quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
Er[j], no need for fisticuffs, I'll eat ricotta, just don't prefer it. I like creamy vs dry, that's my preference.

All in good fun, sir!

If I’m going to make bechamel and cook pasta I’m going to make pastitsio instead of lasagna.

There's a similar Greek dish with white sauce, pasta and beef called pastitio (Greek lasagna).

The spice blend is slightly different and you only layer one time but it's terrific and definitely uses bechamel or a butter-based white sauce over cheese.

It wasn’t until college that I found out that people put ricotta in lasagna. Mom said she learned her recipe from an Italian girlfriend of a GI they had over for dinner one night (Dad was stationed in Vicenza). Which is good enough for me.

But I do experiment with it. Beef, sausage, etc.

And simple bechamel with Parmesan becomes an ersatz alfredo when necesssary.

My grandparent's families came from Bari and Potenza in southern Italy so my mom always made lasagna with ricotta cheese. She used too much IMO. I used to peel my lasagna and scrape out some of the spackle. Too dry and pasty.

Invariably when I have lasagna in Asia - it's the béchamel style. And believe it or not, you can usually find a really good Italian restaurant in the larger cities in Asia. If not, the western brand hotels always make decent Italian food. I think it is more common for chefs from France to be bought in to train the locals, so that's probably why. Nothing like have to eat local for business for a couple days and then getting to eat on your own and have a nice bolognaise pasta or lasagna. And the mayor of bologna went on a rant a little while ago because they did not invent tomato meat sauce.

But noodles were invented in Asia so they should be good at it.

Now if I could just get them to stop putting a fried egg on the plate next to my Cesar salad...

you guys are killing me. lasagna may be my favorite food of all time

5 Mother Sauces

Regardless of regionality. Knowing these 5 basics is key, they can be tweaked to what you need

When I make lasagna, I make a large bath of marinara, a small béchamel, with ricotta and shredded mozzarella and parmesan.
In my case I'm using ground elk instead of beef.
Some of the marinara goes into the elk, ricotta goes into a bowl with an egg (small batch) salt and pepper with parmesan, mozzarella and béchamel, to a smoothable consistency.

Assembly is marinara, then blanched pasta ground elk with sauce, additional marinara, pasta then layer of ricotta cheese mix, then pasta then elk mix repeating until two layers of each are in the dish with red sauce on top to keep moist, then depending on your oven temperature determines the final sprinkling of cheeses.

If you like béchamel, find a good moussaka recipe, it involves eggplant, ground beef and béchamel.

The New Lasgna Cookbook, Maria Bruscino Sanchez; Chicken Marsala Lasagna, pp 94-95.

This is a delicious (!) dish. There are CML recipes online. I have prepared only the recipe from the cookbook. I vouch for her recipe.

quote:

Originally posted by Neel:
When I make lasagna, I make a large bath of marinara

I prefer baked beans!

quote:

Originally posted by PGT:
There's a similar Greek dish with white sauce, pasta and beef called pastitio (Greek lasagna).

The spice blend is slightly different and you only layer one time but it's terrific and definitely uses bechamel or a butter-based white sauce over cheese.

I made a pastitsio back in Feb, a bit easier to make than lasagna and every bit as satisfying. The spices the Greeks use gives it a nice change-up to the richer Italian flavors. The Italian region around Venice and Trieste make their lasagnas like a pastitsio, using tubular pasta rather than the familiar sheets.

One of my good friend's has family in the Northern Italy town of Traviso, we visited a few years back and the lasagna version they made had more Austrian/Germanic influence as they include more vegetables like radicchio & mushrooms, along with pancetta, and the local taleggio cheese which is stronger and richer over a ricotta.

Foodie factoid - ricotta is a whey-cheese which you get from mozzarella production.

quote:

Originally posted by frayedends:
I've recently been watching these 2 on Youtube. Great channel. This video is perfect for this thread...

<snip>

I just put myself into a food coma. I made their bolognese version with homemade spinach pasta for dinner tonight and it was absolutely fantastic. Where has it been my whole life?

I didn't have any ground pork so I substituted Italian sausage for both the pork and beef, and I'm certain that that added immensely to the flavor profile, but I can't imagine that the original recipe is much different.

It is a bit time consuming, but I'll be making this again.

I stumbled across this video of béchamel style lasagna and put it on the list of things to try: https://youtu.be/y2SVA6EsrTE

I make a ricotta, parm lasagne with butternut squash and spinach. Topped with pancetta, and a bechamel sauce.

It’s fucking magical.

Damn Noah those look good. Your chef experience is showing!

Must've taken forever to pull the stems from all them spinach leaves.

Those do look good though.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
Ricotta is trash

Amen!

quote:

Originally posted by PGT:

I need this in my life

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:

I prefer baked beans!

R U a fan of The Who, too?

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
Must've taken forever to pull the stems from all them spinach leaves.

Those do look good though.

You have no idea how much I appreciate you noticing that. Yes. It took what felt like a millennium.