Ricotta Herb Lasagna

We came up with this recipe while brainstorming how to make a pasta dish for two, and landed on lasagna because it’s the ultimate crowd-pleaser, the king of all baked pastas, the most impressive thing we could think of. We are not ashamed to admit that the idea for presenting it this way came from a photo of baked cinnamon buns in a pan, though we later learned that there is in fact a classic, pinwheel-shaped pasta dish that exists in Italy, called rotolo. We wanted to make this version taste like classic lasagna, and pulled in all the flavors of a true lasagna Bolognese—fresh pasta, besciamella, Bolognese sauce—and added some Italian-American twists of our own (i.e., mozzarella, tomato sauce, sweet Italian sausage).

In its finished form, this is the perfect amalgamation of regional Italian and Italian-American cuisine, with a unique presentation that’s helped make this one of our most requested dishes at the restaurant. It’s perfect for sharing, because each person gets a pinwheel, and the whole top is crispy, so every bite is perfect. And because the pasta is rolled around the filling, instead of stacked and compacted, it feels lighter than most lasagnas. Diehard regional Italian connoisseurs will say this isn’t a “real” lasagna, in the traditional sense, but nothing we do is, and we don’t claim it to be. This is just us doing our thing.