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 melting into a poem with creamy bechamel and a moderate spread of rich ragu. This traditional central and northern Italian meat sauce is made with finely chopped beef and chicken livers or pancetta and simmered for hours until the flavors meld. In spring, the delicate sheets of pasta have been covered with tender artichoke hearts, bechamel sauce and ham, a marriage 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 in microwave meals, supermarket dinners, and has been slaughtered in the process. Thick, heavy sandwich sheets of pasta that ooze amounts of sauce and bear little resemblance to their Italian forebears.
To taste the true Italian lasagna I am describing, you must take a gourmet trip to Italy, visit the rolling hills of Tuscany or Emilia Romagna with its rich butter cuisine and multitude of excellent restaurants. In Ferrara, Bologna or Parma or any of its beautiful cities, you will be able to appreciate the delicacy of the flavor, the melting texture with which the genuine Italian lasagna can delight the palate.
Here lasagna is just one part of a leisurely meal. In the fall, you might have started with an antipasto of Parma ham and ripe figs, sampled some fettuccini with truffles, then tried the lasagna, leaving enough room for your 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 freshly made pasta into sheets thin enough not to be heavy, by briefly boiling it a few sheets at a time; make gravy from fresh meat and let it simmer for three to four hours; stirring a bechamel sauce carefully so it doesn’t burn; finally, assemble all the components and place them in layers, carefully spreading just the right amount of sauce so that the pasta absorbs and a little on top; adding freshly grated Parmesan cheese to get the balance of flavors; baking it all in the oven just long enough for the flavors to meld into a divine whole. It’s a labor of love made at home for special occasions or ordered at a restaurant where you know they do it right.
If you want to try making an authentic Emilia Romagna lasagna, look to Marcella Hazan for guidance. Her cookbooks are the best I know of to help you reproduce the flavors of Northern Italy at home. I confess that I don’t have the patience to make my own fresh pasta and thus do without lasagna at home. I am looking forward to the opportunity to return to Italy for a gourmet vacation, feasting on lasagna, porcini mushrooms and truffles!
