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IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT LASAGNE VERDI - BY JOHN MARIANI
Food & Wine | Restaurants
That evening, however, I ate at the home of Ronnie Venturoli, a formidable red-headed woman in her seventies who is the self-proclaimed “regina di lasagne verdi.” She is part of a program called Homefood, described as an “Association for the protection and increase of the value of typical gastronomic and culinary legacy,” through which visiting guests to Italy may, as did I, dine with one of their home cooks, called “Le Cesarine.” Queen Ronnie, who has a voice that could cut through a wheel of Parmigiano, served me two lasagnes, one, her own creation, made with artichokes—“for summer”--the other lasagne verdi (left), for which she uses twelve layers of spinach pasta rolled out with a long mattarello. “Dodici sfoglie! Like the twelve Apostles,” she said. “I make them so thin you can see [the mountain of] San Luca through them!” Night had set in, so I could not test her contention, but these were indeed exceptionally fine sheets of deep green pasta. Ronnie’s ragù was made with roasted beef, which she adds to the holy trinity of onions, carrot, and celery and cooks in water, not fat, which came as a big surprise, and with a little concentrate of tomato and a touch of sugar. After simmering it all down for three hours, she adds some olive oil and cooks it for three more hours. Then she layers the pasta sheets, alternately, with ragù and besciamella, tops it all with Parmigiano and brings it to a bubbling point when the besciamella pops through the last sheet of pasta. A little jetlagged that first night, I went to bed counting the Twelve Apostles till I fell asleep. The next morning I attended La Vecchia Scuola Bolognesi, founded in 1993 by Alessandra Spisni (below), a generous, gregarious woman devoted to spreading the gospel of Bolognesi cuisine, teaching students how to make everything from lasagne verdi to tortellini al ragù as well as how to cut a sheet of pasta into strings truly as thin as angel’s hair must be. She told me that in Emilia, Bologna’s region, the pasta is always made thinner than in Romagna, and that she uses only beef, never pork, cut from the shoulder and neck, pushed through a coarse grinder, then sautéed in strutto (pork fat). She then turned me over to Chowdhury Ashraf Uddin, who hails from Bangladesh and was once a student at La Vecchia Scuola, now a teacher here who disproved to me the assertion I’d heard elsewhere that only a true Bolognese can great Bolognese food. I was running low on cherished beliefs. Uddin showed me the small but important refinements that make the school’s version so delicate. He first hand chops the odori mix of onion, carrots, and celery—never in a blender, which extrudes liquid from the vegetables—in strutto for about 20 minutes or more till the carrots are cooked through. Without adding any more fat, he puts the meat in a sauté pan and cooks it at high heat to brown it, then pours in one cup of red wine and one or two cups—measured by eye—of tomato passato (puree), with a little salt, but no pepper whatsoever. He adds a cup of water and cooks for two to three hours. Meanwhile he makes the besciamella by quickly thickening 90 grams of butter and 60 grams of flour, then adding one liter of milk and a scraping of nutmeg, cooked over low heat until slightly thicker than heavy cream. He boils the sheets of spinach pasta then dunks them into salted cold water. He then layers five sheets of pasta with small amounts of the ragù and besciamella on each layer—“not too much of either ingredient,” he notes—then lavishes the top with Parmigiano, the completed dish to be baked at 180 degrees for 45 minutes.
As I’d been hearing again and again, the aim in modern Bolognese cuisine is to make it lighter but tastier, with less fat but more flavor drawn from the best ingredients of the region, which has a mighty reputation for its eggs, balsamic vinegar, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Prosciutto di Parma, and more.Facchini’s version was superb, the layers thin and artfully cut, the melding of ragù and besciamella consistent, and the topping crisp and fragrant with Parmigiano. I poked: heated through everywhere.
That evening I dined al fresco at a revered trattoria named Biassanot, a dialect word that means, roughly, “night eater,” and the place was packed at least until eleven p.m. with people feasting on dishes like roast capretto with rosemary, gnocchi al Gorgonzola, and lasagne verdi, its pasta rolled out very thin and with considerable pride. This rendering was five layers in height, creamy but not overflowing with besciamella. I was beginning to learn that balance, not ostentatious display, was the key to lasagne verdi and that the Bolognesi go white at the thought of putting mozzarella, ricotta, and tomato sauce on thick layers of pasta as is the case in Southern Italian lasagne recipes.
With one day to go, I balanced the trattoria style with one of great posh. At lunch I ate with gusto at Trattoria Anna Maria, now a quarter century old, where the appropriately stout owner/chef Anna Maria Monari (left) is not happy unless her guests are full and very happy, and she loves nothing better than to go to tables and explain every dish ordered and those she’d like you to try. Like her friggione, made with onions, green peppers, and tomatoes cooked down to a chunky condiment perfect with the flatbread called piadina.
Anna Maria’s lasagne, which is made daily and never reheated, begins with a ragù made with pancetta, thinly sliced lardo, two parts pork shoulder, one part beef, the former cooked first, the latter afterwards, in peanut oil. She adds half a glass of milk and cooks it until it is absorbed, and, along with the odori of onion, carrot, and celery, and adds a bit of tomato concentrate, stirred in over a low flame. The ragù is cooked slowly for three hours till the fat comes to the top. She adds salt and pepper, but no wine. “Wine is for drinking,” she says. “It’s an old farmer’s tradition in my home of Sasso Marconi that children shouldn’t eat food with wine in it.”
I tasted the fragrant ragù on its own, deeply flavorful with only a hint of tomato and a perfect equilibrium of fat to lean in the meat, which is chunkier than other versions I’d had. The pasta layers number five, and they were, surprisingly, yellow-white, not green. “I use very little spinach,” said Annamaria, “and not too much besciamella. Lasagne used to be a Sunday dish and was made with seven layers, a holy, symbolic number. Nowadays, we make it lighter, with just five.” I finished off with an Emilia-Romagna signature dessert, zuppa inglese, and began thinking about my last dinner in Bologna.
I had been staying at the very well-named Majestic Hotel, so I dined there that evening in their splendidly decorated ristorante named I Carracci (right), named after the Bolognese family of baroque painters. There, sitting at a beautifully set table within walls faced with silk, beneath a gorgeous ceiling fresco, and served by a staff who seem to have an impeccable sense of pacing for my meal, I dined leisurely, beginning with a cup of cool gazpacho with whipped robiola and sea asparagus, then a plate of sliced culatello with toasted brioche, followed by the inevitable, and last, lasagne verdi.
After all the versions—homemade, schoolmade, traditional and eccentric, lasagnes with boiled beef, sauteed pork, red wine, no wine, twelve layers, five layers, but never any garlic--I still found that when I became hungry each day and evening, the idea of another portion of this dish that I’d found in so many variants was still a welcome surprise. The flavors of the ragù, some with nutmeg, some without pepper, some spread with besciamella, others just dotted, still made for a distinct taste always identifiable as lasagne verdi alla bolognese but different enough to show the personal touch of those who made them.
I Carracci’s lasagne was the most beautiful of them all. It came in the round shape of an individual torta, its layers folding inward, and it was set in a little pool of remarkably light Parmigiano fondue, just enough for each bite. When the captain came to ask how I enjoyed it, he eyed my clean plate and said, “Ah, the dish is talking for you.”
The next day, flying back to the States, I thought about all the lasagnes I’d tasted and the recipes I was brining back, and I realized that, with the exception of the wildly fanciful version I had at Osteria Francescana, just about any of them would make a lasagne I proudly could serve my own guests and pronounce it to be a very typical example of how they do it in Bologna. I could hardly wait to get home and cook.
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