Despite similar ingredients, I'm disappointed by the results – in the grand scheme of things, this is a decent dish, but the robustly savoury slow-cooked version is a hard act to follow.Īngela Hartnett compromises on a two-hour simmer for her sauce, but with the important distinction of using finely diced chuck or rump steak instead of minced beef – more Italian, apparently. It's an undeniably lengthy process, however, and I'm seduced by the recipe in The Silver Spoon, which simmers its minced beef sauce for just 30 minutes before assembling the lasagne. Layered, in the Locatelli fashion, with béchamel sauce and fresh egg pasta, and topped with 'lots of grated parmesan that will crisp up in the oven', I'm pretty pleased with this first attempt – the lasagne has plenty of structural integrity, and a rich meaty flavour that works as well here as the spaghetti it was originally designed to complement. At Locanda Locatelli, they make it with their standard ragù alla bolognese, which, having tried and found wanting, I'm substituting for my own perfect bolognese sauce, which gently fries a mixture of coarsely minced beef, streaky bacon and finely chopped chicken livers with onion, carrot and celery, then slow-cooks the lot with milk, white wine and chopped tomatoes. MeatĪlthough we're not aiming for 'sheets of pasta floating in minced beef', as Locatelli has it, as the principle flavour of any such lasagne, the meat aspect still deserves careful consideration. So, for the avoidance of doubt, this article refers to a baked dish of lasagne and bolognese sauce – those in search of the perfect sausage and garlic, or chicken tikka versions must continue their quest elsewhere. It's a bit like referring to steak and ale pie as simply 'pie' – you've got a rough idea of what you're going to get, but the all-important specifics are missing. While we're beating ourselves with the authenticity stick, even the name's misleading: strictly, lasagne refers to flat, thin sheets of pasta – the same ones used in what is correctly referred to as lasagne al forno – baked lasagne, which, in the UK at least, tends to mean lasagne alla bolognese, or lasagne with a meaty, tomatoey sauce.

'What I see is not lasagne,' he scolds, 'but a version of shepherd's pie, only made with pasta instead of potato.' All credit to us for our inspired fusion cooking – sometimes a gloopy, cheese feast just hits the spot – but I sense that a perfect lasagne will need to be truer to the original spirit of the dish to really cut the mostarda. In fact, Giorgio Locatelli describes lasagne in Made in Italy: Food and Stories as a 'sturdy, quite dry pasta dish' which would come as news to fans of even the poshest of supermarket versions. The most striking thing about the new arrival was its proud and noble bearing – it stood up straight, rather than oozing saucily outwards across the plate like the stuff which came out of the college kitchen.

As a pasta dish which contained neither tuna nor sweetcorn, it was bound to be a marvel, but there were other reasons for falling upon this manna from heaven – or, at least, Highgate. I was quite taken aback the first time I encountered the real thing – or a London delicatessen's version of the real thing, which arrived in our mouldy student dwelling courtesy of a parent visiting from the Big Smoke. A h, the homely lasagne: a dish which, if not exactly lost in translation has, in the grand British tradition, been considerably mangled.

Perfect layers 2