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.