Vincisgrassi

A Marche baked pasta with offal in the sauce and marsala in the dough.

Chicken, Pork, Veal, Egg. Not vegetarian — contains chicken, parmesan whose rennet the source does not name, pork, veal.

Ingredients

• 300 g plain flour, 3 eggs and 2 tablespoons marsala, for the sheets
• 300 g chicken livers, trimmed
• 200 g veal sweetbreads, blanched and peeled
• 200 g minced veal
• 100 g prosciutto, diced
• 1 onion, chopped
• 150 ml marsala
• 300 g passata
• nutmeg and cloves
• 1 litre milk, 70 g butter and 70 g flour, for the besciamella
• 120 g parmesan, grated
• 2 teaspoons salt

Method

1. PUT MARSALA IN THE PASTA DOUGH, two spoons with the eggs. It is the first sign this is not a lasagna: the sheets end up faintly sweet and a shade darker.
2. Blanch the sweetbreads 5 minutes, cool them, and peel off the membrane. Skipping that leaves them rubbery.
3. Soften the onion, brown the minced veal and prosciutto, then add the chopped livers and sweetbreads for 5 minutes only — offal cooked long goes grainy.
4. Add the marsala, let it reduce, then the passata, nutmeg and cloves, and cook 40 minutes.
5. Make a loose besciamella and keep it pourable.
6. Roll and blanch the sheets, then build SEVEN OR MORE THIN LAYERS — more than a lasagna, and thinner, which is how the Marche does it.
7. Bake at 180C for 40 minutes and rest it 20 before cutting.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes