Lasagne is like life; like a relationship. It has layers. It’s complicated. A good one takes work but it is even better the next day. It gives you the rough with the smooth. It’s loads of fun once you get between the sheets. (Alright that’s quite enough of that now. We get the point – Ed)

It is also spelt differently depending on where you are from in Italy. It’s ‘lasagne’ in the north and generally ‘lasagna’ in the south. So, for the sake of unity let’s just call it ‘lasagn-yeah’ because we all love it so much.

Lasagn-yeah – those textbook silken pasta sheets tucked between layers of bolognese and bechamel – is one of the most famous Italian foods in the world; loved from Leichhardt to London. Yet different versions exist across Italy, and it is so much more than the Emilian archetype (lasagne al forno) that has become famous overseas and which relies on a meat sauce that is scarcely known in traditional Italian cookbooks.

The original lasagne of Naples 
The original lasagne is most commonly traced to medieval Naples. Instead of bechamel and meat sauce, there’s grated cheese and crumbled sausage. Don’t believe anyone who says it featured a tomato sauce – tomatoes hadn’t arrived in Europe at that time.

The lasagne of marche 
Vincisgrassi might be the most decadent of all lasagnes. Originally from the Marche region, this version uses bechamel as a topping, with pasta sheets separated by a sauce of pancetta, prosciutto and chicken giblets ruddy with tomato puree and white wine.

The unbaked lasagne
Way back (at least six months ago) restaurants layered splotches of sauces and angular ingredients on plates blanketed with blanched handkerchiefs of pasta and called it ‘lasagne’. I have discovered that these lighter lasagnes actually have Italian antecedents. In Genoa they layer pasta sheets with pesto mixed with fresh ricotta. Olive oil dresses that small stack of milky basil freshness.

The meat-lovers lasagne
Perhaps my most favourite lasagne is the meat-lover’s version served to me by the wonderful Ms Di Pasquale who looks after, and largely enables, my ridiculous TV wardrobe. Calabrian in origin, it not only has mortadella in it but also hard-boiled eggs, which sounds ridiculous until you taste their pristine presence among all this meaty decadence. Try it and discover yet another wonderful Italian lasagne. Can I get a “Hell yeah, lasagn-yeah”.

See here for Matt’s calabrian lasagne 3.0 (sagna chine) recipe.