I fully agree with the round part, but to me, lasagne is probably the single most perfect dish for anything even heavily tannic. All that butter in the béchamel (besciamella) sauce and proteins from the meat are more than enough to tame down even the most aggressive tannins. When I’m making a lasagne at home, I never think of how tannic a wine is when I’m looking for a wine to go with the food. Basically all I need to worry is that the acidity is high enough to make the wine cut through the food.
Having drunk some tough and aggressively tannic Sagrantino with lasagne and having no problems whatsoever with the tannins as long as there still was food on the plate, I really can’t think of a scenario where the tannins would be a problem.
Thanks for all the suggestions! For those who mentioned the importance of producer, these are the ones I was thinking of (the plan is to open something fairly nice since this is a deferred Christmas dinner).
Barolo- My one and only B Mascarellom it’s a 2012, been dying to try this producer, or 2012 Alessandria Monvigliero
Brunello- 2015 Il Poggione, I also have a 2012 Montevertine (not the Pergola Torte)
Valpolicella- 2006 Giuseppe Quintarelli Valpolicella Classico Superiore (another producer I’ve been dying to try)
Sagrantino- 2006 Paolo Bea Montefalco Sagrantino Secco Pagliaro
I don’t have an Barbera, dolcetto, or Lambrusco at hand.
No, not all overdo it. Yet they all have it. Some more, some less.
How cold is super cold? We’ve been having sub-zero temperatures (both in C and F) since the new year’s and only today it got only to -1°C (30°F). For the most part it has been closer to -20°C (-4°F). Still wouldn’t think of going with an Amarone or Zin or Shiraz with any food. I myself don’t just think that those kinds of monolithic high-octane wines are good food wines, but of course YMMV.
If I had these wines to select from and a lasagne coming up, I’d go either with Alessandria or Montevertine. Just on the basis of what would go best with the food and at what point the wines are at the moment. A good selection of nice wines, but IMO the others might not pair as well. Except of the Mascarello - I think it would be an excellent choice, but I’d give it more age. If you’re not keen on aging it further, it’s also a solid pick.
I’d like to try the Mascarello sooner rather than later. So, not planning to wait years. Since this is still on the young side, what would you recommend in terms of decant time?
No. Marcella Hazan’s husband (who translated her books) calls for Bechamel. Marcella Hazan wrote in Italian and I bet it would have said besciamella in the original text. Bechamel has sort of become the most commonly used name for the sauce in English.
Obviously this is all just tongue-in-cheek commentary, as bechamel and besciamella are the same exact thing. But calling it Bechamel is allowing the French to win, and we can’t have that.
There are as many decanting suggestions as there are wine drinkers. I prefer to err on the shorter side and follow the wine’s evolution through the evening rather than miss out those expressive aromatics one can lose with extended aeration.
Normally at home I never decant, unless it’s a wine that can be stuffy and reductive, in which case I open the wine about an hour beforehand, check out how it is, then double-decant. Only if I know that the wine really calls for a lot of air before it starts to show its best, I might open it even earlier and even think of putting my decanter into use. But that’s rare.
Bechamel is usually made with about 4-5% of the weight of flour to milk, that milk normally but not always being pre-infused with aromatic elements, the whole being cooked for at least half an hour to cook out the taste of flour. Italian versions are made with 10% of the weight of flour and barely cooked at all after the milk is incorporated.
Interestingly the original bechamel consists of equal parts of chicken stock and cream cooked down to a coating consistency with no flour whatever involved.
Well, I guess most of the Italian besciamella recipes then erroneously were for béchamel sauce, because almost all of them described using about 5% of flour to the weight of milk and saying one should cook the sauce for 15-20 min, some even longer. Only one said the sauce should be ready in 5 minutes, but even that one had 5% flour weight to milk.
I think I found more variations on the ingredients and cooking times when checking out béchamel recipes from American cooking websites.
The original recipes for Bechamel had onions, parsley and lots of things that we don’t use today in it. The original recipe (where the name bechamel was first used) also did call for a “dust of flour”. You don’t require bechamel to have 4-5% of the weight of flour to milk to be bechamel, you can make thicker or runnier bechamel.
Again, from Essentials of Italian cooking. According to this:
((7.8g/tbsp of flour * 3tbsp) / (225g/cup of milk * 2cups)) * 100 = 5.2%
But, you are right about the brief cooking time.
Also interesting to note, that the Italian give here is Salsa Balsamella. And one more point, the French version usually includes nutmeg, which is omitted here. I usually include it because I think it adds a nice subtle but pleasant flavor.
Back to wine, in this cold weather I was all in on the Brunello, but then I saw that the Valpolicella was Quintarelli. It’s a Special Occasion, that is it!
And the Mascarello will improve for a decade or more.
