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Lasagna, the original recipe – Italian cuisine – Italian Cuisine

Lasagna: how not to love it! Typical dish of Italian cuisine, here we tell you some curious historical anecdote and we provide you with the original recipe

Sunday, family lunch: if we try to close our eyes, she comes to mind, the queen of the festive table: the lasagna.

Typical recipe of traditional cuisine, a true symbol of Italian style, lasagna is a dish that brings everyone together, young and old.

Even if each region declines it in its own way. Below, therefore, we report the original recipe, while in our gallery you can find some suggestions for delicious variations, all to taste.

What is lasagna?

First of all, what is lasagna? It is nothing more than a series of rectangular pasta sheets, made from egg or durum wheat, boiled, then arranged in layers in a pan or an oven dish, alternating with a filling, which can vary according to regional uses. The traditional recipe calls for ragù and bechamel.

Lasagna: history and origin

The history of the lasagna has its roots millennia ago and also sees a dispute – never resolved – regarding the authorship of the original recipe. The ancient Romans already talked about and wrote about lasagna: Apicius, Roman gastronome and writer, wrote of one "Lagana", composed of pasta sheets stuffed with meat.

A dish so good, that it spreads throughout the territory: in the Middle Ages, the lasagna conquered the poets Jacopone da Todi and Cecco Angiolieri, who wrote about it in their compositions, enhancing their goodness.

And from here, you get to the diatribe between Emilia Romagna and Campania: in Emilia, during the Renaissance, the recipe for fresh pasta, which is the basis of the lasagna with the ragout, recipe perfected in the seventeenth century and still reported in the cookbooks.

A dish that collides with the Neapolitan lasagna, based on durum wheat pasta and tomato sauce.

So what is the real lasagna? L'Italian Academy of Cuisine filed the Bolognese green lasagna recipe, or based on classic Bolognese sauce, Parmesan cheese, bechamel, butter and green puff pastry prepared with spinach. But the Neapolitan lasagna – based on Neapolitan ragout, meatballs, cow's milk ricotta, provola, pecorino cheese, extra virgin olive oil and puff pastry, rigorously "white" – are the ones that boast more ancestors and written tests. Therefore? We suggest a tie and a draw: choose which one to cook according to your tastes.

Lasagna: how to prepare pasta?

Now let's go into the recipe: we propose the Bolognese one, filed with the Bologna Chamber of Commerce. Let's start with pasta. Like ingredients, you need: 400 g of white flour, 2 eggs and 250 g of spinach. that's how proceed to make the pastry: mix the flour, eggs and spinach previously boiled and sieved. Then flatten the pasta, creating a thin sheet, to be cut into large squares. Put a pan on the fire with plenty of water to bring to a boil, then boil the sheets and let them dry on a tea towel.

Lasagna: how to prepare the sauce?

Now let's proceed with the filling, that is ragout is bechamel. Let's start with the ragù, for which you need the following ingredients: 300 g of coarsely ground beef, 150 g of pork belly, 50 g of carrot, 50 g of celery, 50 g of onion, 300 g of tomato sauce or peeled tomatoes, half a glass of dry white wine, half a glass of whole milk, broth, olive oil or butter, salt and pepper. here is the method: cut the bacon into cubes, mince it and fry it. Add 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, 50 g of butter, chopped celery, carrot and onion and cook on a low heat. At this point add the ground beef and brown. Pour in wine and evaporate. Finally, add the tomato puree, cover and simmer for about two hours, gradually adding some broth. At the end, add the milk and a pinch of salt and pepper, to correct the acidity.

Now let's move on to preparing the bechamel, for which you need: 100 g of 00 flour, 100 g of butter, 1 lt of fresh whole milk, fine salt and nutmeg. Here's how to prepare it: melt the butter in a pan over a low flame, add the sifted flour and mix with the whisk. Cook until it is golden brown and, at this point, add milk, salt and nutmeg.

Lasagna: how to cook it?

Now is the time for to assemble the various preparations: butter a baking dish or an ovenproof dish, line it with a layer of puff pastry, add a layer of ragù, one of bechamel and a sprinkling of grated cheese. Start again with a layer of pasta, then ragù, then bechamel, until you almost reach the top of the pan. Make sure that the last layer is bechamel, add some flakes of butter and cook in the oven at 160 ° for about half an hour. Check the surface: when it is golden, you can take it out of the oven and serve it steaming.

Pizzoccheri recipe, the original recipe from Valtellina – Italian Cuisine

Fresh pasta, potatoes, cheese and cabbage: here's how to prepare traditional pizzoccheri, the heart of Valtellina

Ingredients

300 g potatoes
400 g cabbage
400 g buckwheat flour
300 g butter
200 g casera cheese
100 g 00 flour plus a little
6 cloves of garlic
grated Parmesan
salt

Duration: 1 h

Level: Middle

Dose: 4 people

Fresh pasta, potatoes, cheese and cabbage: here's how to prepare traditional pizzoccheri, the heart of Valtellina For the classic pizzocheri recipe, prepare the vegetables: peel the potatoes and cut them in half slices; peel the cabbage, remove the core and divide the leaves in half, removing the rib, then reduce them to 2 cm wide strips.

Sift the 00 flour and the buckwheat flour in a bowl; pour 270 g of water, add a pinch of salt and begin to knead. Transfer the dough to the floured surface and work it briefly with your hands to make it homogeneous and compact.

Put a large pot with 6 liters of water on the fire, salt it and, when it is boiling, pour the cabbage leaves; cook them for 8 ', add the potatoes and cook again for 8' from the resumption of the boil. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin until you get a sheet of 2 mm thick; cut it first into strips 10 cm wide, then reduce each strip by cutting it diagonally into strips 1 cm wide.

Peel the garlic cloves, cut them in half and cook them in the butter without letting it color too much. Cut the casera cheese into cubes. Put the pizzoccheri into the water where they cook cabbage and potatoes and cook them for 10 minutes. Drain pizzoccheri, potatoes and savoy cabbage with the skimmer, arrange them on the plate and season them in layers with the cheese cubes, the butter without garlic and plenty of grated parmesan. Stir and serve immediately.

In the gallery above, our best pizzoccheri recipes.

Pumpkin cream, many original recipes – Italian Cuisine

To enhance its unmistakable flavor, many ingredients can be added, such as cheese, bacon, vegetables, but also clams and prawns. And it is important to match the right wine

Sweet, orange and rich in nutrients: from beta-carotene, useful for training vitamin A, to numerous minerals is antioxidants. There pumpkin she is certainly the great protagonist in the kitchen of this season. You can use it in several ways, but it is there pumpkin cream to certainly represent one of the most popular dishes based on this vegetable, especially when temperatures become very low. But what can you add to give a touch of fantasy more to this delicacy? What are the ingredients suitable? And which ones pairings best? Here are some answers.

The choice of cheese

Making pumpkin cream is a breeze. Just cut her chopped pulp, put them in a saucepan with a little onion previously fry, adjust of salt is pepper, cook for 20 minutes and finally pass everything in a mixer. of toast of bread, maybe toasted in a pan with a little butter, and a generous sprinkling of parmesan cheese will be enough to guarantee an extra touch of flavor to this dish. But there are also others solutions. In addition to the classic grated Parmesan cheese, the can also be used to contrast the unmistakable sweetness of the pumpkin gorgonzola and the Taleggio cheese. Just a spoonful in the center of the dish is ready and steaming. If, on the other hand, you prefer to keep the sweetness of the pumpkin unchanged, it is better to opt for a more delicate cheese such as goat.

Orange, artichokes or bacon?

To give a real twist with pumpkin cream, the absolutely tasty combinations with bacon, speck or smoked salmon, without forgetting the sausage and the rosemary. But the pumpkin cream also goes well with potatoes, the vegetables (chicory is chicory above all), the lentils, i chickpeas, i beans and i artichokes. The most sought after and most difficult to imagine is the matching with the almonds: self toasted and then chopped slightly, they can amaze diners in an original and very tasty combination. The same color as the pumpkin, but with a decidedly different flavor, even theOrange it is a very useful ingredient to give a touch of fantasy and of perfume in addition to the cream obtained by whipping the king of autumn vegetables. It is sufficient to cut one or two (based on the portions of velvety to be prepared) to the julienne, boil the orange slices in water for half a minute and finally add them in the mixer together with all the other ingredients necessary for the preparation of the pumpkin cream.

Pumpkin cream sea and mountains

By creating a delicious and inviting harmony between sea and land, you can try the pumpkin cream with the clams, i shrimp and even with scallops: that's enough affumicarle wrapped in bacon in a pan with del melted butter and over high heat, and then place the rolls on the cream before serving.

The importance of the right wine

In addition to the list of ingredients to add to the preparation, when it comes to pumpkin cream and of pairings one must not forget the wine. Being an extremely sweet vegetable, it is necessary to choose wines capable of contrasting this characteristic, while at the same time managing to enhance it: the recommended types are therefore the Chardonnay, the Lambrusco and the Riesling, a German white grape also produced in South Tyrol.