I Love Lasagna
It is the festive dish of days of celebration and Italian Sundays, known and appreciated all over the world...
Indeed it has very ancient roots. It was already present in the vocabulary in Roman times with the term “lasanon” or “lasanum” (“De re coquinaria” by Apicio, 25 B.C. – 37 A.D.), but only during the Renaissance a recipe similar to the one currently in use started to surface.
Lasagna has been “praised” by several extraordinary poets of the thirteenth century such as Jacopone da Todi and Cecco Angiolieri (“Chi de l’altrui farina fa lasagne, il su’ castello non ha ne muro ne fosso”). Ancient recipes can be found in the “Libro di cucina del secolo XIV” ["The Cooking Book of the XIV century"] by Francesco Zambrini (1863) and in the celebrated “La Scienza in cucina” ["Science in the Kitchen"] by Pellegrino Artusi (1891).
They can be prepared using spinach pasta lasagna noodles or white pasta lasagna noodles, depending on the tradition. Bologna lasagne are traditionally spinach pasta lasagna noodles, thus green in color, prepared with egg dough and spinach and layered with beef ragout, bechamel and Parmesan cheese. In Naples, instead, lasagna noodles are white and they are layered with meatballs, ricotta and pecorino cheese.
Trivia
Across Italy there are many variations
Among the most famous ones there's the Liguria lasagne recipe. In fact, it seems that lasagna was the dish most loved by twelfth-century sailors.
More recently, the design studio Korefe created the “The Real CookBook”, an edible recipe book created with sheets of fresh pasta dough, ideal to prepare excellent lasagna!
However, if you really wish to produce a true home-made classic, Lasagne alla Bolognese is definitely a dish you want to try!
Lasagna in the Movies!
In the American thriller "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle", 1992 - directed by Curtis Hanson - it seems that lasagne represent the condition that determines whether women will ever have success in their life.
While in the cartoon movie “Shrek”by Adamson and Jenson, lasagne are simply irresistible! At the very least for Donkey...
«Do you know what else everybody loves? Lasagna! Did you ever know someone to whom you’d say:
"Hey, let's go eat lasagna" and the answer is: "I don't like lasagna".
Lasagne are delicious».
