Italian Spinach and Ricotta Lasagne | Lasagne Rivisitate agli Spinaci e Ricotta
Spinach and ricotta is the oldest filling in the Italian repertoire that is still eaten every week, and this lasagne asks it to carry an entire dish alone. There is no ragu here, no meat of any kind, no tomato. The structure comes from three things: thin sheets of egg pasta, a spinach and ricotta layer seasoned hard enough to taste of itself, and a besciamella loose enough to finish cooking the pasta in the oven.
That absence is the whole difficulty. A meat lasagne forgives almost everything, because a long simmered ragu carries salt, fat and depth into every layer. Take the ragu out and every weakness is on the plate: wet spinach, bland ricotta, a besciamella made too thick, sheets that never softened. The compensating work happens before the pan is assembled, and it is mostly about moisture and salt.
Built properly it slices cleanly, holds its layers upright and tastes green rather than beige: a top blistered dark gold from parmigiano, an inside creamy without running, and spinach that reads as spinach.
Yield: 8 servings, one 9 by 13 inch pan. Prep: 1 hour. Cook: 45 minutes. Rest: 20 minutes. Total: about 2 hours 5 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo. Region: Emilia Romagna and Tuscany.
The Story
Lasagne is the oldest recorded pasta shape in Italy. The Roman laganum was a sheet of dough fried or cooked in broth, and by the fourteenth century the Neapolitan Liber de Coquina describes sheets boiled, layered with cheese and spices, and eaten with a pointed stick. The baked lasagne Italians recognise today is that document plus two later arrivals: besciamella from the French influenced kitchens of the north, and the tomato, which entered Italian cooking seriously only in the eighteenth century.
The spinach and ricotta pairing belongs to a different and equally old line. Across Emilia and Tuscany, fresh ricotta mixed with wilted greens, nutmeg and grated cheese has filled tortelli, ravioli and gnudi for centuries. In Parma it is made with erbette rather than spinach; in the Mugello and the Casentino it is spinach outright. It was cheap, it used up the greens of the field and the whey cheese of the dairy, and it required no meat.
That last point is why this lasagne exists. The Catholic calendar imposed many meatless days, and every region built a full dress version of its festive dish that observed them. A lasagne bound only with besciamella and filled with greens and ricotta was the Friday and Lenten answer to the ragu lasagne of Bologna, made with the same pasta and the same skill. It survived the end of compulsory abstinence because it is lighter in warm weather and can be assembled a day ahead.
Ingredients
For the pasta sheets
Italian 00 flour, 2 1/4 cups (280 g)
Fine semola rimacinata, 1/4 cup (40 g)
Large eggs, 3, at room temperature
Egg yolk, 1
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tsp (5 ml)
For the spinach and ricotta filling
Fresh spinach, 2 1/4 lb (1 kg), or frozen leaf spinach, 1 1/3 lb (600 g), thawed
Whole milk ricotta, well drained, 1 lb 2 oz (500 g)
Grated Parmigiano Reggiano, 1 cup (90 g)
Large egg, 1
Freshly grated nutmeg, 1/4 tsp (0.5 g)
Finely grated lemon zest, from 1/2 lemon
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, 1/2 tsp (1 g)
Garlic clove, 1, for the pan only
Extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
For the besciamella
Whole milk, 4 1/4 cups (1 liter)
Unsalted butter, 5 tbsp (70 g)
Italian 00 flour, 1/2 cup (70 g)
Freshly grated nutmeg, 1/4 tsp (0.5 g)
Bay leaf, 1
Fine sea salt, 1 1/4 tsp (7 g)
White pepper, 1/4 tsp (0.5 g)
For finishing
Grated Parmigiano Reggiano, 1/2 cup (45 g)
Unsalted butter, 1 tbsp (14 g), in small pieces
Extra virgin olive oil, for the dish
Preparation
Step 1
Mix and rest the pasta dough. Mound the 00 flour and semola on a board, make a well, and break in the eggs, the extra yolk, the salt and the oil. Beat with a fork, drawing flour from the inner wall until the mixture is too stiff to stir, then knead by hand for a full 10 minutes until it is smooth and springs back slowly. Wrap it tightly and rest it 30 minutes at room temperature so the gluten relaxes.
Step 2
Wilt and dry the spinach properly. Cook the washed spinach in a wide pan with the olive oil and the whole garlic clove over medium heat, in batches, just until it collapses, about 2 minutes each. Tip it into a colander, cool it enough to handle, then squeeze it hard in handfuls until no more water comes out. Two and a quarter pounds of raw leaf reduces to roughly 10 oz (280 g) here. A wet filling cannot be corrected later.
Step 3
Chop and season the filling. Discard the garlic and chop the squeezed spinach on a board rather than in a processor, which turns it to green paste. Fold it into the drained ricotta with the parmigiano, the egg, nutmeg, lemon zest, salt and pepper until evenly green rather than streaked. Taste it critically: it should be saltier than you would want by the spoonful, because pasta and besciamella will dilute it in the pan.
Step 4
Make the besciamella loose. Warm the milk with the bay leaf until it steams. Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan, whisk in the flour and cook the roux over medium low heat for 2 minutes without letting it colour. Pour in the hot milk in three additions, whisking hard after each, and simmer 6 to 8 minutes. Season with salt, white pepper and nutmeg, remove the bay leaf, and stop while it still pours freely from the whisk like heavy cream.
Step 5
Roll and cut the sheets. Divide the rested dough into six pieces and keep them covered. Flatten one, pass it through the widest setting of the machine folding and repeating three times, then roll it down setting by setting to about 1 mm, thin enough to read large print through. Cut the strips to fit your pan, dust them with semola and lay them flat on cloth lined trays. Never stack them dry or they fuse.
Step 6
Blanch and cool the sheets. Bring a wide pot of water to a rolling boil and salt it properly, about 1 tbsp (18 g) per 4 quarts (4 liters). Blanch the sheets two or three at a time for 45 seconds only, lift them with a spider and drop them into cold water. Spread them flat on damp cloths in one layer. They are still short of al dente, which is correct: the oven finishes them on the water in the besciamella.
Step 7
Assemble the layers. Oil the dish, then spread a thin film of besciamella over the base so the first sheet cannot stick. Lay down pasta with the edges just overlapping, then a thin even layer of filling, a ladle of besciamella spread to the corners, and a dusting of parmigiano. Repeat for five layers of pasta, finishing with pasta, a generous coat of besciamella, the last parmigiano and the butter in small pieces.
Step 8
Bake, rest and cut. Bake at 375°F (190°C) for 35 minutes covered loosely with foil, then uncover for 10 to 15 minutes more until the top is blistered and dark gold at the edges. A skewer pushed into the centre should meet no resistance and come out hot to the wrist. Rest it a full 20 minutes before cutting: the starch and egg set as the temperature falls.
Plating
Cut with a thin sharp knife, wiping the blade between cuts, and lift each portion with a wide offset spatula slid under the base so the bottom sheet comes with it. Serve on warmed plates, never hot ones: a plate from a warming drawer keeps cooking the underside and turns the besciamella oily. Around 120°F (50°C) is right.
Set the piece on its side, cut face towards the diner, so the five layers are visible. The dish earns its appearance from that cross section, the green seams reading clearly between pale pasta and cream, and nothing should be piled on top to hide it. Finish with a little grated parmigiano, a thread of good olive oil around the base and a turn of black pepper. No extra besciamella should be spooned around the piece: a lasagne built correctly carries all the sauce it needs inside.
Professional Technique
The governing technique in a lasagne bianca is water accounting. Every component arrives carrying moisture and the oven redistributes all of it. Raw spinach is roughly 91 percent water, ricotta about 72 percent, and besciamella is milk by volume. The pasta, blanched short of al dente, is the only component that wants to absorb water, and it will take between 15 and 20 percent of its own weight during the bake. A lasagne is correctly built when the water the pasta wants and the water the other layers release are close to equal.
That is why the two adjustments here move in opposite directions. Squeezing the spinach to near dryness removes water the pasta cannot use, because it arrives all at once at the filling seam and pools there. Keeping the besciamella loose adds that water back in the one place the pasta can reach it, spread evenly across the sheet. The second technique is salting the filling against the dilution of the whole: ricotta is close to unsalted, spinach loses salt with every squeeze, and the besciamella is seasoned only for its own volume.
Texture and Moisture Control
Three textures have to arrive together: pasta tender with a faint bite at the edge of each sheet, a filling creamy and grainy at once in the way good ricotta is, and a top that is genuinely crisp. They fail independently. Pasta rolled too thick never hydrates through and stays chalky. Pasta blanched a minute too long turns to paper. Ricotta that was not drained weeps into the layer below and leaves a watery line under every seam.
Drain the ricotta whether or not it looks wet: a fine mesh sieve over a bowl in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, or overnight for supermarket ricotta, which is almost always the wettest. The egg is the second control, since it sets during the bake and binds the ricotta into a sliceable layer, which is why the rest afterwards matters. The crust is a matter of the final 15 minutes: covering the dish early traps steam and drives heat into the centre so the pasta hydrates, then uncovering lets the surface dry and the parmigiano brown. Reverse that order and you get a hard skin over a raw middle.
Professional Mise en Place
This lasagne is built in advance and finished in the oven, which makes it one of the calmest dishes to run for a table of eight. The assembled pan improves from a night in the refrigerator.
Equipment and tools
Pasta machine or a long rolling pin, plus a bench scraper
9 by 13 inch (23 by 33 cm) baking dish, 2 1/2 inches (6 cm) deep
Wide pot for blanching, spider skimmer, bowl of cold water
Heavy saucepan and a balloon whisk for the besciamella
Fine mesh sieve for draining the ricotta, clean cloths for the sheets
Prepared ahead
Ricotta draining in the refrigerator, overnight
Pasta dough made and rested, up to 1 day ahead, wrapped and refrigerated
Spinach wilted, squeezed and chopped, up to 1 day ahead
Besciamella up to 1 day ahead, surface covered with buttered paper
The lasagne assembled and refrigerated up to 24 hours before baking
Service setup
Oven fully preheated to 375°F (190°C) with a rack in the middle
Assembled pan out of the refrigerator 45 minutes before it goes in
Add 10 minutes to the covered bake if the pan is still cold
Plates warmed to about 120°F (50°C), thin knife and spatula to hand
Timer set for the rest, the step everyone skips
Chef Tips
Weigh the spinach after squeezing, not before. Bunches vary enormously in stem and water, and the number that matters is the 10 oz (280 g) of squeezed leaf that goes into the ricotta. Short of it the filling turns pale and dairy heavy; well over it goes dry and will not bind.
Buy ricotta from a cheese counter rather than a sealed tub if you can. Tub ricotta is usually stabilised with gums that stop it draining properly and it tastes flat next to a fresh dairy ricotta. If a tub is all there is, drain it overnight and raise the parmigiano in the filling slightly.
Build the lasagne the day before and bake it the day you serve it. The sheets absorb besciamella overnight, the seasoning equalises, and it slices more cleanly than one assembled and baked within the hour. Cover it with buttered paper rather than foil pressed onto the surface.
If you use dried sheets, choose egg sheets that need no boiling and raise the besciamella by roughly 1 cup (240 ml). Dried sheets absorb far more liquid, and a lasagne built to fresh pasta proportions comes out with a hard chalky layer in the middle.
Common Mistakes
Not squeezing the spinach hard enough. This is the failure behind nine out of ten watery lasagne. A handful that still drips when pressed releases that water into the filling seam and leaves a grey pool under every layer. Squeeze in small handfuls until nothing more comes out.
Making the besciamella too thick. A stiff sauce cannot migrate into the pasta, so the sheets stay chalky and the dish is dry. It should pour off the whisk in a ribbon, closer to heavy cream than pudding, and it thickens in the oven regardless.
Underseasoning the filling. Ricotta and spinach are both mild and the besciamella around them is seasoned only for itself. A filling that tastes correct on the spoon tastes of nothing once it is one layer in five. Season it until it is slightly too salty alone.
Cutting the lasagne straight from the oven. The egg and starch are still liquid at that point and the slice collapses the moment it leaves the pan. Twenty minutes of rest is the difference between a portion and a spoonful.
Overblanching the fresh sheets. Forty five seconds is enough. Sheets boiled two or three minutes arrive already cooked, then take on besciamella for another 45 minutes in the oven and end up with no structure.
Wine Pairing
Soave Superiore DOCG: The most natural match and the one to reach for first. Garganega from the volcanic soils east of Verona gives quiet white flower and almond aromatics with a saline finish, and its moderate acidity lifts the besciamella without cutting across the ricotta. No oak, no tropical fruit, so nothing competes with the nutmeg.
Lugana DOC: Turbiana from the southern shore of Lake Garda, and the answer when the lasagne is particularly rich. It has more body and a rounder texture than most Italian whites of its weight, so it meets the dairy on equal terms instead of being swallowed, while a firm citrus spine keeps each mouthful light.
Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico Riserva DOCG: The choice for a lasagne finished with a lot of parmigiano. Riserva bottlings spend longer on the lees and gain a creamy weight that mirrors the besciamella, while the variety keeps its high acidity and bitter almond close. That bitterness resets the palate after each forkful of dairy.
Colli Bolognesi Pignoletto DOCG: The local bottle for a dish of this ancestry, from the hills south of Bologna where egg pasta and besciamella belong. Grechetto gentile gives a crisp dry white with green apple and a herbaceous edge that runs alongside the spinach rather than against it. Light, and meant to be.
Bardolino DOC: For anyone who wants a red with a meatless lasagne, this is the sensible one. Corvina based and deliberately pale, it carries red cherry fruit, almost no tannin and bright acidity, and served cool at about 57°F (14°C) it refreshes rather than weighs. A structured Tuscan red would flatten the ricotta.
Storage & Reheating
Cooled leftovers keep refrigerated up to 3 days, covered tightly or cut into portions in airtight containers. Cool the pan to room temperature within about 2 hours first. Unbaked assembled lasagne keeps 24 hours refrigerated and bakes from cold with an extra 10 minutes under the foil.
Reheat portions in the oven, never the microwave, which boils the water in the besciamella and splits it into oil and curd. Set the piece in a small dish, add 2 tbsp (30 ml) of milk around the base, cover with foil and give it 20 to 25 minutes at 325°F (165°C) until hot through. The milk turns to steam and rehydrates the pasta, which is exactly the problem with reheated lasagne. Uncover for the last 5 minutes to recover the top.
It freezes well, baked or raw, in portions, double wrapped, for up to 2 months. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator and reheat as above; a frozen raw pan baked from solid scorches on top long before the centre is hot. Do not refreeze anything already thawed.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 8 portions from one 9 by 13 inch pan:
Calories: 520 kcal
Total Fat: 26 g
Saturated Fat: 13 g
Trans Fat: 0.4 g
Unsaturated Fat: 11 g
Cholesterol: 160 mg
Sodium: 730 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 44 g
Fiber: 4 g
Total Sugars: 8 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 26 g
Lactose: 6 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, vitamin A, vitamin K, folate, iron, magnesium, riboflavin
These figures are estimates. Most of the salt in the blanching water is discarded, and the sodium varies with the parmigiano used.
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