"Victor Sack"
> Maybe what you had was badly made? People are perfectly capable of bad>
> cooking, both in New York and in Naples. It is just pasta layered with
> ragù and béchamel very much in the manner of lasagne and baked in a>
> pastry shell. Except for the pastry shell, which is there more for>
> decoration and for just keeping the ingredients together somewhat in the>
> manner of quiche, it is not all that much different from lasagne al
> forno. The dish is a bit fussy to make, but there is nothing really>
> excessive about it.
>
> Victor

It is a feast dish and when eaten out of the house it almost always (my
experience is always) has all kinds of "treasures" stuck in it. Boiled
eggs, sweet things, sourish things, there's no limit. Also the pastry has
to be leaden to do its job, beacuse it is taken out of the cooking vessel
and carved as a standalone. It looks spectacular and to me is a bomb in the
mouth followed by an "Oh, no, I ate that!" sensation in the gut.

Pasta al forno is juicy and saucy. It can somewhat resemble lasagne. This
thing is dry, cooked so everything sticks together and doesn't resemble
lasagne in the least, secondo me.