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Vincigrassi


Zee

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Last week my partner and I went to a new Italian trattoria in Vancouver and ordered a dish called Vincigrassi. Here's how it was described on the menu:

Layered pasta baked with fresh porcini, Parma ham, fontina cheese

The hidden ingredient? Dried porcini powder sprinkled atop every layer of the sauce, as the chef explained to us later.

The dish was absolutely sublime. I wouldn't mind having it every night of the week. A quick google search today yielded many results but also many variations of the dish.

I'd like to give Vincigrassi a try at home. Does anyone have a recipe that they can share?

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Last week my partner and I went to a new Italian trattoria in Vancouver and ordered a dish called Vincigrassi. Here's how it was described on the menu:

Layered pasta baked with fresh porcini, Parma ham, fontina cheese

The hidden ingredient? Dried porcini powder sprinkled atop every layer of the sauce, as the chef explained to us later.

The dish was absolutely sublime. I wouldn't mind having it every night of the week. A quick google search today yielded many results but also many variations of the dish.

I'd like to give Vincigrassi a try at home. Does anyone have a recipe that they can share?

I think the dish is "vincisgrassi" but I've no recipe available

H.B. aka "Legourmet"

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Last week my partner and I went to a new Italian trattoria in Vancouver and ordered a dish called Vincigrassi. Here's how it was described on the menu:

Layered pasta baked with fresh porcini, Parma ham, fontina cheese

The hidden ingredient? Dried porcini powder sprinkled atop every layer of the sauce, as the chef explained to us later.

The dish was absolutely sublime. I wouldn't mind having it every night of the week. A quick google search today yielded many results but also many variations of the dish.

I'd like to give Vincigrassi a try at home. Does anyone have a recipe that they can share?

Sorry; Just checked my Marcella Says and can't find it there! :sad:

"Commit random acts of senseless kindness"

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Last week my partner and I went to a new Italian trattoria in Vancouver and ordered a dish called Vincigrassi. Here's how it was described on the menu:

Layered pasta baked with fresh porcini, Parma ham, fontina cheese

The hidden ingredient? Dried porcini powder sprinkled atop every layer of the sauce, as the chef explained to us later.

The dish was absolutely sublime. I wouldn't mind having it every night of the week. A quick google search today yielded many results but also many variations of the dish.

I'd like to give Vincigrassi a try at home. Does anyone have a recipe that they can share?

Dried porcini powder! Molto Italiano. Non. Why would anyone think a dish with dried porcini powder was sublime. This reminds me of truffle oil. When one goes to a restaurant that has dishes with truffle oil... leave. This has nothing to do with Italian cooking in Italy.

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Dried porcini powder! Molto Italiano. Non. Why would anyone think a dish with dried porcini powder was sublime.

Well, I did.

This is one of the recipes I found online:

25g dried porcini

500g fresh lasagne sheets

150g unsalted butter

60g flour

1 litre milk

400g button mushrooms, sliced

extra virgin olive oil

150g prosciutto slices, finely cut

200mls cream

3 tablespoons chopped parsley

salt and freshly ground black pepper

150g freshly grated parmesan

truffle oil

Place the dried porcini in a bowl and cover with boiling water, leave for an hour. Preheat oven to 210 C Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour and cook for 2 minutes. Meanwhile heat the milk until almost boiling and add a little at a time to the sauce whisking as you add. Heat a little oil in a pan and cook the mushrooms until tender, add to the sauce along with the sliced prosciutto and the porcini with a little of their liquid. Add the cream and the parsley and bring to the boil. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Butter a lasagne dish and cover the bottom with a layer of pasta. Spread over a layer of sauce, dot with butter and sprinkle with parmesan. Continue the process finishing with a layer of sauce and a sprinkling of parmesan. Bake for 20 minutes. Splash with truffle oil and then serve. Serves 6

Seems close. I'll have my bottle of truffle oil ready.

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classic vincigrassi is a lasagna like layed pasta dish..

the ragu is made with Beef, pork and chicken livers and sliced porcini.

then layered with bechamel sauce, cheese ( I saw mozzarella listed.. )

and baked.

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I believe the people from Le Marche lay claim to this dish. I have a recipe but it calls for lots of organs, lungs, esophagus etc. If you would like it, I can PM it to you.

What you ate, may very well have been sublime, but it's a 'clean' version of the real deal. Make your recipe and enjoy! That's my advice.

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hathor, I'd definitely PM you for the recipe if I have access to lungs and esophagus in Vancouver. But wait, there is always Chinatown...

Even the 'clean' version of the dish was pretty heavy on the palate. The chef definitely wasn't skimping on the cheese and sauce.

Thanks for everyone's feedback so far!

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I believe the people from Le Marche lay claim to this dish.

Correct, it's named for Prince of Windisch-Graetz who's cook served this dish during the Napoleon Wars to his Field Marshal. I've found a recipe where veal brain, sweetbread, minced lamb meat,chicken liver and pancetta are ingredients. The secrets are Vin Santo mixed into the noodle dough and cinnamon powder in the meat sauce.

H.B. aka "Legourmet"

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  • 2 weeks later...
I believe the people from Le Marche lay claim to this dish. I have a recipe but it calls for lots of organs, lungs, esophagus etc. If you would like it, I can PM it to you.

What you ate, may very well have been sublime, but it's a 'clean' version of the real deal. Make your recipe and enjoy! That's my advice.

This is it. It's a regional specialty of Le Marche.

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I believe the people from Le Marche lay claim to this dish.

Correct, it's named for Prince of Windisch-Graetz who's cook served this dish during the Napoleon Wars to his Field Marshal. I've found a recipe where veal brain, sweetbread, minced lamb meat,chicken liver and pancetta are ingredients. The secrets are Vin Santo mixed into the noodle dough and cinnamon powder in the meat sauce.

I think that this naming is controversial: here is an extract from a blog post I did recently on just this topic:

A cookbook (Il Cuoco Maceratese) was published during his Papacy [Pius VI elected 1775] by Antonio Nebbia, which is famous on a number of counts. It documents the upper class cuisine of the time, and included mention of the fine French sauces developed by La Varenne. It also included a recipe for the famous lasagne-style dish of the Marchese region now called vincisgrassi (although he called it princisgras) which contains chicken livers, truffles and prosciutto.

The name of Nebbia’s dish is the cause of some controversy, with the popular theory that it was named for the Austrian General Windisch Graetz being impossible because the Napoleonic Wars which caused him to be in the region did not happen until long after the book was published. There are other mysteries in the world of pasta words - the origin of the word ‘lasagne’ itself for example. The first written Italian recipe occurs in a fourteenth century cookbook from Naples. However, something pasta-like called ‘loseyns’ is described in The Form of Cury – the late fourteenth century cookbook of the master chefs of King Richard II of England. An even more intriguing (but less likely) contender is a Viking-era dish called ‘langkake’.

I'm sure there are other theories, and I'd love to hear them.

Janet

Happy Feasting

Janet (a.k.a The Old Foodie)

My Blog "The Old Foodie" gives you a short food history story each weekday day, always with a historic recipe, and sometimes a historic menu.

My email address is: theoldfoodie@fastmail.fm

Anything is bearable if you can make a story out of it. N. Scott Momaday

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