You may be heading to your favorite Italian restaurant or making a pan of this delicious dish in your oven at home. Either way is a great way to celebrate National Lasagna Day, which is recognized each year on July 29.
Lasagna, a wide flat pasta, is possibly one of the oldest kinds of pasta. There is also a dish made with this type of pasta in several layers interspersed with layers of various ingredients and sauces.
- The origin of lasagna is debated with varying theories.
- Originally the word “lasagna” referred to the pot in which the dish was cooked rather than the food itself as it does today.
- Lasagna was featured in a 14th century England cookbook.
- Cartoon character Garfield’s favorite food is lasagna.
- The earliest lasagna recipes known are dated from the thirteenth century. At that time, tomatoes were not known to Europeans. This means that they couldn’t have used them in the recipes. However, depending on the recipe, different cheeses are used.
- Boiling noodles used to be a requirement for making lasagna. No-boil noodles now exist. These are great as they soften in the oven, but it is absolutely necessary to make sure that there is a great quantity of sauce so the noodles get wet and cook while they are in the oven.
- You can make lasagna in the dish washer. All you have to do is put the ingredients together in a dish (either boils noodles or use the no boil noodles), cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil, then use the heated dry and sanitize cycle on your dishwasher to cook the lasagna.
- Weird Al Yankovic recorded a song called “Lasagna” that is a parody of “La Bamba”.
- The first recipe book to feature a modern lasagna recipe, believed to have been written by an Italian and named the Liber de Coquina, ‘the book of cookery’, was published in the 1300s.
- The term ‘lasagne’ is thought to have originated from either the Latin or Greek languages, most likely from the words ‘lasanum’ or ‘laganon’, the former meaning ‘pot’ in Latin, while the latter meaning ‘cut strips of pasta’ in Greek.
- Lasagne possibly has its origins in Ancient Greece and Rome, as a flat bread, although the Italians in Naples are believed to have first produced the modern style dish in the medieval period.
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