Lasagna.

Remember the final sec­tion of Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev? After Andrei’s taken the vow of silence, and the plague has wiped out most of the region? And the prince’s sol­diers come to the bell-maker’s house to demand a bell, and the bell-maker’s whole fam­ily is dead, except his teen­age son, the kid from Ivan’ Childhood? And the kid boasts how he can make the best bell ever, ’cause the dad gave him the secret of bell-making from his death bed, and the sol­diers take the kid up on it, and tell him if he screws up the bell it’s exe­cu­tion for sure, and the kid over­sees the whole pro­cess and is a com­plete prick to every­one, and Andrei’s watch­ing from a dis­tance? And finally it’s the moment of truth and the clap­per­’s in and the bell has to ring in a beau­ti­ful tone, and it does, and every­body’s ecstat­ic, except the kid him­self, who’s a dev­ast­ated sob­bing wreck, and Andrei breaks his silence and asks the kid what’s wrong, and the kid tells Andrei that he lied, that his fath­er nev­er gave him the secret of bell-making?

Well, I kind of feel that way rel­at­ive to my Grandma Petrosino and lasagna-making. And still, I go on, year after year, try­ing to approx­im­ate her sub­lime res­ults. I am told that my efforts more than suf­fice, so I will share here, for the first time, my meth­ods and tips. 

FIrst, the cor­rect recept­acle. In my early years of lasagna-baking, when I was a schlubby, nomad­ic bach­el­or, I was con­tent to throw everything in one of those dis­pos­able alu­min­um roast­ing pans.   But the time came to put away child­ish things, and a few years ago My Lovely Wife and I inves­ted in a Real Lasagna Pan from Mario Batali (left). Aside from being an attract­ive and sturdy piece of cook­ware, it’s a real whiz at heat reten­tion, a ser­i­ous con­sid­er­a­tion in the lasagna-making game.

Ingredients are, of course, incred­ibly key here. The object is to get the best and freshest pos­sible. Here’s where I’ve gained a con­sid­er­able advant­age over the past two dec­ades: by liv­ing in Carroll Gardens, a Brooklyn neigh­bor­hood known for fab­ulous Italian food. I make a homemade tomato sauce using Italian canned goods I usu­ally buy at Esposito’s And Sons on Court Street.  That’s also where I get the meat. While Esposito’s is fam­ous for its saus­age and sop­pres­ata and oth­er such truly great stuff, the store is also a superb all-around butcher shop.I get four pounds of ground meat—2 1/2 pounds beef, 1 1/2 pounds pork (“That’s the fla­vor,” as Martin Scorsese’s dad says in Goodfellas.) For cheese, it’s Caputo’s, also on Court Street. Four pounds ricotta, and three balls (about a pound each) of fresh salted moz­zarella. Caputo’s is also a fant­ast­ic pasta store, and they have come up with the lasagna-maker’s life saver: a soft fresh lasagna noodle that goes straight into the pan, no boil­ing required (it’s next to the sauce there). You just shake the semo­lina off and lay it down. Then there’s the salt, pep­per, oregano, and two eggs. 

Of course before the chef begins he or she must make sure that the tunage is in order.  For this cook­ing ses­sion, I decided to groove to, first off, Just Us, the first solo ses­sion from British sax­man Elton Dean, made around the time he was just join­ing Soft Machine and fea­tur­ing that group’s Mike Ratledge on keys for a couple of tracks; fans of the Softs might be sur­prised at the par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter of this largely free-blowing ses­sion. Then there’s Larry Coryell’s Spaces, pair­ing that great gui­tar­ist with the equally great John McLaughlin; Chick Corea, Miroslav Vitous, and Billy Cobham com­prise the killer rhythm sec­tion that finds the lead play­ers split­ting the dif­fer­ence between early fusion and unabashed Django-worship. Ragged Border is the debut album from Cosa Brava, the latest rock pro­ject spear­headed by the won­drous Fred Frith. And finally, the “new” Jimi Hendrix album, Valleys of Neptune, very hot stuff indeed. Throw these in the CD changer magazine, crank the volume, and get down to business.

First to pre­pare the ricotta. This will be, in a sense, the bed­rock of this cas­ser­ole (it seems sac­re­li­gious to refer to lasagna as such, but some­times such de-mystification can be use­ful), so it needs some char­ac­ter of its own. 

I like to mix the cheese up with some eggs, and sprinkle some oregano in, for both fla­vor and texture/color. The eggs help bind the cream cheese, mak­ing it work bet­ter as a base.  You can mix up the ricotta and egg and oregano as you begin to brown the meat. Put half of the beef/pork mix­ture into a good sol­id pan that’s had a light coat­ing of olive oil drizzled on its bot­tom. In the midst of all this, coat the bot­tom of your nifty pan with sauce. As I men­tioned before, the sauce I’m using was made from more-or-less scratch earli­er in this year for a sausage/meatballs/pasta feast, and I wound up freez­ing a good por­tion of it. Now it’s defros­ted, and I can use it for this cook­ing pur­pose without yet reheat­ing it. With the bot­tom of the pan coated, you can then lay down your first lay­er of noodles.   Which you then fol­low, of course, with more sauce. And here is where things get slightly tricky, and where exper­i­ence comes in handy; you don’t want to put too much sauce down, for fear of end­ing up with a too-wet, as it were, dish. Lasagna’s one of those dishes that improve with age, and I’ve nev­er made a pan of it that was per­fectly 100% sol­id right out of the oven, but I have been able to cut down on sog­gi­ness over the years through a more judi­cious met­ing out of liquid sub­stances dur­ing the pre­par­a­tion pro­cess. Capeche?

Having been dili­gent in the top­ping of the noodles with the sauce, you now begin to spoon down the ricotta.  As I implied, you wanna dis­trib­ute it rel­at­ively evenly over the sauce and noodles, so spoon­ing out indi­vidu­al dol­lops and then pat­ting them down with the bot­tom of the spoon it the way to go.  At this point your first pan of meat should be done, so go ahead and drain that big boy, after which you may proudly com­mence spoon­ing the meat on top of the bed of ricotta. It goes without say­ing that you may sea­son your meat to taste before or dur­ing saute­ing; I tend to lean on the min­im­al­ist side in this respect, as the meat’s going to get a lot of fla­vor­ing, as it were, from the oth­er ingredi­ents in the mix as the come togeth­er in the bak­ing process. 

Now, while you’ve been up to all this, you’ve had an intern or a eunuch on the premises sli­cing your moz­zarella. Wait, no, you haven’t? Well, then you’re going to have to cut it up your­self. I recom­mend eight slices of the fresh stuff per lay­er of lasagna. This seems like odd math, giv­en that this recipe will in fact yield nine big slices of lasagna. I can­not account for this dis­crep­ancy. Just trust me. It will work. Lay each slice down like so, I mean, as seen in the photo at right. After which comes anoth­er applic­a­tion of the sauce. As seen at left.

And then, of course, more noodles are laid atop that full lay­er, and the pro­cess is repeated.   By the time you reach the top, you will find that you’ll need to lay three noodles length­wise across the pan, and tuck the ends in a bit; this seals the whole thing togeth­er, as it were. And then it’s time to pop that beau­ti­ful baby into the oven. (After you’ve covered the dish with alu­min­um foil, or course [not shown here].)

Said oven should be at 350 degrees. And if you’re mak­ing it to be refri­ger­ated and eaten a day or so later, which you def­in­itely should do, don’t cook the thing fully. Cook it for 25 minutes to a half-hour, long enough for all the ingredi­ents to start mix­ing togeth­er. Then remove from the oven, cool at room tem­per­at­ure for a while, and put in the refri­ger­at­or. For the main event, again with the 350 degrees, but this time bake for an hour, give or take a few minutes. Here is some idea of what the res­ults ought to look like…    

 
                                                                                                                                             After which, you should enjoy. And enjoy the leftover por­tions; they just get bet­ter and bet­ter after reheating.