Everyone loves food, even though they all love different kinds. As George Bernard Shaw says, “there is no love more sincere than the love of food,” and to some people that is 100% true. But, even if you’re not crazy about foods and flavors, you still have to have a favorite dish or cuisine.
I’m very indecisive, so it’s hard for me to choose a favorite of anything, though I really like Japanese and Italian food. Even though they are different in many ways, I really enjoy both of them. A couple of my favorite Italian foods are pizza and lasagna, probably because they taste quite similar to each other. But, living in Puerto Vallarta, it’s hard to find a good lasagna, one that tastes legitimately Italian. They always have some twist that gives them a more Mexican flavor. That is, until my family and I found Giovedi Gnocchi.
Giovedi Gnocchi is a small Italian delivery food company with around 400 followers that we found on Facebook. We noticed that a lot of people were complaining about the price of the lasagna, but we thought that it looked very big, making the price actually very fair, so we decided to buy one and see for ourselves.
The couple drove some distance to deliver the lasagna, and they were so kind when they arrived. The tray was even bigger than it seemed in the picture, and it was very heavy and still warm from being freshly baked. It probably weighed twice as much as it looked like it would, so I was kind of shocked when my dad handed me the lasagna to hold.
For the whole tray of lasagna the cost is 550 pesos, about 27 dollars, and it was much bigger than it seemed in the picture. The tray was also especially deep, making the pieces at least half again as high as your average lasagna. We got 12 huge pieces out of it, which put each one at around 45 pesos, or about $2.25 dollars. That’s way cheap! And so filling!
But, what matters more than the size or price is the flavor. And, it was delicious! It did not let us down, you could say it even let us up. The lasagna was full of soft, gooey cheese, which had great flavor. And the sauce was not just a regular tomato sauce, I wouldn’t even call it so, it was a real Italian, full of flavor, meat sauce. The following day after resting in the frig the sauce flavor was brought out even more, and we enjoyed it again, even better that time. The lasagna had a soft and smooth from melted cheese texture, but not mushy, so everything about it I loved! I would call it a cheese-lover’s lasagna, and it is made with a shredded white soft cheese rather than aged cheeses, just as in the traditional recipes of the small town Giovedi Gnocchi’s family came from.
Italian food is universal. It can be found almost everywhere, and there are many variants of it. For example, lasagna is mentioned as far back as Ancient Greece, and then later in the Roman Empire. It was known as laganon or laganum, which was a container resembling a pot in which unleavened bread was assembled in layers with sauce. It is argued that this dish is the oldest form of pasta.
Giovan Battista Crisci introduced the first recipe for current lasagna in 1684. He incorporated layers of pasta, rather than bread, and mozzarella that was then cooked in an oven. A crucial ingredient in current lasagna is the tomato sauce, which was introduced in 1881. But the most important ingredient is the heart and soul that goes into making a good lasagna.
The lasagna from Giovedi Gnocchi is a recipe that comes from a small town in Italy called Casalvieri, and it uses the same recipe that has been passed down from generation to generation. In this small town there’s a tradition of keeping and using original recipes, which can only be learned if you live there and gain the trust of the locals; otherwise it is very difficult, practically impossible, that they’ll give you the secret of the lasagna recipe. This is why the flavor is so special in the case of Giovedi Gnocchi’s lasagna.