Lasagna, famed worldwide, has ancient origins and remains an Italian superstar dish. Basically, lasagna is a baked casserole made with wide flat pasta and layered with fillings such as ragú, bechamel, vegetables and various cheeses. Unsurprisingly, every Italian region has its own traditional recipe.
Lasagna: History
Lasagna – the name and the dish – is of ancient origin. There are various theories about the word, such as the Latin lasanum for “cooking pot,” or the ancient Greek and Roman laganum for “flat piece of bread”. Within Italy, still today, variations of the name persist, such as sagne or lagana.
There is archeological evidence of thin sheets of pasta, much like modern lasagna, dating back centuries. The remarkable 4th century BC Etruscan frescoes in the Tomba dei Rilievi (“Tomb of Reliefs”) in Lazio near Rome show the basic tools and ingredients for pasta-making as well as banquets showing diners enjoying a version of lasagna. As for written evidence, a dish consisting of layers of dough, meats and cheeses appears in the ancient Roman 1st century AD cookbook De Re Coquinaria (“on the Subject of Cooking”) by Apicius. It wasn’t until the Middle Ages that a recipe appears for something approximating modern lasagna. The 14th century cookbook: Liber de Coquina (“the Book of Cookery”) describes a dish of flattened dough, boiled and then sprinkled with cheese and spices.
Lasagna: Variations throughout Italy
In southern Italy lasagna is generally made with dried sheets of pasta layered with rich meat ragú, ricotta and mozzarella. In the north, especially in Bologna, the most popular version of lasagna features fresh egg pasta colored green with spinach and layered with ragú, bechamel and Parmigiano Reggiano.
Each region of Italy has its own signature lasagna specialty. Lasagne al brodo, baked lasagna in broth, is a typical dish of Molise made with a chicken and veal stock. Lasagna pasta sheets are layered with tiny veal meatballs, shredded chicken, veal from the broth, mozzarella and Parmigiano Reggiano. Then it is baked, and slices are served in a bowl filled with the stock. Lasagne all’Ascolana, from the Ascoli province in the Marche region, is another non-tomato-based lasagna, made with fresh egg lasagna sheets layered with a sauce of ground beef and minced chicken giblets cooked in wine and sliced white truffles. Vincisgrassi, another specialty lasagna of Marche, was created in honor of an army general who fought against Napoleon during a siege of Ancona in the late 1700s. It’s a non-tomato sauce lasagna made with bechamel, wild porcini mushrooms and prosciutto. The name vincisgrassi is a remarkable Italianization of the Austrian general’s name, Alfred von Windisch-Graetz.
In Sardinia, lasagna is often made with pane carasau, a very large round flatbread specialty of that region. It is so very thin and audibly crunchy that it’s amusingly called carta da musica, “sheet music.” Pane Frattau is a virtually instant lasagna—with the pane carasau first dipped in hot broth (traditionally lamb stock) and then layered with tomato sauce and pecorino cheese and topped with a poached egg.
Holiday Lasagna:
Carnival
Lasagna is a popular holiday dish, and each region even has its own special occasion version. For example, for Carnival Calabrese will make Sagne Chine, lasagna layered with little meatballs, ricotta, aged cheese, mushrooms and artichokes. In Naples, a must on every table for Fat Tuesday or Fat Thursday, is Lasagna di Carnevale Napolitana, a rich meat sauce lasagna layered with tiny meatballs, plus salami, ricotta, mozzarella and other cheese, and even sliced boiled eggs. In Naples they like to say that without this lasagna “che Carnevale sarebbe,” what sort of Carnevale would it be?
Christmas
It is traditional to serve a meatless meal for Christmas Eve. Lasagne da Fornel is a meat and dairy-free specialty from the Dolomite area of northern Italy’s Friuli-Venezia Giulia region traditionally served as a first course on Christmas Eve. It is a most unusual Italian lasagna, made by layering sheets of lasagna with grated apples, dried fruit, nuts, and poppy seeds.
Sciabbó, a lasagna made with pork ragú seasoned with dark chocolate, is a traditional Christmas day dish in Sicily, especially in the Enna province. Chocolate, a new world ingredient, was introduced into Sicily in the early 1700s and incorporated not just into many sweets, like chocolate sorbet, but also into savory dishes like this one. The lasagna is made with curly edged noodles of the same name, sciabbó, a Sicilian corruption of the French jabot, the word for the ruffles on men’s shirts so popular in the 1700s.