Poland has strawberry pasta dishes. I heartily recommend strawberries.
Though I’m a bechamel guy, I will say cottage cheese is an absolute abomination — to my tastes at least. Ricotta I can deal with, though not my favorite.
I first tasted ricotta as a youth, just a taste of the plain uncooked cheese. It struck me as one of those unusual things that has two tastes – an immediate taste that is mostly just texture and blandness, and an aftertaste that is an interesting mellowness. You don’t notice that when it’s cooked in lasagna and blends with the other ingredients, but it’s nevertheless there, exuding its goodness. The only commercial lasagna I ever buy is made with real ricotta, and that’s what sold me on it.
I trust we will eventually get a report on how @JohnT’s lasagna dinner went, and whether Luna got her fair share! Also, @JohnT, I wouldn’t mind an update on how you have come to harbour two cats, which apparently poor Luna has to put up with. What’s up with that?
The strange thing is I do love ricotta in manicotti or stuffed shells, which is a similar melange of ingredients in a different form. (Unfortunately, the kids don’t.) And I put just a little bit of it in my gnocchi do to make them even more pillowy. At the end of the day, pretty much all lasagna is good, though I can live without the forms with cottage cheese in them. When I have time, I also make lasagna sheets made with spinach from scratch. That was my signature “impress my date” meal at home back in those years. Never failed. On the other hand, I’m sure any lasagna would have worked.
And my husband won’t eat the bechamel type, which seems to be the default around here.
I thought it was possible to make ricotta fairly easily. I’ve never done it myself. When I was living at my parents’ house, we never made lasagna. After living in the PA/NJ area for more than a decade, I’ve gotten used to a lot of Italian-American recipes, such as sausage and peppers.
I just looked it up - it seems that spicy Italian sausage is more typical in the toe of Italy. The ones north of there, at least the ones I’ve met, are not fans of spicy food.
I made spaghetti and meatballs recently (another Italian-American recipe) and put more red pepper flakes than it called for, and my husband suggested I could put more, but not much.
I’ve never made my own pasta sheets, but I normally make my own sauce. The weather has to be right, though. It should be cold and damp.
And since it’s usually in the cheese drawer, I’ll often add some Asiago and reduce the mozzarella.
Yeah, Italian-American tends to draw from Southern Italy and Sicily. Most Italian restaurants seem to draw from the Northern Italian tradition. The Southern lasagnas tend to have all sorts of stuff in them. Something from Bologna is fresh spinach pasta sheets, bolognese, and bechamel. Sounds like you are probably living in Europe if bechamel is the default and I’m guessing your husband is American, more used to ricotta styles?
Heh, I just remembered that I’ve had a spinach pasta veggie lasagne with bechamel. That seemed to work. It was light and tasty. For heartier meat sauced lasagne, I much prefer ricotta.
Haha. It’s funny cuz it’s exactly the opposite for me. For veggie, I need a little more oomph in mine, so ricotta is great for some extra protein and fat. And texture. I’ve had ricotta and eggplant lasagna that was quite good. Variety is the spice of life!
Yeah, man!
It’s interesting how poverty affects a regional recipe. In the dirt poor village Mom was from, meat was a luxury, so nobody used any in their lasagna. However, when the same sauce was to be used for linguini, mostaccioli, etc., it was often simmered with pork neck bones. Yum! I have a hard time finding pork neck bones here. I guess it’s still ethnic poor people food. The nearest place that reliably has it is a Vietnamese market 40 miles from here.
As a side note, we always mix some of the sauce into the spaghetti, then passed a bowl of extra sauce. Mom said pouring the sauce on plain spaghetti was an American practice, as none of her Italian friends did it. Anybody here know? Sorry for the hijack.
The mixing of the sauce in the pasta is more American, but not exclusive at all. It again depends on which hills/villages your family came from. But yes, most Italians serve the pasta and sauce separately. I prefer the Italian-American way that you described. Mix the sauce in and have extra to add to taste (or for bread.)
That’s not what I’ve experienced. I’ve never experienced any sauce on the side that I can think of with any Italian-born friends families of mine, or in my brief foray into Italy. The pasta comes already sauced (usually the finishing stage requires a quick toss in the sauce) and it is served like that. But the amount of sauce used is much less than Italian-Americans.
For example, here’s a typical recipe for spaghetti pomodoro: the sauce is cooked, some of the past water is used to thicken up the sauce and help it stick, the spaghetti is finished in the sauce, and served. This is pretty standard technique:
And neck bone “gravy” is a nice treat. I can still find neck bones here, but it requires knowing who has them. The packing house a few miles from me has every part of the cow, pig, goat, and chicken you could want (and ones you don’t. Who the hell eats spleen? What do you do with it?)
I was unclear. Sufficient sauce is mixed in with the spaghetti, and some of us eat it that way. (Mom did, with romano cheese and additional crushed red pepper.) It’s not plain spaghetti each diner has to sauce himself. Some of us like to add additional sauce. More important, the bowl with the extra sauce also contains the pork neck bones, which still have some pork bits on them. The bones were my mother’s favorite part of the meal. I’ll have to ask my brother if the aunt who stayed in Italy served spaghetti that way. He’s been there; I haven’t. Someday, I hope!
The platter of plain spaghetti with a layer of sauce on top was what Mom referred to as “American” style. I asked her because I saw it in commercials and on TV shows. (I should add my mom LOVED the US, and saying something was “American” was not an insult.) This was all long before we Americans started eating more authentic ethnic foods, and spaghetti for many non-Italians was made from a bland recipe in a Betty Crocker cookbook or the like. My Irish-American friend’s mom used Campbell’s tomato soup as a base and put Worcestershire sauce in her spaghetti sauce. My friend told me it was “the best spaghetti sauce in the world.” And to them at that time, it was. I wonder if she still makes it like her mom did. Probably not.
Times have changed for the better, at least in this regard.
I also like a sparingly small amount of sauce between layers. Ever ordered Olive Garden lasagna? You’ll see why.
I think this is the wrong thread for this question. I’ll just say this, “Yuck”
It almost tastes like lasagna.
Kind of like Pizza Hut serves a pizza-like food? I’m disturbed, there are 18 Olive Gardens in NJ. There’s even one in my county.
The seafood dishes I’ve had are decent and the soups are yum (salad isn’t bad, either), but they haven’t quite figured out tomatoes, yet.
As a fellow San Antonio resident, love seeing the HEB products. I use ground beef and their ground Italian sausage in my lasagna. I like the idea of using sliced mozzarella as an additional layer, I usually just mixed shredded in with my white layer. Thx for the recipe and hope it is delicious and a crowd pleaser.
Curious to know people’s thoughts on boiling the pasta in advance versus just adding some more liquid to the sauce and letting it cook in the oven.
My mom always put a layer of sliced mozarella on top, but I don’t need it. Can make it awkward to eat.
We always boiled the noodles first. Rather al dente but still mostly cooked.