Lasagna – The Real Italian Dish

Do you think of lasagna as a sublime gourmet sensation or a heavy, school staple?

In Tuscany I have tasted luscious layers of fresh, tender pasta that melds into a poem with creamy béchamel and a moderate spread of rich ragù. This traditional meat sauce from central and northern Italy is made with finely chopped beef and chicken livers or pancetta and simmered for hours until the flavors mellow. In spring, the delicate sheets of pasta have been covered with tender artichoke hearts, béchamel and ham, a combination of delicate flavors to delight the most gourmet palate.

Lasagna (having replaced its plural e with a singular a) is, however, a dish that left home and traveled the world. It has become mainstream microwave meals, supermarket diners, and been butchered in the process. Thick, heavy sheets of pasta sandwich that ooze amounts of sauce and bear little resemblance to their Italian ancestors.

To try the true Italian lasagna that I am describing, you must take a gourmet trip to Italy, visit the hills of Tuscany or Emilia Romagna with its rich butter-based cuisine and multitude of excellent restaurants. In Ferrara, Bologna or Parma or any of their beautiful cities, you will be able to appreciate the delicacy of the flavor, the melting texture with which genuine Italian lasagna can delight the palate.

Here lasagna is just one part of a leisurely meal. In the fall, he could have started with an antipasto of Parma ham and ripe figs, tried some fettuccini with truffles, then tried the lasagna, leaving just enough room for his main course of a bistecca ai funghi porcini, steak with fresh porcini mushrooms harvested in the forest. hills around you.

Lasagna is a dish designed for a feast: preparing it correctly is time consuming: roll out your own fresh pasta into sheets that are thin enough not to be heavy, by briefly boiling it a few sheets at a time; make fresh meat sauce and let it simmer for three to four hours; stirring a béchamel sauce carefully so it doesn’t burn; finally, assemble all the components and layer them, carefully spreading the right amount of sauce so that the pasta absorbs and leaves a little; adding freshly grated Parmesan cheese for balance of flavors; baking it all in the oven for just the right amount of time for the flavors to meld into one divine whole. It’s a labor of love made at home for special occasions or ordered from a restaurant where you know they do it right.

If you want to try making an authentic Emilia Romagna lasagna, look up Marcella Hazan’s guide. Her cookbooks are the best I know of to help you replicate the flavors of Northern Italy at home. I confess that I do not have the patience to make my own fresh pasta and thus do without lasagna at home. I’m waiting for the opportunity to return to Italy so I can enjoy a gourmet holiday, feasting on lasagna, porcini mushrooms and truffles!