Le lasagne in un ristorante Michelin emiliano con Massimo Spigaroli - Antica Corte Pallavicina*

Hello, everyone! I'm Massimo Spigaroli. I am chef and owner, together with my brother Luciano, of Antica Corte Pallavicina. We are in this place, let's say ancient, built by the Marquises Pallavicino in 1320, where in the cellars, even today, that important product ages: it is our culatello, above all a product linked to our family. Until 1882, my great-grandfather produced this sausage for the master Giuseppe Verdi and today I am here. I am lucky to have been chosen to launch this important competition: Acqua di Chef. I feel very honored. Since the theme of Acqua di Chef this year is lasagna, I'm going to tell you about my lasagna.

Out of the respect I have for my entire family, my entire history, my entire tradition, I have to present to you the lasagna that I have been seeing since the beginning, the real one, the one that perhaps made this dish a global phenomenon. . Let's start by making a good ragù. We take the carrot, celery and onion, cutting them finely. Let's take the meat, it is the meat of our bovine. Normally we use a mixed meat of the whole animal. Today we used a beef shoulder. We grind it very finely and at the end we add a sausage, an important sausage, and then we start making this ragù.

We take a pot, adding a little oil to roast our vegetables. Later, when they are well roasted and cooked, we add the meat. We roast it, letting it dry well, releasing all these juices. It's not about losing them, it's just about losing the volatile part, let's say, the watery part, so that all the flavors stay in our base. To this we add an important wine, a wine from the territory: Carlo Verdi. Why Carlos Verdi? Because the maestro Giuseppe Verdi loved these still wines. He bought the vine plants in the Bordeaux area, implanting this vine in his father's company, called Carlo Verdi.

Today we rent it, so we still have this wine. But let's continue adding the wine, letting it evaporate, adding the tomato and mixing. A little bit of water, so we are giving it the liquid part. A little salt and we just let it cook. It is going to cook slowly, almost on the edge of the stove, for at least 3-4 hours. Meanwhile we prepare the fresh pasta. The recipe is quite simple: 10 eggs for every kilo of flour, and then we add a little salt, incorporating and kneading well, making sure it is well incorporated, then we spread it finely.

We spread the pasta very thin and at the end we cut it. We scald it for no more than a minute, half a minute. We take out the pasta when the water boils again. We do this to prevent it from sticking and the pasta from losing a bit of that glutinous flavor. Now we strain it very carefully, moving it in water and ice, just for a moment, there is no need to wash it. Then we will let it drain. We still need béchamel, which is the French name used at home, not 'besciamella', but béchamel, a very simple and contaminated sauce from our territory.

We start with the butter, melting it. We add the flour, letting it cook, it is called roux, still using the French term. Meanwhile, we will have boiled the milk. So we add the roux to the milk and, little by little, we will see how it thickens. A little spanking. We add a little nutmeg, salt and let it cook slowly. It must be cooked, otherwise we will end up with a béchamel that tastes like flour and this becomes a big defect. Lasagna is an important dish. It is a difficult dish, perhaps one of the most difficult since it includes many different recipes that all converge in a single dish.

We are ready to assemble the lasagna. We take a deep tray, spread it with butter and begin to create our layers. We add the bechamel, the ragù, a little parmesan and then we add the pasta. We will do this four times. The pasta has to be very fine, there has to be love in the way this ragù is poured, in the way the bechamel is poured, because as my aunt Emilia said, in the end everyone should eat it the same. , that is, not only the garnish: béchamel and ragù in the middle, but also on the sides, because, as she said, only the pizza has dough only on the edges and does not have mozzarella.

Lasagna is lasagna and should be 100% the same. After proceeding with these layers, in the end we look at it with satisfaction. We add all the angles of the pasta that can then be dried and then we finish it again with our bechamel, with our ragù and our parmigiano. We put it in the oven at a temperature between 160 and 170°C. It needs time, otherwise it would burn on top and stay cold in the middle. It needs cooking, since we have just blanched the pasta, because the béchamel and ragù must be absorbed by the pasta and eventually, slowly, in 40 minutes or more, depending on the size.

Then we take it out of the oven and let it rest again for 5 or 6 more minutes, even 10, covered with a cloth. This is the sublimation of our Italy. This is my lasagna. I couldn't have done it any other way. I was born in Emilia, in Parma. If someone makes an old dish, they may think it's old, but it's more of a form of gratitude to my territory, to my family. Now, anyway, it's time for the other chefs to get to work: lasagna is lasagna; This is the historical one and you can do what you want, however you want, because it means that the world moves forward.

Contamination of a dish means that this dish has a future! My best wishes to all!