Lasagna

The lasagna recipe in this post draws inspiration from two lasagne recipes in Giuliano Bugialli’s classic Bugialli on Pasta (1988). One version hails from Naples and the other from Calabria.

Bugialli introduces the Neapolitan form:

“The well-known and very popular Lasagne imbottite, using long lasagne strips alternating layers of pasta with manifold ingredients, such as Napolitan ragù, tiny meatballs, sausage pieces, slices of mozzarella and hard-boiled egg (sic), ricotta, and grated Parmigiano is Naple’s version of the elaborate baked pasta made for the festivities of Carnival time. Such festival dishes once had a special meaning and were really made just at one time of year. Not only Carnival but each holiday season and even each saint’s day had its special dishes that were for just such an occasion, and they varied among the different regions and towns. But now one finds Lasagne imbottite on menus all over and at most times of the year, since the special meaning of such dishes has faded.”

Bugialli next turns to the Calabrian version:

“The Lasagne imbottite from neighboring Calabria is different. The fresh pasta is made with rougher semolina flour, whereas the Neapolitan is made with normal all-purpose flour; the little meat balls are made with pork rather than beef; the grated cheese is more likely to be pecorino; there is a simple tomato sauce rather than the Neapolitan ragù; and along with mozzarella, ricotta, and hard-boiled eggs is a special vegetable stuffing including dried porcini, artichokes, peas, and aromatic vegetables flavored with bay. A grand dish to celebrate Carnival, it is called in dialect form by the name, Sagne chine.”

The lasagna featured in this post borrows certain elements from both the Neapolitan and Calabrian dishes but more resembles the latter version (albeit simplier). I make a fresh egg pasta using 00 flour but add semolina to the dough. I form tiny pork meatballs that I poach in a simple tomato sauce. For cheese, I employ fresh homemade ricotta and heaps of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. I often sauté sliced mushrooms in butter to join the polpettine, tomato sauce and cheese in a six-layer lasagna. I omit the mozzarella and hard-boiled eggs favored by both the Neapolitans and Calabrians.

Here’s a little more detail if you want to try my take. I include links to previous posts to truncate these instructions.

For the Pork Meatballs

15 grams panko flakes, finely ground

50 grams whole milk

1.5 grams fennel seed, roughly ground

30 grams white onion, finely minced

12 grams butter

.35 gram fennel pollen

5 grams grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

4.5 grams kosher salt

5 grams sugar

1 gram freshly ground black pepper

5 grams tomato paste

1 gram toasted onion powder (I use Burlap & Barrel brand)

.5 gram garlic powder (Again, Burlap & Barrel brand)

225 grams ground pork

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, hydrate panko in milk. In a small pan, sauté minced onions in butter until onions are translucent and soft. Put cooked onions on a small tray and place the tray in the freezer to quicky cool. Add the remaining ingredients to the panko/milk mixture, remembering to add the cooled sautéed onions placed in the freezer. Mix the meatball ingredients together. (I usually fry a bit of the meat mixture to see if I need to adjust for salt and/or sugar.) Using wet hands, form approximately 40 tiny meatballs weighing between 5 to 7 grams each and measuring about 1-inch in diameter. Place meatballs on parchment paper-lined tray, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until use.

For the tomato sauce

½ white onion, diced

28 ounces whole peeled tomatoes (I use Bianco DiNapoli brand), crushed by hand or cut into small pieces with kitchen scissors

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

In a 26cm enameled cast iron Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add diced onions, salt and pepper to taste. Sauté onions until translucent and soft. Add tomatoes and remaining tomato liquid in can to the pot. Simmer tomato sauce, covered with lid slightly ajar, for 10 minutes. Add uncooked meatballs and shake pot to settle meatballs into the tomato sauce. Bring tomato sauce back to an low simmer, cover with lid lightly ajar, and cook for another 8 to 10 minutes. Use a kitchen thermometer to verify the meatballs are cooked (160°F). Cool sauce to room temperature and refrigerate, covered, a day or two until assembling the lasagna.

For the Ricotta

See recipe for fresh ricotta (here). I use around 275 grams of ricotta when I make this lasagna. Refrigerate ricotta until assembling the lasagna.

For the Pasta

165 grams Central Milling Organic Type 00 Normal Flour 

35 grams Giusto’s Gourmet Semolina Flour

2.3 grams sea salt

107 grams of an egg mixture (about 1 large egg and 2 egg yolks)

For this lasagna, I follow the pasta dough recipe in Andreas Papadakis’s Tipo 00 (here). I use my Imperia R220 Manual Pasta Machine to laminate and roll per Papadakis’s instructions. I stop rolling when reaching my machine’s No. 2.5 setting. This produces a pasta sheet approximately 1.5mm thick. The rollers on the R220 are a little over 8-inches wide. I cut the pasta sheet into six 8-inch by 8-inch squares.

For the Mushrooms

Using a damp towel, clean approximately a dozen Cremini mushrooms. Towel dry and slice off the end of each mushroom stem. Slice the mushrooms and sauté in 4 tablespoons of butter. Add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. (I often add shiitake mushroom power (here) while sautéing the mushrooms.)

For Parmigiano-Reggiano

Using the fine-shred side of a box grater, grate 300 grams of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

Assembling the Lasagna

I usually make the lasagna’s ricotta, meatballs poached in tomato sauce and mushrooms a day or two in advance. I assemble the lasagna the day before baking and serving. 

With the ricotta, meatballs/tomato sauce, mushrooms, and Parmigiano-Reggiano ready, here’s my process.

1. Bring a pot of well-salted water to a boil. Fill a wide mixing bowl with cold water and ice cubes to shock the par-boiled pasta sheets. Cook each pasta sheet for approximately 1 minute. Using a spider strainer, transfer the pasta to the ice water bath. Remove the parboiled pasta from the ice water and lay it on a kitchen towel and pat dry. Repeat with remaining pasta sheets.

2. Butter a deep, square baking dish with interior dimensions of 8” x 8” x 2”. (I use an Emile Henry Modern Classics Square Baker with a 2-quart capacity.) Spoon enough tomato sauce to lightly cover the bottom of the baking dish. Keep in mind you need enough tomato sauce for each layer and the top of the lasagna.)

3. Place a parboiled pasta sheet on top of the tomato sauce. Spoon another thin layer of tomato sauce on the pasta. Scatter meatballs—five or six—over the pasta sheet, dot with ricotta, add some of the cooked mushrooms and dust with a handful of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Place a sheet of pasta on top of the base layer and evenly press down on the pasta sheet.

4. Repeat using the remaining ingredients. Top the final layer with tomato sauce and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Dot with small pieces of butter. At this point I usually slice the lasagna into 6 to 8 portions. This makes serving easier after baking. Cover the assembled lasagna with aluminum foil and refrigerate until ready to bake.

5. A couple of hours before baking, take the lasagna out of the refrigerator. When ready to bake, put oven rack in middle position and pre-heat the oven to 375°F. Bake the lasagna, covered with aluminum foil, for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake the lasagna for another 30 minutes. Let lasagna rest after baking for 10 minutes.

Making a lasagna from scratch takes time. But prepping components early and assembling your lasagna a day in advance pays dividends on serving day: feeding friends and family becomes less hectic.

I frequently play around with some of the lasagna’s ingredients. Sometimes I use wide strips of homemade pasta in place of large sheets. I might use Pecorino Romano instead of Parmigiano-Reggiano (or even a mixture of the two cheeses). I often swap out the mushrooms for thick slices of artichoke hearts poached in a rich chicken stock until the slices are almost soft. Sometimes I even make things even easier by using store-bought ricotta and replacing the homemade meatballs with chucks of sausage squeezed out of its casing. Easier is often just as delicious! Enjoy!

Best Cookbooks of 2025

I think 2025 a very, very good year for new cookbooks. Whittling down my list to only five titles took time. Reflecting upon these standout books, I see a number of authors that appear in my Best Of lists of years past. In alphabetical order, I share my picks for the five best cookbooks of 2025.

Chocolat: Parisian Desserts and Other Delights by Aleksandra Crapanzano (Scribner)

 

Mokonuts by Moko Hirayama and Omar Koreitem (Phaidon)

 

On Meat by Jeremy Fox (Phaidon)

 

Rome: A Culinary History, Cookbook, and Field Guide to the Flavors that Built a City by Katie Parla (Parla Publishing)

 

The Talisman of Happiness by Ada Boni (Voracious / Little Brown)

 

Chocolat Crapanzano follows up her Gâteau (2022) with a comprehensive collection of recipes of Parisian desserts starring chocolate. Crapanzano writes clear, concise recipes that offer helpful hints and delivers delicious results. I particularly enjoy her chapter entitled Mousse and More. I made her recipe for Mousse au Chocolat Rapide for Christmas dinner. So good and easy! Crapanzano’s recipe calls for Grand Marnier and orange zest, but she writes “[r]um, bourbon, Cognac or simply a spoonful of espresso can stand in....” I opted for coconut rum. Sorry, Mary, but the coconut and chocolate tasted delicious together. I cannot wait to see what Crapanzano writes next.

 

Mokonuts This excellent cookbook presents recipes from a small restaurant called Mokonuts in Paris’s 11^tharrondissement run by Moko Hirayama and Omar Koreitem. The chef/authors divide their cookbook into two parts: Part 1 features Koreitem’s savory fare. Some dishes sound fancy (e.g., Asparagus, Scallop Skirt Emulsion, and Broccoli Sprouts) while others simple (e.g., Tomato Salad and Lamb Shoulder Tagine). His careful, appealing recipes evidence his fine dining credentials. To date, I’ve spent more time cooking from the book’s Part 2 – Breakfast and Sweet. Hirayama shares recipes for very good English Muffins and Coconut Milk Blancmange, which tastes wonderful. But, like many others who own this book, it’s hard not to do a deep dive into the cookie recipes. The Mokotecao is a special, easy-to-make cookie that has absolutely no business being as delicious as it is. Hirayama ends Part 2 with a couple of family recipes I want to try in 2026: Mom’s Super Juicy Orange Cake and Dad’s Legendary Curry. If I had to buy only one cookbook this year, Mokonuts might be the one.

 

On Meat Fox’s follow-up to his On Vegetables (2017) begins with a Forward written by Paul Bertolli, author of some of the greatest modern cookbooks. Fox and Bertolli both write unique, inspiring prose: Bertolli more formal while Fox casual and, well, funny. For example, here’s Fox’s introduction to his recipe for Meatloaf & Mash which he tops with crispy shallots: “I’m just gonna throw this out there: fried shallots are insanely tasty. The amount listed here [in the recipe] is enough for this dish. But it doesn’t cover the snacking tax. Or the “I wish I had more of those” regrets. Maybe quadruple the amount. Or perhaps pentuple. That means five times. I had to look it up. You can also say quintuple, but pentuple just sounds cool. The point stands. More is more and that is better.”

 

A Fox On Meat recipe reads like the chef is there at your side offering counsel while you prep and cook. Highlights in this wonderful cookbook include: Spanish Tortilla but Like a Reuben; Pickle Chick; Chicken Paprikash with Board-Cut Spaetzle; and, last but not least, Manresa Staff Gumbo “Ya Ya” by David Kinch. This is a great cookbook!

 

Rome I own a lot of excellent cookbooks on the food of Rome. Yet...although the recipes in Parla’s latest effort ring quite familiar, there’s just something about this cookbook/travel guide that really appeals to me. I mean, it’s fun! It has a recipe for Uova Sode (Hard-Boilded Eggs). Stinky hard-boiled eggs! Where you actually aim for that eggy “sulfurous funk” as Parla writes. But even if the recipes represent variations on familiar Roman recipes, the book’s design and writing and pictures are all, well, really fun! I cannot wait until next summer to try her recipe for Zucchine Ripiene Alla Romana (Meat Filled Zucchini) cooked in tomato passata. I happily add Parla’s latest to my Italian cookbook collection.

 

The Talisman of Happiness Last, but by no means least, a true (and now complete) classic becomes available to English readers. From the Forward by Lidia Bastianich and—here she is again—Katie Parla, I glean that The Talisman of Happiness represents for Italians what The Joy of Cooking is to Americans: a trusted tome when looking for cooking guidance and a sound recipe to make a time-honored dish. I flip to any given page and I find something I want to cook. Turn to page 214 and find a recipe for Riso in Timballo con Polpettine (Rice Timbale with Meatballs). Now, I may not want to follow the recipe exactly as written—I might jettison the Cognac—but Boni gives the cook enough to work with to create the dish they want to make. Turn to Page 708 and find Boni’s recipe for Zucchine Ripiene di Carne Alla Romana. (It’s fun to compare this recipe to Parla’s.) The Talisman of Happiness is a great reference cookbook and, with 1,680 recipes, a tremendous value. If you love to cook Italian food, check it out.

 

Because I limit my Best Of lists to five cookbooks, I like to end these posts by highlighting a number of other cookbooks that I purchased and enjoy. In no particular order for 2025: Sunny Days Taco Nights by Enrique Olvera with Alonso Ruvalcaba (Phaidon); Homemade Ramen by Sho Spaeth (Norton); Recipes from the American South by Michael W. Twitty (Phaidon); and Korean Temple Cooking: The Life and Work of Jeongkwan Snim by Hoo Nam Seelmann (Hardie Grant).

 

Finally, I like to focus on the positive, but one cookbook I purchased that I thought I couldn’t do without was Phaidon’s Franco Pepe: Pizza Chef. I ordered it sight unseen from Pegasus Books, a local bookshop in Berkeley. If you’re thinking about buying this book, definitely try to preview a copy in your local bookstore or library. It failed to meet my admittedly high expectations, but maybe it will be your cup of tea.

 

Happy New Year to All!

Ricotta Cavatelli

In my previous post (here), I shared a recipe for homemade ricotta. Let’s now use fresh ricotta to make cavatelli with a BeeBo cavatelli maker.

I own two hand-cranked cavatelli machines: a vintage BeeBo and a Demetra. In my opinion, the BeeBo bests the Demetra. The Demetra features a sturdy build but, in my experience, its suction cup foot often fails to secure the machine even to a clean and flat stainless-steel work counter.

My BeeBo came with a small recipe booklet. I didn’t pay attention to it for years. However, while researching ricotta cavatelli recipes, I learned that a number of talented chefs swear by the BeeBo’s ricotta dough recipe.  Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo in their The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual (2010) write “[o]ur [ricotta] cavatelli recipe—which we learned from the pamphlet in the BeeBo box—is on page 100.”

In Pasta By Hand (2015), Jenn Louis introduces her ricotta cavatelli recipe as follows:

“This Italian dumpling is one of the first I learned how to make. One year, my husband bought me a hand-crank cavatelli machine for my birthday. We now use that machine at Lincoln, and it has been repaired and rewelded twice because it gets so much use! The recipe for ricotta cavatelli in the booklet that was included with the machine yields perfectly tender and flavorful dumplings.”

Here’s Louis’s take on the BeeBo ricotta cavatelli recipe.  I include her instructions for using a stand mixer and I offer some BeeBo-specific recommendations. 

500 g / 3½ cups + 1 tbsp all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1 tsp kosher salt

480 g / 2 cups whole-milk ricotta cheese, homemade or store-bought

55 g / ¼ cup whole milk

1 egg

Sauce of your choice (suggestions follow)

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment, combine the flour, salt, ricotta, milk, and egg. Knead on medium speed for 10 minutes, until fully combined and the dough is mostly smooth. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and dust with flour.

Uncover the dough and place it on a work surface lightly dusted with flour. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough to approximately ¼-inch thickness. As best you can, square off the sides of the dough sheet to form a rectangle. Cut the dough into strips approximately ½-inch wide.

Attach your cavatelli machine to a sturdy work surface. Feed the dough strips into the machine by cranking the machine’s handle. Cavatelli will fall out of the machine’s round head onto your work surface. Put the cavatelli on the prepared baking sheets and shape the remaining dough. Make sure that the cavatelli don’t touch or they will stick together. After processing all of the dough, Louis writes that you should have enough ricotta cavatelli to serve 8.

To store, refrigerate on the baking sheets, covered with plastic wrap, for up to 2 days, or freeze on the baking sheets and transfer to an airtight container. Use within 1 month. Do not thaw before cooking.

To cook, bring a large pot filled with generously salted water to a simmer over medium-high heat. Add the cavatelli and simmer until they float to the surface, 1 to 3 minutes. Remove immediately with a slotted spoon and finish with your choice of sauce. Serve right away.

Louis recommends pairing ricotta cavatelli with these traditional sauces (recipes that Louis shares in Cooking By Hand): pesto; tomato sauce; guanciale, tomato, and red onion; brown butter with sage; fonduta; gorgonzola cream sauce; liver, pancetta, and porcini ragú; rabbit ragú; lamb ragú; or beef ragú. 

I frequently sauce ricotta cavatelli with leftover meat and braising liquid from a previous meal. A favorite combination includes chopped meat from chicken thighs braised in stock with sliced artichoke hearts and porcini mushrooms.

Making cavatelli with a BeeBo is so easy. Through experience I found that the key to crafting perfectly formed cavatelli with a BeeBo is rolling and cutting the strips of dough to just the right thickness and width. I find that the sweet spot is a dough strip that is approximately ¼-inch thick and ½-inch wide. But, don’t worry, even misshaped cavatelli taste great.

A couple of final notes. The BeeBo ricotta cavatelli recipe easily scales up and down. I often halve Louis’s recipe to feed 4. And I find that a stacking set of gyoza trays work really well when storing pasta. Three of these trays easily accommodates over one pound of cavatelli.