Yummy Malaysiana: lasagna bolognese

This, this is my culinary Mount Everest. This twenty-layer striation of noodles, ragu, bchamel and cheese, repeated four times and then some took me more than five years to conquer. To be honest, six years ago I didnt know what it was. Sure, I had heard of lasagna but I wasnt terribly fond of it because I dont much care for the texture of ricotta once it has baked. (Ricotta, Id argue, is best rich, fresh, and cold on toast.) But I was galloping through a post on an Italian food blog and I stumbled upon a parenthesised side-thought that stopped me dead in my tracks. It said something along the lines of I dont know whose idea it was to put ricotta in lasagna but shudder. And I thought, but wait! Whats supposed to go in lasagna? But there was no answer, so I set out to find one.

Lasagna alla Bolognese is an epic dish. Oh sure, it looks like an ordinary broiled mass of cheese, pasta and meaty tomato sauce but its so much more. To make it as I dreamed from that day forward I wanted to, everything gets a lot of love and time. The ragu is cooked for hours. The bchamel (ahem, besciamella), although the simplest of the five Mother Sauces, is still a set of ingredients that must be cooked separately, and in a prescribed order. The pasta doesnt ! have to be fresh, but I figured if I was going to do this, I was going to really, really do this and I wanted fresh, delicious sheets of pasta to support the other cast members Id so lovingly craft. And the cheese? Theres just one, Parmesan, and it doesnt overwhelm.