By Donna M. Airoldi
Special to DNAinfo
MANHATTAN— New Yorkers gave a resounding thumbs down to celebrity chef Sandra Lee’s lasagna recipe after it got dissed by her boyfriend Andrew Cuomo’s mother for using cottage cheese and tomato soup.
So DNAinfo asked some of the city's best Italian chefs to weigh in.
“It's definitely not the original recipe,” said Alain Allegretti, chef and owner of Allegretti restaurant in the Flatiron District, of Lee's technique. “You start with pasta, then you add beef with tomato sauce and a white sauce, béchamel. That is the original recipe of the lasagna.” (Bechamel sauce is a mixture of butter, flour and milk.)
While Allegretti couldn't condone Lee's Food Network shortcuts, he lent a little support to her rejection of ricotta cheese.
“The ricotta is not necessary,” said Allegretti, who was born in France and raised in Italy.
Cesare Casella, cookbook author, chef and owner of Salumeria Rosi on the Upper West side, also uses a basic béchamel lasagna recipe, but said the use of other ingredients depends on geography.
Casella identified three main schools of Italian lasagna: the standard béchamel recipe used particularly in central and northern Italy, the mozzarella recipe used mainly in the Campania region, and the ricotta-centric recipes of Naples and Sicily.
“Where you come from is very important for the ingredients. The way to cook in Italy changes so much from north to south,” said Casella, who's currently writing a cookbook called "True Italian" that focuses on teaching Americans about traditional Italian ingredients.
“If you’re talking serious Italian lasagna, it’s a culture. It’s regional and each town, each family, is very proud of their own recipes,” said Casella. “For Italians, it’s a very sentimental dish. If you say there’s this recipe with tomato soup and cottage cheese, Italians will say, ‘What do the Americans know?’”
Casella suggested that Lee’s recipe may be for people in a rush, but said there's no confusing her finished product with the real thing.
“It’s like lasagna, but impossible to call it lasagna,” Casella said. “You can make it with taco shells instead of pasta, but then it’s impossible to call it lasagna."
For home cooks looking to shave their lasagna prep time, Allegretti suggested pre-made dry pasta and canned tomato sauce, instead of tomato soup.
“I probably shouldn’t say this, but there are some very good tomato sauces in cans now available,” said Allegretti. “It makes life easier, since it takes a lot of time to make homemade pasta and good tomato sauce.”
As for tips for Andrew Cuomo, Casella split his lasagna advice straight down the middle.
“He’ll gain more weight, but he should eat both dishes—for lunch, Sandra’s; at night, his mother’s.”
