The Lasagna Queen

31/07/2026

Everyone asks me the same question about octopus: why does yours come out tender?

The answer disappoints people, because it isn't a trick. It's cold water.

You put the octopus into cold salted water and you bring it up to the boil slowly, the way you'd wake someone you love. Heat that arrives gently is heat it can accept. Heat that arrives all at once — boiling water, straight in — makes it close up like a fist, and once it's closed nothing opens it again. Not another twenty minutes, not another hour. That is the part nobody tells you: overcooked octopus never comes back.

Then you let it cool in its own water, and it keeps drinking while it rests.

The rest is barely a recipe. Potatoes boiled in their skins and cut while still warm, so they take the oil. Black olives. A lot of parsley, more than looks reasonable. Lemon, good oil, salt.

We eat it at room temperature, never fridge-cold, and here in Panama that means most of the year it's ready the moment it's dressed.

The whole recipe is on the second photo — swipe. It's yours. 👑

🍷 Perfect with: a Vermentino, cool and a little briny, the way a coastal white should be. Away from Italy, look for a Sauvignon Blanc — or any crisp unoaked white, served very cold.

Tell me honestly: had anyone ever told you about the cold water?
→ thelasagnaqueen.com

30/07/2026

Somebody, somewhere, decided that lasagna deserved a day of its own. July 29. They were right — though one day a year feels a little thin for the greatest dish in history.

Because lasagna was never really a recipe. It's a Sunday. It's the pan coming out of the oven and everyone suddenly finding a reason to be in the kitchen. It's the ragù that started this morning, the béchamel stirred with one hand, the sheets of pasta rolled thin enough to see the light through them.

Nothing about it is quick. The sauce wants hours, not minutes. The layers have to be built one at a time, and the last one always looks better than the first. And when it finally comes out, you still have to wait — ten minutes at least — or it slides apart on the plate and takes all that work with it.

That's the whole point. In a world that wants everything fast, the best thing on the table is the one that refuses to be hurried. Lasagna isn't food you make when you're in a rush. It's food you make for people you want to keep.

So — happy Lasagna Day. Make one this week. Invite too many people. Cut the first square badly, the way everyone does, and give it to whoever helped you.

👑 From my kitchen in Panama to yours, wherever you are.

🍷 In the glass: a Sangiovese di Romagna, the wine that grew up next to this dish — enough acidity to cut through the béchamel without covering the ragù. Wherever you are, an Argentine Malbec does the same job and you'll find it on any shelf.

What's your rule: béchamel or no béchamel?
→ thelasagnaqueen.com

29/07/2026

The word gives it away. Aperitivo comes from aperire — to open. It was never meant to fill you up. It opens the appetite, and it opens whatever is coming next.

That's why the portions look absurd to anyone who isn't Italian. Four olives. A couple of salty things to pick at with your fingers. Never enough to ruin what's on its way — because something is always on its way. An aperitivo that fills you has failed at its one job.

By the sea it doesn't even wait for the evening. Before lunch is perfectly legitimate: a cold glass on a wooden table, the shade of an umbrella, half an hour in which nobody has to decide anything. Nothing gets cooked. Nobody sits down properly. And then you eat.

Here in Panama the water is warmer and the shade is harder to find, but the habit made the trip with me. 👑

🍹 In the glass: a Spritz — the drink Venice invented for exactly this hour. Dry sparkling white, a bitter orange liqueur, a splash of soda, one slice of orange, and more ice than feels reasonable. Wherever you are, any dry sparkling white will do: it's the bitter that makes it Italian, not the label.

An aperitivo before lunch: perfectly normal, or scandalous?
→ thelasagnaqueen.com

27/07/2026

There is a moment, at the end of July, when tomatoes stop needing help.

That is when the Italian kitchen goes quiet. No sauce on the stove since morning, no long list of ingredients: a handful of cherry tomatoes that collapse in the pan in ten minutes, a clove of garlic whose only job is to perfume the oil and then leave, and basil torn by hand at the very end, with the heat already off — because basil that cooks is basil that has given up.

They say in Italy that the difficult dishes forgive you and the simple ones don't. It is true. There is nowhere to hide in a plate of spaghetti al pomodorino: there is you, the tomato, and whether you had the patience to wait for a good one.

Here in Panama the tomatoes ripen all year, so I make it often — at the table outside, when it is too hot to cook anything serious. It still tastes exactly like a July in Italy.

The whole recipe is on the second photo — swipe. This one is just for you, here. 👑

🍷 Perfect with: a cold Vermentino from the Ligurian coast. Away from Italy, look for any crisp dry white — or a young red, served slightly cool, the way they drink it on the coast in August.

Do you crush your tomatoes in the pan, or leave them whole?
→ thelasagnaqueen.com

25/07/2026

In Italy, this is the dish that opens the summer.
Nobody makes it in a hurry. On the coast someone starts it in the morning: the clams sit in salted water giving back their sand, the squid takes its long slow half hour, and by noon the bowl is already in the fridge, quietly waiting. Because insalata di mare isn't really cooked — it's marinated. You do half the work, time does the other half, and time is the better cook of the two.
Then it comes to the table in the shade, with bread, and the afternoon is free to do absolutely nothing.
Here in Panama I have the sea at the door, so I make it often. The names of the fish have changed, the patience hasn't.
The whole recipe is on the second photo — swipe. This one is just for you, here. 👑
🍷 Perfect with: a Greco di Tufo, from Campania. Away from Italy that bottle is hard to find, so look for an Austrian Grüner Veltliner — or any crisp, unoaked white, served very cold.
Do you dress yours with lemon, or with lemon and a whisper of garlic?
→ thelasagnaqueen.com

24/07/2026

Mousse al cioccolato. 🍫

There's a small silence that comes at the end of a good Italian dinner. The plates are gone, the wine is low, and nobody really wants to leave the table yet — and that's exactly the moment something dark and soft should arrive in a little glass.

Chocolate mousse is barely a recipe. Good chocolate, a bit of patience, air folded in with a gentle hand. But the first spoonful makes the whole table go quiet for a second — that cool, silky, almost-serious kind of sweet you feel more than you taste.

We're never in a hurry to get here. Dessert is the part of the evening that quietly says: stay a little longer. 👑

What's the dessert you could never say no to?
→ thelasagnaqueen.com

23/07/2026

Un caffè. ☕

In Italy, if you say "let's grab a coffee," you don't mean a plan — you mean five minutes. A shot of espresso, standing at the counter, gone before it has time to get cold. No sleeves, no lids, no walking around with it. You drink it where you are, then you go back to whatever you were doing.

It's small on purpose. Strong on purpose too. There's no room in that little cup for anything halfway — which might be the most Italian thing about it.

We say "un caffè" a hundred times a day, and we mean a hundred different things by it: I need a break. Let's talk. Wake me up. Welcome. One word, so many reasons to stop. 👑

What does "let's grab a coffee" mean where you're from?
→ thelasagnaqueen.com

21/07/2026

In Italy the day doesn't end when the work ends. It ends about an hour later, at a small table, with a cold glass and something salty to pick at with your fingers.
Nobody is really hungry yet — that's the whole point. The aperitivo isn't a meal, it's a doorway: the hour when you put the day down and pick the evening up. A few olives, a slice of prosciutto, a little something that makes everyone talk a bit louder.
Here the sun goes down fast, and I've kept the habit anyway. The glasses come out — and whatever felt urgent at five o'clock has quietly stopped being urgent. 👑
🍷 Perfect with: a Prosecco di Valdobbiadene — or, wherever you are, any dry white cold enough to fog the glass.
What's in your glass tonight?
→ thelasagnaqueen.com

20/07/2026

Buongiorno. ☕

There is something the rest of the world finds strange about the way we wake up: our breakfast is sweet. No eggs, no bacon, nothing salty. A cappuccino and a cornetto, and that is the whole story.

It is not a big meal because it was never meant to be one. It is meant to be a pause — five minutes, often standing, sometimes at the counter of a bar where the barista already knows what you take. You put a little sugar in. You eat the cornetto in three bites. You say something to whoever is next to you about the weather, or about nothing at all. Then you go.

That is the trick, and we have been doing it for a very long time: it isn't the food that makes the morning good. It's the fact that you stopped, on purpose, before the day could start without you.

Wherever you are reading this from — stop for five minutes this morning. 👑

Sweet or savoury, how does your morning start?
→ thelasagnaqueen.com

19/07/2026