In the United States, lasagna almost universally includes tomato sauce, mozzarella, and ricotta. However, a recent visit to Italy reminded me that the lasagna family is, in fact, vast and varied. There are hard-boiled egg lasagnas and Napoli meatballs; chicken liver studded from Le Marche; Bolognese and bechamel cloaked examples from Emilia-Romagna.
But there was one version that made me run to whip out my lasagna pan as soon as I got home: white lasagna. Made with a béchamel sauce and often without meat, white lasagnas are plush, creamy showcases for seasonal vegetables — artichokes in spring, zucchini in summer, mushrooms in fall, radicchio in winter — layered between thin sheets of pasta, then baked until golden brown.
This version evokes spring with a combination of leeks, asparagus, spinach and peas, all of which are much quicker and easier to process than fresh artichokes. And what’s more, a mix of different vegetables gives this lasagna an extraordinarily complex taste.
Like most lasagna recipes, it’s a bit of a project. You need to make the béchamel sauce, sauté the vegetables and layer everything with four types of cheese (mozzarella, parmesan, pecorino romano and ricotta).
But unlike some lasagna recipes, you don’t have to make the pasta by hand. You don’t even need to find fresh lasagna noodles from the store. Dried noodles from the box (either uncooked or plain) work exceptionally well here, as the liquid from the béchamel and all the vegetables cook the noodles while the lasagna bakes, saving you what Marcella Hazan describes as the “necessary nuisance” of cooking, washing, wring out and dry the paste. People do not deviate lightly from Marcella’s instructions, but that is very annoying.
She and I agree that lasagna won’t hurt if prepared up to two days in advance. You can assemble it in advance and bake it when your guests arrive, or you can assemble it and bake it in advance and then reheat it just before serving. Either method makes for a great dish, but you’ll get a firmer, easier-to-cut lasagna if you bake and reheat it ahead of time. Or you can time things to let the freshly baked lasagna rest for 30 minutes before serving.
Lasagna may have left many cousins in Italy when it became American, but there is still so much to learn from the extended family.
