06. Consider the layers
Lasagne. Well-known, well-loved. Google “lasagna” and you’ll find endless recipes, some with ground beef or sliced sausage, others with spinach and eggplant, some using cottage cheese, others ricotta, some add eggs, others not, quite a few proclaiming themselves, The Best.
Il Talismano has its share, too, including Lasagne di Carnevale in Timballo.
Carnevale: the yearly celebration marking the beginning of Lent. Timballo: a shape or form, strictly round, although Ada sensibly suggests using a rectangular baking pan (una teglia).
“Lessate....” Ada writes. Hmmm. The infinitive must be lessare. But what is lessare? Why not bollire, which I know means to boil? I look up the definitions of both verbs. A revelation!
Lessare means to place in already (usually unsalted) boiling water. This in a sense, shocks what you’re dropping in, keeping the nutrients locked inside. With pasta, it allows for the perfect al dente.
Bollire means to place in cold water and then bring to a boil, allowing the nutrients to seep slowly into the water as it heats, the process necessary, for example, in preparing a broth.
I approach Paul with this awareness: two distinct verbs in Italian to our one, generic term in English. A simple example, remarkable for what it says about a language, a culture, that cares enough (about cooking) to get it right.
“Yes!” he says, then offers as an aside—Did I know?—un pesce bollito [a boiled fish] is a useless person. I’m accumulating a mental list of these (his?) expressions....
I THINK OF MY LIFE AND THE LIVES OF THOSE I LOVE, the endless ways of interacting and reacting, the choices that were made. Lessare or bollire: which process did I opt for? If there were the chance to go back, to decide differently, would I?
I consider the situations where I held back, observing from the shadow, then jumped in once the heat was known, the circumstances at their final, peak boil. I was scalded—sudden and sharp—but insulated from the wider responsibility, pain.
And those times when I was in it from the start, not realizing the heat was steadily increasing, giving of myself, enabling those I loved—a dynamic which overtime withered my sense of who I was. When the situation eventually came to a head, I was often too drained to recognize the truth.
And then?
And then. Lessate, Ada writes, telling us in one word that we are to place the lasagne noodles in a large pot of rapidly boiling (and in this case, salted) water. While still very al dente, they are to be drained and transferred to a large container with cool water.
Ad una ad una... one by one... take them and spread them out to dry.
A good sugo d’umido, Ada says, is essential. Sugo d’umido: literally, a damp sauce. A “lighter” sauce, as I understand it, prepared with broth, wine, or gravy rather than heavy cream or cheese. I sautéed onions, garlic, zucchini, carrots, celery, wild mushrooms, tomatoes, and a small bit of green cabbage, then processed them in a blender until smooth. I cooked ground beef, deglazed the pan with red wine, added meat stock, stirred this into the puree, and simmered it for an hour.
The layering. The recipe calls for the classic ricotta-eggs-grated parmigiano blend, thinly sliced fresh mozzarella, and sliced cooked sausage. The order of assembly is clear: sugo, lasagne noodles, ricotta blend, sausage, mozzarella, then again sugo, lasagne, ricotta...continuing, building layer upon layer, the lasagne floating on a sauce bed blanketed by a fluff of ricotta, the sausage nestled between two cheeses, on and on until the ingredients run out, the final layer being a dusting of parmigiano and lastly, on top, the sliced mozzarella, placed/pressed together, Ada insists, without gaps.
No gaps. Is this to retain the internal heat, melding the cheese with the pasta and the pasta with the sauce, enriching the flavor, and when sliced, its stability?
Distinct layers, yet a blended uniform whole. Nice.
