Lasagna, the oldest type of Italian pasta. Almost a hundred years before the birth of Christ, we find the term Lasagna in the writings of Horace and other authors!
Although they were referring to the thin, rectangular and wide pasta shape, which was perhaps first boiled and then fried. But this format and name remained over the centuries, until the Middle Ages, when the recipe that the whole world envies us today took shape and substance.
In the 14th century, in Naples at the court of the Angoini, in a cookbook (Liber de coquina), an anonymous author (the author, in fact, is indicated as Southern Anonymous), indicated for the first time the recipe for Lasagna, very similar to the current one.
In the following years the recipe underwent a series of "regionalizations", in which each Italian territory defined its "own" lasagna, both in terms of ingredients and pasta format. In fact, in some Italian regions, lasagna was made up of a sort of large tagliatelle, in others eaten in broth or dry.
Over the years, in the collective imagination, lasagna is the Bolognese or Neapolitan one. The two recipes have variations in the dough, in the Bolognese one there is also spinach which makes it green, and in the seasoning, in Naples they prefer to add ricotta and meatballs to the béchamel.
The recipe for Lasagna Bolognese:
Ingredients
3 eggs
350-400 g of 00 flour
400 g of spinach already cleaned and washed
FOR THE SAUCE:
150 g of "pancetta" (like Becon)
700 g of mixed minced meat (pork loin and beef muscle)
90 g of butter
½ glass of dry white wine
300 g of tomato puree
1 celery
1 carrot
1 onion
2 tablespoons of tomato pastecoarse
salt & pepper
FOR BECHAMELLE:
500 ml of milk
50g of Butter
50 g of 00 flour