Lasagne ai Carciofi (Italian Artichoke Lasagne) This is a white lasagne, with no tomato and no meat, in which artichokes carry the entire dish and besciamella holds it together. It sounds gentle and it is not: the artichoke is one of the wettest vegetables an Italian kitchen puts inside a baked pasta, and a lasagne built on it fails more often from flooding than from dryness. Everything below is arranged around that single problem. Yield: 6 servings. Prep: 50 minutes. Cook: 4

Lasagne Bastarde della Lunigiana (Traditional Italian Tuscan Chestnut and Wheat Lasagne) Lasagne bastarde are not lasagne in the baked sense at all. There is no oven, no bechamel, no layered ragu. In the Lunigiana, the long valley of the Magra river between the Apennines and the Ligurian sea at the top of Tuscany, the word describes sheets of pasta made from chestnut flour cut with wheat, boiled in salted water and dressed the second they leave the pot. The word bastarde refe

Lasagne Rivisitate di Zucchine (Italian Zucchini Lasagne) A lasagne without meat and without tomato is not a compromise in Italy, it is a separate tradition with its own rules. This one is built on zucchini cooked until sweet and lightly coloured, layered with egg pasta and a besciamella carrying a great deal of Parmigiano Reggiano. With no ragu underneath doing the structural work, the vegetable and the sauce have to hold the dish together on their own. The difficulty is wat