As an Italian I am contractually bound to replying that there is no mozzarella nor ricotta nor cream in traditional meat lasagne. It's a bechamel sauce, made of milk. Booo!
Side note: bechamel lasagne is usually called lasagne al forno and I think it comes from Bologna. In many other parts of Italy they don't use bechamel in their traditional lasagnes, and they often do use ricotta and mozzarella.
So like a snapshot of Italian culture as it was a few generations back like how Quebec is a snapshot of historic France and Newfoundland is a snapshot of england
It's not a really strong identity, we don't cultivate the ancestry like Americans do, so unfortunately I don't speak the language, neither do most of the ~30M italian descendants in the south. The deeper into the countryside you go though, you start hearing old dialects of italian (and german).
I make lasagna using bechamel sauce as well, but you'll also find videos with chefs that add mozarella (or other cheeses) to their bechamel sauce. So a traditional recipe can be sabotaged at every stage of the process!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_cucchiaio_d%27argento
https://www.phaidon.com/store/food-cook/the-silver-spoon-978...
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/5006077 (The translation into English was a small miracle)
> As an example, I made the carbonara in this book which calls for (among other ingredients) ... "4 cloves of garlic" & "1/4 cup dry white wine" & "2 Large Eggs".
> Upon further research, an authentic Italian carbonara has no garlic, no white wine and only the yolks of eggs.
> I have found several recipes in this book already which are not true to the original recipes. Granted, this may not worry some people, but please bare in mind that if you are looking for true authentic Italian recipes ... look elsewhere. This book will not give it to you.
Wikipedia can be helpful for translating the dish name. They'll either list the name directly, or you can switch to the version of the article in the dish's home language.
Difficulty: this is less useful for Indian dishes because they'll almost always include ingredients an American won't have in even a stocked-for-Indian-dishes kitchen. Usually a great strategy for European dishes, at least, though.
They are 100% authentic Italian by definition, but if you are looking for THE singular authentic Lasagna recipe you aren’t going to find it. Even within Italy there are huge regional variations, and the practice is continually evolving to this day.
I really like this chef’s outro (another lasagna video: https://youtu.be/zXZq6crD6WI) Basically he says “This is how I make it and honour my region and my ancestors, but you should make it however you like, and experiment, because it means the food is alive”.
0: https://www.phaidon.com/store/food-cook/the-silver-spoon-978... 1: https://evanfunke.com/orderamericansfoglino
you can generally put all British, German or US cooking "evolvements" put into this category. thankfully the recent "fusion" cooking doesn't involve anything related to these evolvements, only the good asian and central american kitchens.