Lasagne di zucchine

One thing that I keep noticing about Italian cooking is their minimal usage of onion and garlic. They use both in almost every recipe, but in much smaller quantities than we seem to in England (in my house anyway). When cooking a lasagne for 6 people, I'd probable use 1-2 large onions and at least 2 cloves of garlic, here however, only one small shallot was used and no garlic. I could be completely off the mark here, but from a few comparisons I've heard/made about English/Italian cooking, it seems we cook much faster and consequently use stronger flavours to make up for the fact that we haven't allowed our ingredients time to intermingle and become more flavoursome. If we make a tomato pasta sauce at home, we probably throw it together in 10 minutes flat, with lots of garlic and basil. In Italy, this sauce would be started at least an our before lunch and left to simmer, enabling all the flavours to develop to their fullest. This lasagne is another example, Guiseppina cooks it an hour in advance, and then leaves it to cool to just above room temperature as she believes the taste is much better after a little time to rest.

Serves 6

4 courgettes, grated lengthways to form fairly long strips
1 shallot, finely chopped
6-8 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp. crumbled vegetable stock cube
250g lasagne pasta sheets, cooked and drained
2 handfuls of fresh parmesan, grated
A tiny bit of butter

Fresh nutmeg (about 1/4 of one)
About 1/2 pint of whole milk, warm (keep it on a low heat on the hob until needed)
About 25g butter
About 1 handful of flour
... the 4 above ingredients are for the béchamel sauce... Guiseppina's measurements weren't particularly precise, so feel free to use your own béchamel sauce recipe (you'll need about half a pint)

• Mix the onion, courgettes and stock in a bowl and fry off in batches on a medium-high heat. Use 1-2 tbsp. oil with each batch, cooking four batches in total. Each batch should only be cooked for about 2 minutes and you want the courgettes to have lots of space, otherwise they'll become watery instead of fried.
• Make the béchamel sauce according to your recipe, or follow Guiseppina's version here: Melt the butter in a saucepan on a low heat and grate in about 1/4 of a whole nutmeg. Once melted, add the flour and stir vigorously. When fully combined, begin slowly pouring in the milk and keep stirring vigorously to avoid any lumps. Keep cooking on a low heat until slightly thickened (about 3-4 mins in our case - you want it to be the thickness of double cream) and set aside once ready.
• Heat the oven to 180 degrees and begin layering the lasagne.
• First butter the bottom of your chosen dish (the dish Guiseppina used was about 30cm/20cm and about 4cm deep), then add a layer of pasta, then courgette, then sauce, then parmesan and do this until you have four layers - finishing after the 4th addition of parmesan. You hardly add any courgette/sauce/parmesan to each layer - about 2 heaped tbsp. courgette mix per layer, 3 tbsp. of sauce and about half a handful of parmesan... it won't even cover all the pasta.
• Cook in the oven for 20 minutes, then Guiseppina recommends eating it just above room temperature, so turn the oven off and leave it in there for about an hour.