Ricotta Lasagna Filling

Ingredients

• Ricotta cheese
• 1 large Egg
• Parmesan cheese
• Oregano

Method

Ricotta is a wet cheese — looser than mascarpone, more fragile than cream cheese — which means your filling needs an egg-binding agent to hold it together during the bake. The egg proteins coagulate around 63°C, turning the filling from a loose curds-and-whey situation into something that won't leak through the pasta sheets and pool at the base of the lasagna.

Start with 250g of ricotta, cold from the fridge. Add 40g of finely grated Parmesan — use the microplane, not the box grater; you want a powder that distributes evenly rather than stringy shards that clump. The Parmesan does two jobs: it adds salt (crucial — ricotta is bland) and it speeds up the egg's coagulation slightly via its minerals. One large egg, lightly beaten first to homogenise the yolk and white. This matters because a whole yolk will scramble before the whites have fully hydrated the ricotta. Fold everything together with a rubber spatula, working from the bottom of the bowl, until there are no dry pockets of cheese and the mixture has a thick, creamy consistency — roughly the texture of soft-serve.

Season with fine sea salt and black pepper. Taste it now, not once it's layered into the dish. The filling should taste distinctly of cheese, salty, with a sharp edge from the Parmesan — this will read as "savoury" once it's surrounded by pasta and tomato sauce, which both blunt perception of salt. A half-teaspoon of dried oregano (or a small pinch of fresh if you have it) folded through just before assembly. Dried oregano loses its volatile oils quickly once mixed into wet filling, so add it at the last moment.

The filling should be used immediately, before the ricotta weeps further liquid and the egg begins to set at room temperature. Spread a thin layer — roughly 200g — over each sheet of pasta, leaving a 2cm border on all sides to prevent the filling leaking out at the edges during baking. This is a lasagna classic because the filling's mild, creamy character lets the sauce and cheese do the talking; it's not meant to be the star, just the structure that binds the assembled-dishes together.