The legendary Marcella Hazan passed away one year ago on September 29th. A few years ago, I not only became enamored with her teaching and her famous cookbook, the Essentials of Classical Italian Cooking, I became captivated by her story and her approach to Italian cooking, and wrote about it here, featuring the many dishes I have made from her teaching.

This week I sat in Milan and had the opportunity to eat green lasagna, which answered the question for me as to how well I captured the recipe. Let me quickly answer your question first.

What is green lasagna? Funny enough, it was a “green lasagna” google search in 2008 that led me a blog, which led me to founding Spinach Tiger. However, I had a different green lasagna in mind, and it would be a few years until I would discover what green lasagna is to a true Italian.

Green lasagna is made with green (spinach) noodles, and layered with bolognese and bechemel. It’s not a ricotta and spinach filling, as I once thought. The Italians reserve that mainly for ravioli and that can be found all over Northern Italy. The green lasagna was not so easy to come by, and sometime next week, I’ll show you what it looked like and how very similar it was to this dish.

This is not the heavy lasagna we are all most familiar with. However, it is a very rich dish.

Green Lasagna is a bit of process to make, but no more complicated than a good mac and cheese. The bolognese takes time to prepare. While bolognese is fairly easy to put together, it requires several hours to simmer.

Bolognese is not a spaghetti sauce, in that it’s not a tomato sauce with meat, but it’s rather a meat sauce with some tomato, made gently soothing by the addition of white wine and milk. I encourage you to make a triple batch of bolognese because it freezes well and is quite suitable for a wide pasta such as a papparadelle, crepes, risotto, or even my American twist of the sloppy Joe, using a different Marcella bolognese recipe, with pancetta, sausage, beef and pork,  which is probably my favorite. The first bolognese I tried is also very good but only uses one meat.

You can make two pans of green lasagna and freeze one, which is another recommendation.

The beauty of this dish is its balance and delicate flavor. Green lasagna is very rich and not meant to be eaten in a large portion, and remember there is always tomorrow.

First, choose which bechemel sauce you want to use. For this dish, I would probably go with the all beef bolognese. (Link inside recipe).

Print

Baked Green Lasagna with Meat Sauce, Bolognese Style

Authentic Green Lasagna adapted from Essentials of Classical Italian Cooking from Marcella Hazan.

Course Entree

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 1 hour hour

Cook Time 4 hours hours

Total Time 5 hours hours

Servings 8

Author Angela Roberts

Ingredients

• !Bolognese Recipe found here

Spinach Pasta Recipe Ingredients

• 6 ounces fresh spinach rinsed, dried thoroughly
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 2 large eggs
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Bêchemel Sauce Ingredients

• 3 cups milk
• 6 tablespoons butter
• 4 1/2 tablespoons flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• dash of nutmeg

Instructions

Spinach Pasta Instructions

• Mix spinach and flour together before adding egg. You can do by hand or in mixer with dough hook.
• Knead for about 5 minutes (if by hand).
• Wrap in plastic. Rest dough 30 minutes. During this time you can make Bêchemel sauce. Rolls out into wide 10 inch strips as thin as you can without tearing. You are going to make six layers of this pasta, but it will be as light as a feather.
• Cook pasta in large pot of salted water, a few at a time. Blanch for a minute or less, and immediately put into bowl of ice water. Remember to keep changing water with every few pasta strips to keep it ice cold. Then squeeze water out of pasta and dry on clean towels. This is important so pasta will not get mushy. It feels funny to wring out pasta, but it works.

Bechemel Sauce Instructions

• Heat milk to a strong simmer. Heat flour and butter together without browning flour. Remove from heat.
• Add hot milk to flour-butter mixture one tablespoon at a time. Put back on the heat and cook stirring constantly until thick.

Assembly

• Reserve enough bechemel sauce for the top. Mix remaining bechemel with bolognese sauce f
• or the inside layers and top it with bêchemel. Top with Parmesan.
• Bake until bubbly at 400 degrees in uppermost rack of oven. Marcella suggests no longer than 15 minutes. If refrigerated, cook longer.
• Left over spinach lasagna noodles (or make extra) are delicious with just the sauce.

We would love for  you to follow us on social media. The full European vacation posts will, of course, be here, so please subscribe and never miss a post.

The post Baked Green Lasagna with Meat Sauce, Bolognese Style appeared first on Spinach Tiger.

I did not follow Marcella’s exact instructions, which called for 2-inch square ravioli. I made some square and some round and some much bigger than the recipe. I also had no amaretti cookies, but I did have some organic maple almond granola bought directly from the maker, and ground it to a powder in a food processor.

And, instead of making a butter cream sauce, I chose a browned butter with sweet onion, fresh sage, rosemary, thyme and parsley. It was delicious.

I hope this is not to much of a departure from the essence of the original, but I give myself full permission to adapt recipes, otherwise I might not be able to make them at all.

I often find that when helping others learn to cook, they rely too much upon the recipe, and then when they do make substitutes, it’s in the wrong places. But, I would rather see a home cook practice adaptation and learn from it, than maintain a rigid stance that the cookbook author never would do. A home cook must learn to trust their own taste buds, because all recipes require adaptation, as ingredients are not constants.

How to Not Follow a Recipe

1. Understand the spirit of the chef  This is an art that I have developed, not out of rebellion, but more practicality and in keeping with the spirit and integrity of the cook behind the recipe. Often I’ll ask, does this substitute keep the integrity of the dish or recreate a new one. Sometimes, driving across town to get one ingredient (like amaretti cookies) might be the opposite of what the author intended or would do herself. And, to purchase a tin of cookies because I only need two is not being smart in the kitchen. But, I don’t let that stop me from going forward with the recipe.
2. Understand the frame of reference of the chef  Italians made food great by perfecting what they had access to. And, while I would love to be in the little town of Ferrara, eating Cappellaci made from zucca barucca, I am here eating a delicious dish inspired by that town, using an granola from a local artisan, sweet potatoes and eggs (for the pasta) from my local farmer, and herbs from my own garden.
3. Understand the Ingredients and why they are in the dish
   The things that made this dish “the dish” were not compromised. Prosciutto, and plenty of freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano graced the ravioli, and these are the two ingredients I would never substitute or leave out.

Taste
When making the filling, I was tempted to reduce the amount of cheese, but when I tasted it, I realized it needed the full amount. Some prosciutto is more salty than others, some cheeses more salty, etc. so tasting a dish along the way is key, because all recipes need adaptation.

The Sauce
Marcella’s has a few pages devoted to sauce and pasta pairing. A butter, cream sauce was recommended and I can see how makes sense, but the sun was shining, and the autumn chill tickled my fall herb taste buds. I made a browned butter not too different from the familiar sage browned butter sauce, but also included rosemary, thyme, and some sweet onion.

Print

Cooking Italy: Cappellacci--Ravioli Filled with Sweet Potatoes, Autumn Browned Butter

Sweet Potato Filled Ravioli,, adapted from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, paired with my own Sage Brown Butter

Course Entree

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 2 hours hours

Cook Time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 2 hours hours 30 minutes minutes

Servings 4

Author Angela Roberts

Ingredients

Cappellacci-Ravioi Filled with Sweet Potatoes

• 1 3/4 pounds orange-fleshed sweet potatoes I used 2 large
• 2 amaretti cookies imported from Italy (I used ground maple almond granola)
• 1 egg yolk
• 3 tablespoons chopped prosciutto
• 1 1/2 cups parmigiano-reggiano cheese
• 3 tablespoons parsley chopped very fine
• whole nutmeg
• salt

Autumn Browned Butter, my own recipe

• 1/2 sweet onion chopped finely
• 6 juniper berries optional
• 4 -6 tablespoons butter
• 6 small sage leaves
• 1 sprig rosemary
• 2 sprigs thyme
• 3 sprigs parsley

Instructions

Cappellacci-Ravioli Filled with Sweet Potatoes

• Roast potatoes at 400 degrees until soft (about 40-50 minutes, depending on size. Remove skins. Add remaining ingredients. Mix well.
• Egg Pasta (recipe for ravioli can be found here) Skip the herbs)
• Cook ravioli in large pot of boiling, salted water. Cook just until al dente, 3-5 minutes.

Autumn Browned Butter

• Heat onion in butter with sage until onion and sage are crispy
• Remove other herbs before serving, Garnish with crispy sage.

The post Cooking Italy: Cappellacci–Ravioli Filled with Sweet Potatoes, Autumn Browned Butter appeared first on Spinach Tiger.