When I was writing a book about pasta, an acquaintance from Naples who lives in Chișinău, Moldova, with his Welsh wife suggested that the first step with lasagne is to approach it like a town planner. That is, first work out the size of the dish in relation to the size of the pasta sheets (this applies to both fresh and dried), then decide how many layers you want, not only to establish how many sheets you need, but also to proportion the various fillings accordingly. We also decided that the construction of a lasagne should be like that of a bricklayer combined with a Jackson Pollock approach to the sauces.
My ceramic lasagne dish is 30cm x 20cm, and three 10cm x 25cm dried lasagne sheets make a single layer in it, so a five-layer lasagne requires 15 sheets. Most dried lasagne sold today doesn’t require pre-cooking or soaking, but those sheets depend on the sauce being liquid enough to provide enough moisture to hydrate and cook them. Dry sheets also require a relatively long cooking time, so, in the case of today’s lasagne, which involves a dense and creamy, rather than a liquid sauce, I dip the sheets into boiling water for 30 seconds, then in cold water and then lay them on a tea towel to dry, which gives them a head start. It also reduces the total cooking time, which suits the delicate texture of the courgette and ricotta in the sauce.
