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IN THIS ISSUE

IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT
LASAGNE VERDI ALLA BOLOGNESE

By John Mariani

NEW YORK CORNER
LOVE AND PIZZA
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
    UNFAMILIAR NAMES, VERY GOOD WINES
By John Mariani



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IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT
LASAGNE VERDI ALLA BOLOGNESE

By John Mariani



Ronnie Venturoli's unorthodox Lasagne alla Bolognese

         It seemed such an easy quest: I just wanted a recipe for one of the few Italian dishes that might be pronounced a classic—lasagne verdi alla bolognese, a dish as indelibly associated with Emilia-Romagna’s capital city as Wienerschnitzel is with Vienna and salade Niçoise with Nice.
    Yet, aside from the requisites that lasagne verdi should be made with green spinach pasta, meat ragù and besciamella, asserting anything more definitive would be like saying that, in all Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child, the Madonna will be dressed in red and blue and the Child will be chubby. 
    Pulling down authoritative Italian cookbooks from my shelf showed I was off to a bad start.  From old texts like La Scienza in Cucina e l’Arte di Mangiare Bene (1891) by Pellegrino Artusi to modern classics like the massive, 928-page La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy by the authoritative Accademia Italiana della Cucina, every source backed away from a definitive recipe.
    Confused by all this questionable dogma, I decided the best thing for me to do was to go directly to the source: the beautiful city of Bologna (below)—long called “Bologna Grassa” (“fat Bologna”) for its rich and lavish food—and find out exactly how the best cooks in Emilia-Romagna make lasagne verdi. 
    Four days of eating the dish did reveal a few things: first, I found no “classic” version of the dish, despite the claims by many cooks that theirs was the only correct way to make it; second, Bologna Grassa has lightened up its cooking in recent years, so that few chefs now cook the ragù with livers, coxcombs, chicken eggs, nerve ganglia, porcini, or truffles, as they once did. In fact, I found the lasagne I tasted remarkably light, owing to the extreme thinness of the pasta layers.
    One American cooking teacher in Bologna told me, “The Bolognesi are very demanding people, and are very, very critical at the dining table. Everyone has an opinion on the proper lasagne, and everyone will have his or her own version, and, of course, it’s the best!”
    One evening I ate at the home of Ronnie Venturoli, a formidable red-headed woman in her late 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 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 lasagne, one, her own creation, made with artichokes—“for summer”—the other lasagne verdi, 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 is made with roasted beef and, the holy trinity of onions, carrot, and celery, and she cooks it in water, not fat, 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 top sheet of pasta. 
    The next morning, I attended La Vecchia Scuola Bolognesi (right), founded in 1993 by Alessandra Spisni, a generous, gregarious woman devoted to spreading the gospel of Bolognesi cuisine.
    She told me that she uses only beef, never pork, cut from the shoulder and neck, pushed through a coarse grinder, then sautéed in strutto (pork fat).  I was running low on cherished beliefs. She  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. Then she adds a cup of water and cooks for two to three hours.
    Meanwhile, she makes the besciamella by quickly thickening butter and flour, then adding one liter of milk and a scraping of nutmeg, cooked over low heat until slightly thicker than heavy cream.  She then layers five sheets of pasta with small amounts of the ragù and besciamella on each layer—“not too much of either ingredient”—then lavishes the top with Parmigiano, the completed dish to be baked at 180 degrees for 45 minutes.
    For lunch that day I returned to a ristorante I hadn’t visited in twenty years, back when every celebrity from Gina Lollabrigida and Claudia Cardinale to Sharon Stone and Lionel Richie dined there and happily had their photo added to the walls of the dining room at Pappagallo (left). I was delighted to find it a better restaurant than ever, thanks to a young chef named Ricardo Facchini (below), who has brought delicacy and new ideas to the traditional dishes that have always been served there, including, of course, lasagne verdi.
         His version was made with a ragù based on pork, not beef, chopped with a knife, not ground, cooked in strutto. “In the old days beef was too expensive, so pork would have been used,” explained Facchini, “and Emilia-Romagna really didn’t use olive oil until the 1950s. The green of the lasagne was originally from nettles, but now spinach is used.”
    Facchini’s version was superb, the layers thin and artfully cut, the melding of ragù and besciamella consistent, and the topping crisp and fragrant with Parmigiano.
         That evening I dined al fresco at a revered trattoria named Biassanot, a dialect word that means, roughly, “night eater,” and the place was packed at least until 11 p.m. with people feasting on lasagne verdi, its pasta rolled out very thin and with considerable pride. This rendering was five layers in height, creamy but not overflowing with besciamella. I was beginning to learn that balance, not ostentatious display, was the key to lasagne verdi and that the Bolognesi go white at the thought of putting mozzarella, ricotta, and tomato sauce on thick layers of pasta—as is the case in southern Italian lasagne recipes.
         With one day to go, I balanced the trattoria style with one of great posh.  At lunch I ate with gusto at Trattoria Annamaria, now a quarter century old, where the appropriately stout owner/chef, Annamaria Monari (below, with her daughter), is not happy unless her guests are full and very happy, and she loves nothing better than to go to tables and explain every dish ordered and those she’d like you to try.     
    Annamaria’s  lasagne begins with a ragù made with pancetta, thinly sliced lardo, two parts pork shoulder, one part beef, the former cooked first,  in peanut oil.  She adds half a glass of milk and cooks it until it is absorbed, and, along with the odori of onion, carrot, and celery, adds a bit of tomato concentrate, stirred in over a low flame.  The ragù is cooked slowly for three hours, till the fat comes to the top.  She adds salt and pepper, but no wine. “Wine is for drinking,” she says.
         I tasted the fragrant ragù on its own, deeply flavorful with only a hint of tomato and a perfect equilibrium of fat to lean in the meat, which is chunkier than other versions I’d had.  The pasta layers number five, and they were, surprisingly, yellow-white, not green. “Lasagne used to be a Sunday dish and was made with seven layers, a holy, symbolic number,” she said. “Nowadays, we make it lighter, with just five.”
         I had been staying at the very well-named Majestic Hotel, so I dined there that evening in their splendidly decorated ristorante named I Carracci, at a beautifully set table within walls faced with silk, beneath a gorgeous ceiling fresco (left). 
       After all the versions of lasagne I’d had, I still found that when I became hungry each day and evening, the idea of another portion of this dish that I’d found in so many variants was still a welcome surprise.         
I Carracci’s lasagne was the most beautiful of them all, served in the round shape of an individual torta, its layers folding inward, and it was set in a little pool of remarkably light Parmigiano fondue, just enough for each bite. When the captain came to ask how I enjoyed it, he eyed my clean plate and said, “Ah, the dish is talking for you.”
         The next day, flying back to the States, I thought about all the lasagne I’d tasted and the recipes I was bringing back, and I realized just about any of them would make a lasagne I proudly could serve my own guests and pronounce it to be a very typical example of how they do it in Bologna.  I could hardly wait to get home and cook.

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By John Mariani

Cover Art By Galina Dargery












UNFAMILIAR NAMES, VERY GOOD WINES
By John Mariani


"Sylvia Scarlett" (1935)

         What’s in name? As with any in life, plenty, and in the world of wine names count heavily and are heavily promoted.  But that world is also changing year by year by year, with new wineries appearing and old brands coming out with new ones.  Here are some you may never have heard of but will want to try. 

CASTELLO DI RADDA 2018 ($36)—The Radda region of Tuscany is known for its difficult terroir, which has hard soil, is poor in organic matter and colder than others in the province. But challenging soil can make for strong grapes, and Castello de Radda shows how well the wine ca be made in a good vintage like 2018. Aged six months before release, the Sangiovese softens and gives off a vibrancy that makes it worthwhile drinking right now.

 

ESCUDO ROJO GRAN RESERVA 2018 ($22)—The name doesn’t suggest the pedigree, which is Baron Philippe de Rothschild, and the wine actually is a Chilean blend in the Médoc style, 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 38% Carmenere, 20% Syrah and 2% Cabernet Franc. It’s an impressive piece of work, especially at this price,  and would make a fine addition to any table of red meats, no matter how luxurious that table mighty be.

 

ISCAY 2015 ($53)—Another unknown name on the bottle, but the company is the renowned Trapiche, and the Malbec from Gualtallary and Cabernet Franc from Altamira are grown in high altitudes and cool weather. It ages 12 months in new oak, blended, then aged in French oak for another six months before spending 24 months in bottle. It all comes together, and, despite its 14.5% alcohol, it is not too much of a mouthful, making for a flexible wine to match up with many dishes, including chicken.

 

TARGA MARSALA SUPERIORE RISERVA SEMI-DRY ($31)—I’ll bet it’s been a long time since you’ve had Marsala, unless it was whipped into zabaglione, but this splendid Riserva shows that the wine can go toe-to-toe with the best Sherry, Tinto Ports and Madeiras. It has a lovely, light sweetness and fine nuances throughout, to be enjoyed all on its own or with roasted chestnuts and cookies.

 

ARGENTIERA BOLGHERI SUPERIORE 2017 ($100) and POGGIO AI GINEPRI 2018 ($22)—There is a big difference in price between these two Argentiera Tuscan wines, made on the I Pianali plateau, from highly calcerous soil and vineyards unusually well-protected from heat and swept by sea breezes.Made with 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot and 10% Cabernet Franc, they spend time in barriques and bottle. Quantities of grapes were limited in 2017. The Bolgheri Superiore is a very delicious wine with many flavor notes, but for one-fifth the price the Poggio is quite beautiful on its own, if higher in alcohol.

 

PASSETI TENUTAROSSA MONTEPULCIANO D’ABRUZZO 2015 ($12)—Passeti has proven itself among Abruzzese wineries that can make the most of the underrated Monteplulciano grape. This is a wine of finesse but it has the boldness of its tradition, which has always been earthy and rustic in that part of the world. Excellent with pastas made with tomato sauces and spice. I was amazed at its modest price.

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