The Best Way to Layer a Lasagna (The Italian Way)

Everything in this video, written down — www.lacucinavera.com A lasagna is not a stack of ingredients. It is a structure held together by swollen starch and cooled fat. A noodle does not know when to stop drinking. Pour a thin, unreduced sauce over it and it drinks too much, turns to paste, and the layer above has nothing left to hold onto. Add wet ricotta straight from the tub and that is a second flood. Your lasagna never collapsed because you are not a cook. It collapsed because two liquids were fighting one gel. The short of it: reduce the sauce until a spoon leaves a bare trail for a full second. Thin coat of sauce on bare metal first, then dry noodles edge to edge, never doubled. Strain the ricotta and beat in one egg per pound. Hard cheese scattered between, mozzarella on top only. Four layers, each no taller than a finger is wide. Covered for thirty-five minutes, uncovered for fifteen. Then wait twenty minutes before the knife. The gel sets as it cools, not in the oven. Tell me in the comments whether that first slice held its shape, and tell me your county and where your family came from. I read every one. La Cucina Vera — the whole method written down, 79 pages, nineteen dollars, thirty days to change your mind. www.lacucinavera.com