You think of lasagna as a sublime gourmet sensation or a stodgy, school food staple?
In Tuscany I've tasted exquisite layers of meltingly tender, fresh pasta fusing into a poem with creamy béchamel and a sparing distribution of rich ragù. This traditional meat sauce of central and northern Italy is produced with finely minced beef and chicken livers or pancetta and simmered gently all day until the flavours mellow. In spring the delicate pasta sheets have now been layered with tender artichoke hearts, béchamel and ham, a wedding of delicate flavours to delight the most gourmet palate.
Lasagna (having replaced its plural e with a singular a) is however a dish which includes left home and travelled the world. This has caused it to be in to the mainstream of microwave meals, supermarket suppers and been massacred in the process. Thick, stodgy sheets of pasta sandwich oozing quantities of sauce and bear little resemblance for their Italian forbears.
To taste the actual Italian lasagne that I'm describing, you need to take a gourmet trip to Italy, visit the hills of Tuscany or Emilia Romagna along with its rich, butter-based cuisine and great number of fine restaurants. In Ferrara, Bologna or Parma or just about any other of its beautiful cities, it is possible to appreciate the delicacy of flavour, the melting texture with which genuine Italian lasagne can delight the palate.
Here the lasagne is just an integral part of a leisurely meal. In autumn you may have started with an antipasto of Parma ham and ripe figs, tasted some fettuccini with truffles, then sampled the lasagne, leaving enough space for your main span of a bistecca ai funghi porcini, steak with fresh porcini mushrooms harvested from the wooded hills near you.
Lasagne is a dish designed for feasting - to make it properly is time consuming: rolling out your personal freshly made pasta to create sheets which can be thin enough not to ever be stodgy, boiling it briefly a couple of sheets at a time; making fresh meat sauce and allowing it three or four hours to simmer unhurriedly; stirring a béchamel sauce carefully so it doesn't burn; lastly assembling all the different components and layering them, judiciously spreading the ideal amount of sauce for the pasta to absorb and also a bit left over; adding in freshly grated parmesan to obtain the balance of flavours just so; baking all of it in the oven just for the right period of time for the flavours to meld into a divine whole. It really is a labour of love made in the home for special occasions or ordered in a restaurant where you know they are doing it well.
Should you want to try your hand at making a traditional lasagna from Emilia Romagna, seek guidance from Marcella Hazan. Her cook books will be the best I know that will help you reproduce the flavours of Northern Italy at home. I confess to not having the patience for making my own fresh pasta and thus do without lasagne altogether in the home. I'm just looking forward to an opportunity to get back to Italy making sure that I can have pleasure in a gourmet holiday, feasting on lasagna, porcini mushrooms and truffles!
