I gave spaghetti hoops to an Italian woman and she was horrified

Everyone likes spaghetti hoops on toast, right? Wrong. I cooked up a plate of spaghetti hoops on toast for an Italian woman and she was shocked and appalled by the dish.

It seems that the classic teatime treat for kids, students and, to a lesser extent, grown-ups in the UK is an affront to Italian culture. Arguably, serving spaghetti hoops on toast to an Italian is every bit as bad as when that guy from Bristol scratched his name into the Roman Colosseum and caused outrage.

Our Italian 'guinea pig' has been in the UK for 20 years and got 100 per cent on her British citizenship test so it was a surprise to learn that she'd never tried spaghetti hoops on toast, a staple dish enjoyed in so many UK households. It was therefore high time she learned all about spaghetti hoops or risk deportation to Rwanda.

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I wasn't expecting a glowing review in fairness but nor did I expect her to google the name of the inventor of the dish and then work out which circle of hell he would be burning in. The experiment started badly and went downhill from there.

Firstly, 'spaghetti hoops' makes no sense to the Italian mind and is a contradiction in terms, like a square ball. Spaghetti, by the Italian definition, is long and thin strands of pasta. Circular pasta is called anelli, which means rings, or anellini or anelletti which mean little rings.

Secondly, the issue of having bread and pasta together struck our Italian as very odd, like mashed potato on toast which, to be fair, is enjoyed by a friend of mine who hit the headlines a few years ago with his 'recipe'.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the texture and flavour left her aghast. The look on her face when she bravely took her first mouthful of spaghetti hoops on toast was a picture.

It was a mixture of confusion, revulsion with a side salad of something else, concern maybe, bordering on fear. It was the sweetness and mushiness of the hoops that were the problem as Italian people generally like their pasta to be cooked al dente and savoury, rather than sweet.

"My grandma would not give this to a cat. She likes cats," she said, before going down a spaghetti hoop rabbit hole, finding out who first overcooked anellini pasta and put it in tins with tomato gloop.

But would her grandma back in Calabria rather eat a cat? Possibly. Probably. And, furthermore as previously mentioned, she likes cats. Not to eat though.

It turns out that marketing executive Donald Goerke invented 'SpaghettiOs' for the Campbell Soup Company in 1965 as a way to make canned pasta appeal to children. It was also designed to be eaten with a spoon. Putting this product on toast seems to be a British innovation. We just love putting stuff on toast. Eggs, tinned tomatoes, mushrooms, mashed potatoes, anything really.

The Heinz spaghetti hoops we had did taste different to when I was a kid or when I was student. Maybe because Heinz has upped its game and reduced the salt and sugar and additive content while a tin now represents one of your fruit or vegetable five-a-day. Maybe it's because I would've been eating the cheapest corner-shop brand hoops with the most chemicals in my late teens. Not the fancy Heinz version.

During our recent culinary experiment I still ate my hoops, obviously, but the Italian dinner back-up plan was the Italian version of hoops. Anelli, anellini and anelletti often go into soups and are used in the classic Sicilian dish anelletti al forno alla Palermitana which has pasta, peas and a Bolognese-style sauce.

This is what we had for tea, you can see the picture below, showing spaghetti hoops on toast (left) alongside anelletti al forno alla Palermitana (right). It's a nice dish and easy to make if you can get hold of the anelletti. The peas fit nicely into the pasta and look a bit like tiny flying saucers.

It is a more wholesome dish than spaghetti hoops on toast and though it's more difficult to produce, it will save you the discomfort of your Italian friends, partner or family calling you a heretic deserving of eternal damnation trapped in a flaming tomb. That's no way to end a meal, trust me on this one.

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