About Matt

Matt Gross writes about travel and food for the New York Times, Saveur, Gourmet, and Afar, where he is a Contributing Writer. When he’s not on the road, he’s with his wife, Jean, and daughter, Sasha, in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.

The Best Ragù Bolognese for Kids (But You’ll Want to Eat It All Yourself)

Last night, at the tail end of Sasha’s 7th-birthday party, Jean whipped up dinner for the last couple of the kid’s friends still hanging out. She made, of course, spaghetti bolognese, using the sauce that I whip up in large batches each month, then freeze in small Ziploc snack packets. The kids, well, they loved it—and even asked for more. Their moms, who were hanging out too, seemed impressed, so I figured I’d share the recipe.

This is, first of all, a super-basic bolognese sauce. I don’t think there are any weird twists in there, although whether your Emilia-Romagnese nonna would agree with my choices is, well, I don’t care. Here ya go:

Ingredients

  • 2 lbs. ground meat (I prefer a pork-and-beef mix, but you could go all beef, add in some veal, or switch up to lamb)
  • 5 tsp. kosher salt
  • 2 Tbsp. butter
  • 2 medium yellow onions, diced
  • 4–5 celery stalks, diced
  • 2–3 large carrots, diced
  • 6 large cloves garlic
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 4–6 thick twigs fresh thyme
  • 1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes (I prefer Sclafani brand because its ingredients are just “tomatoes, salt”)
  • 3/4 C. white wine
  • 3/4 C. whole milk

1. In a dutch oven over high heat, brown the meat in two batches, seasoning it with 1 tsp. salt and breaking it up once it’s developed a crust, about 5 minutes. Remove the meat from the pot with a slotted spoon, so that the fat drains back in, and reserve.

2. Reduce the heat to medium-high and add the butter. When it’s done frothing, add the onions, celery, and carrots (this mix is called a mirepoix), plus 1 tsp. salt. Cook, stirring regularly, until the veggies have cooked down a bit and the onions are on the verge of caramelizing, about 8–10 minutes.

3. Stir in the garlic and cook 1 minute. Add the bay leaves and thyme and cook 1 minute more. Put the meat back in and stir to combine.

4. Stir in the crushed tomatoes and 1 tsp. salt. At first, this won’t seem like nearly enough tomatoes to make this a sauce, but after a minute or two, everything will be nice and crimson.

5. Stir in the white wine and milk. When the sauce starts bubbling furiously, cover with a heavy lid and turn heat to as low as possible (you may have to change burners for this). Cook at least 3 hours, preferably 4 or 5. However long you cook it, do it until the fats have started to separate out from the rest of the sauce—this is a good way to know when it’s generally ready.

6. When it’s finally done (or you can wait no longer), pluck out the thyme stems; the cooking should have removed the leaves from them already. I usually then let the pot cool and spoon it out into Ziploc baggies; about 8 of the “snack” sizes, each of which holds enough sauce for 2 kiddie portions, or 1 adult portion.

Variations: In summer, I like to add a diced zucchini to the mirepoix and skip the milk.

The last, but possibly most important, thing to know about this recipe is: Make sure you get to eat some yourself! It’s pretty damn tasty, but your kids can easily consume the whole batch without your ever getting a spoonful. And then you’ll have to make another pot. Which maybe isn’t so terrible, come to think of it.

Anyway, let me know it goes for you…

Everything I Know About Parenting I Learned From ‘Dr. Who’

Apparently, a new season of the BBC’s classic sci-fi series, “Dr. Who,” is about to begin here in the former colonies, which has prompted some people to reflect on how the 50-year-old show, about a time-traveling do-gooder with a funny accent and slightly funnier outfits, is an excellent source of parenting wisdom. And they’re right! So right, in fact, that I’ve compiled my own list of dadding lessons learned from watching the TARDIS whine in and out of existence:

1. You can disappear for years at a stretch, and yet your kids will still adore you. No, I’m not referring to the Doctor’s penchant for bouncing into and out of his companions’ lives at odd moments. Actually, I’m talking about the way the series barely made it to the age of 50: Beginning in the mid-80s, its existence was threatened, and it went entirely off the air for years at a time, returning occasionally for a season or three with a new Doctor before once again failing to find a broad audience and going dark. And yet Dr. Who fans STILL clamored for it, their ardor only growing with the show’s prolonged absence. And when it returned: joy beyond all reasonable measure! So that’s the approach I take to my kids. I leave when I feel like it, knowing that when—if—I return, they’ll be as desperate as ever for my love and attention.

2. Kids will believe anything. If there’s one thing Dr. Who is known for, it’s execrable dialogue and even worse special effects. Easy example: For the show’s entire run, the most evil bad guys of all were the Daleks, who trundled around on roller balls, unable to climb stairs, and were usually limited to the singularly idiotic spoken line: “Ex-ter-min-ate!” And yet I fucking loved that show, and even now, despite my overt knowledge of its shoddiness, tune in to catch new episodes. And so, once again, I’m taking this approach to child-rearing: I tell my kids whatever flits through my brain, no matter how unbelievable, knowing that the little creatures are so credulous they’ll eat it all up. Remember, I’ve just returned from months or years away, and they want my attention, so their defenses are down—I might well have been piloting my spaceship through the galaxy in the company of unicorn princesses.

3. A silly outfit makes everything okay. Of course, for these tactics to work, you have to emulate the Doctor down to his wardrobe, which can be anything from Edwardian to cricket-ready to 21st-century hipster formal. This gives the Doctor a playful, almost harmless aspect, when in fact his arrival usually signals the imminent near-destruction of the planet Earth, and the upending of his companions’ lives. But hey, he’s got a long, silly scarf! And a robot dog! And expertly tousled hair! How much chaos can he—or I—really wreak? (Answer: As much as you’ll let me!)

So there you have it: a primer on parenting based on the adventures of a guy who’s lived 900-some years without ever settling down, acquiring health insurance (what’s the deductible on regeneration?), and time-traveling all the way back to 4:35 a.m. in order to be first on line to register a kid for Universal Pre-K. Trust me, this stuff totally works—at least until the network executives (a.k.a. your wife) cancel the season and the kids all yell, “Exterminate!” After that, you might as well go live at Comic-Con.

Why Men Brag About Their Salaries, Part 3

I’ve known for a long time that I’m not—how shall I put this?—the most traditionally manly of men. I know, I know: This may come as a surprise to anyone who’s gazed upon my hulking 5-foot-8, 150-pound frame, heard the resonant boom of my Dylan-esque voice, or run their lustful fingers across my nubby scalp, but it’s true. I’m at heart a little guy, full of frailties, failings, and neuroses, who’s uncomfortable with the idea of any kind of macho behavior, like, say, bragging about my salary.

Because what would I brag about? I’ve never made enough money to boast about; in fact, I’ve always been either underpaid (for glamorous work) or paid just adequately enough (for tedious work). Last year, in fact, I made so little money as a freelance writer (after the usual deductions) that I wasn’t even required to pay New York City’s Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Mobility tax, which is maybe $100 every year, tops. If I were single, I would be homeless, or more likely living in a far cheaper place than New York. Like Lagos.

See how much easier this is for me, to put myself down rather than build myself up? It’s the legacy of Woody Allen, I think, that many of us born in the 1970s and reared in the Freaks and Geeks 1980s are only too happy to embrace (we don’t really have any choice): We are nebbishes, nerds, and nudniks, with bad hair, bad skin, and bad, bad dance moves. And yet instead of letting our unmanliness dominate us, we made peace with it and moved on, mocking ourselves more mercilessly than any jock, prep, or cheerleader ever did. In fact, I just wrote a whole book about my failures as a traveler—how, after decades of jetting around the world, I still get sick, spend nights alone, and make stupid, humiliating mistakes. (It’s coming out in May, by the way.)

Relentless self-deprecation has become my basic mode of being, and that’s antithetical to so much of American office and public life: the endless talk about sports, cars, and money. Whenever I overhear coworkers say things like, “Did you see the Nets beat OKC last night?” (which happened as I was writing this piece), I feel the gap between myself and that traditional form of masculinity yawn ever wider and deeper. At times, when I observe how passionate guys get arguing about the superiority of, say, BMW over Mercedes, or discussing serious money-making deals, I wish I could be the same, just to know how that feels, to care so much. But that’s also how I feel about jumping from a moving train or eating glass: curious, but not that curious.

Instead, I’ll content myself with my own little beta-male world of onedownsmanship, and leave the boasting to the boors. Which is, I have to admit, its own form of bragging. By abasing myself so thoroughly, I’m really setting myself on a different, purer plane of existence, where we’re all so gawky and hopeless that we simply needn’t bother competing with the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe. But you know what? That’s one bit of hubris I can live with.

Sandy Hook, A View From the Fringe

The ‘Fringe’ heroes.

Over the last few years, I’ve become a fairly devoted fan of the TV show Fringe, now in its fifth and final season on Fox. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched it—I get the sense its ratings aren’t too hot, which is why it’s ending—but it’s surprisingly good, particularly considering it comes from the J.J. Abrams wonder factory, better known for creating mysteries than solving them.

Anyway, Fringe revolves around the lives of three people: Olivia Dunham, a tough FBI agent with a photographic memory; Peter Bishop, a rebellious young scientist; and Walter Bishop, Peter’s father, an aging scientist who’s spent the last couple of decades in an insane asylum. Together they investigate “Fringe events,” bizarre crimes with a far-out scientific angle—people who suddenly transform into monster hedgehogs, killers who can liquefy your brain, shape-shifters, and so on. Of course, there’s an overarching mythology-conspiracy tying everything together, slowly revealed over the course of many episodes (spoiler: it involves multiple universes and an ominous post-human race called the Observers).

Quite satisfyingly, the mythology pretty much holds together: This ain’t lost. But what makes the show fun to watch are those main characters—particularly Walter Bishop, an acid-dropping, milkshake-concocting, bathrobe-wearing genius (played by the wonderfully crinkly-faced John Noble)—and the consistency of the themes that emerge from their interactions. The first seasons are about Olivia coming to terms with her childhood traumas, and about Walter’s attempts to rebuild his relationship with his distrustful son Peter, who didn’t really appreciate Dad’s going crazy when he was a teen. The tension builds across the seasons as we learn that Walter, the genius scientist, had done terrible things in his earlier years—experiments that, while seemingly high-minded, were truly unethical, destroyed the relationships everyone is now trying to mend, and may have led to many of the bizarre fringe events the team is now trying to solve.

Again and again through the show, parents like Walter (and, later, Olivia and Peter) use all their formidable powers to try to create a better world for the future—for their children—and yet hubris reigns: The world they create turns out to be more dangerous, threatening not only their own children’s lives but everyone’s. They are geniuses, highly professional law-enforcement agents, and devoted whiskey drinkers, and yet, no matter how many battles they win, against other rogue scientists, against hedgehog men, against the disintegrating fabric of the universe, THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO. All will lose the people they love—their children, their parents, everything they love.

As I watched the show last night, this theme was perhaps more in my mind than usual. The massacre at Sandy Hook, which only slowly filtered into my attention through the course of the day, had left me horrified, uncomfortable, but also weirdly numb. I can’t imagine being one of those parents, learning their children had been killed in an utterly senseless slaughter—or rather, I can all too easily imagine it. These things happen, more and more often it seems—just that morning, some guy killed 22 kids at a school in China with a knife—and it feels like it’s only a matter of time before it happens to us. What were once “fringe events” are now daily reality.

And so I ask myself (as many other parents are probably asking): What can I do about it? And I answer myself: not much. Unless I want to quit my job, home-school my daughters, and never leave them alone for a single second, they are going to be out there in the world—at day care, in kindergarten, hanging out with their friends at libraries, malls, movie theaters, boarding airplanes for far-off lands, or just walking down the wrong street on the wrong day. I can teach Sasha and Sandy (not the most popular name now, I guess) to be ready for calamity—and indeed, Sasha’s school did so yesterday, having the kids practice hiding under a shelf and telling them, according to Sasha, that they did a “fabulous” job.

But readiness only goes so far, and hiding under a shelf is no guarantee that some 20-year-old with Asperger’s won’t slaughter my child for reasons no one will ever really understand. There are matters beyond my control—beyond all our control.

Or are they? Clamping down on guns would help. Improving access to mental-heath care would help. I guess. Insert whatever practical-sounding, reasonable approaches you like here—I’d vote for them, maybe even fight for them. Those things would help.

Or not. Maybe those things would just help preserve our illusion of control. Maybe, as with Walter Bishop, our best intentions will bring unintended consequences. Maybe we’ve fucked this world up so deeply in the past 50 years that there’s nothing we can do but cross our fingers we’ll somehow make it out the other end, live good, long lives, and watch our children grow into adults and start their own families. That’s what I hope for at least, but then I’m seized with a final fear: that the day after my own death, some unspeakable calamity will befall the loved ones I’ve left behind, that despite all I’ve done to keep them safe, their universe will be torn asunder, and that it will never be fully repaired, not even five seasons later.

I don’t mean this to be as utterly depressing as it sounds. In fact, it’s somewhat liberating. Knowing you can’t control the universe, knowing that you will die, that your children will die, that these are the most certain of certainties in our world means that we shouldn’t worry about them, that we should care instead about the moments we have together, however short and uncertain they may be. My daughters could be killed at school next week—or they might not. As likely as the calamities may seem, the lack of calamity is probably just as likely, maybe even more likely. We could all just go on and on, living happy, boring lives, and dying slightly less happy, but equally boring deaths, for generation after generation. So go, eat, drink, be merry, listen to the Flaming Lips, and as President Obama said yesterday, “Hug your children tighter tonight.” And every night.