanciale or pork cheek, with pecorino hiding in sweet and tart tomato rivers from Amatrice.

It is a prerequisite to fare la scarpetta, do the little shoe; ie mop up the delicious remains with a piece of bread. Everything is perfect, freshly made and al dente.

But all so far removed from that can. How wrong it was, but how we children lapped it up, licking the bowl after.

When MSG and preservatives were not an issue, it defied all notions of nutrition, let alone what pasta should be. Definitely not fresh and most definitely not handmade. Some varieties had meatballs in, but we were never brave enough to try.

Warmed just long enough to keep the swollen spaghetti intact. It would dissolve if you handled it too roughly.

The pasta was maggoty, soft and off-white with a tinge of the shiny orange-red sauce. Well, more syrup than sauce, it was sweet with a tang and devoid of texture. No sign of a chunk, let alone a seed. Why would it need texture, though, with the piles of mysteriously slurpy strings of spaghetti that had marinated in it for months. It would splash on your nose and at the corners of your mouth, leaving a stain if you didn't wash it off in time. Still, it was pasta as we knew it. And we liked it.