For Authentic Italian food in New York: Dominick's - southern Italian Da Umberto - northern Italian Felidia - northeastern Italian For Authentic Italian food in San Francisco: Vivande Ristorante - southern Italian Buca Giovanni - northern Italian Pane e Vino - regional, emphasizing northern Italian.

"I hope you don't mind leftovers," smirked my Italian friend, Laura, when I arrived at her Milan apartment early last week for a brief visit over lunch. As she had counted on, I smiled broadly and eagerly tracked her into the kitchen. Laura, whom I met twenty years ago through a pen pal service for kids, is - at least to me - both culinary bible and encyclopedia. A meal of leftovers meant reliving the culinary highlights of the last few days.

Like the obedient pupil I still am in her kitchen, I held the door of the fridge as she pulled out one ceramic bowl after another, announcing the title of the dishes as if they were nobility arriving at a ball. "The zucchini and onion, stuffed with a seasoned beef paste. Last Tuesday," she said, raising the cover off a mouth-watering display. Next came a cold arborio rice salad tinted golden with saffron, and filled with Swiss cheese, tuna, chopped pickles, capers and tomatoes. She also had tabouleh and, best of all, a bowl of red and yellow peppers, saturated in olive oil and sprinkled with chopped garlic. Marco, Laura's husband, contributed a delicious "tomato condetto," tomato juice dressed with a bit of lemon juice, salt, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce. With a little primping, all this food was fit to be served in any better restaurant in the States, no questions asked. As we sat down to eat and I began to rhapsodize about each bite, Laura could not help but bring up my tardy conversion to food.

"Oh yes, you like this but do you remember that Easter when you first came to visit us?" she asked teasingly.

I was in high school then and to me food was only about function. For the holiday we had gone with her parents to visit her paternal grandmother in Rome. In a laundry room behind the kitchen I came upon an ancient cook named Caterina hanging up yellowish strings over a clothesline. When I asked what they were, the family stared at me.

"But of course, it's pasta," Laura's mother answered, as if the question were criminal. An image of a plate of tangled spaghetti with meatballs flashed through my mind and I wondered whether each strand truly merited individual attention.

The next indication of the family's preoccupation with food came just hours later, during the Easter dinner. Since I could speak no Italian, Laura gave me periodic updates on the topic of conversation. "They're talking about food," she said nonchalantly, a half hour into the feast. "They're still on food," she reported a few hours later. Doubtful, I looked at Laura's father, a handsome Roman engineer who designed bridges and read Bertrand Russell on the beach. He speaking was confidently, loudly, manually, and every few seconds his mother interrupted him.

"What's he saying right now," I whispered, sure I was going to catch him talking about the price of steel struts.

"He's recalling Easter dinner 1954, when Grandma first tried out the German chocolate cake recipe we inherited from our cousins in Naples," Laura said. She then translated a few sentences so I could get a sense of his commitment.

It was all so foreign. But in spite of my innocence, I did notice that the meal was really really good.

After this entirely involuntary introduction into the world of taste, culinary lessons followed on nearly every visit to Italy. Once Laura and I sat on another grandmother's patio on the Mediterranean coast and smashed open the petal-like shells of pine cones. Inside were oily white nuts which tasted faintly of pine. Laura told me about a mysterious sounding sauce prepared only in one region of Italy in which these nuts were ground together with fresh basil leaves and garlic, and turned into a paste with olive oil and parmesan cheese. A few years later I realized these had been pine nuts and she was describing pesto.

By this time, I had admitted to enjoying food and I even began to seek out Laura's advice. "My Chinese-American friend," I began, "who grew up in Chinatown in New York City said her brother married an Italian-American woman from Little Italy and she said you should always rinse pasta after cooking it to keep it 'al dente.'"

Laura looked me in the eye. "Brenda," she said, "never, never rinse the pasta. But even more important, never listen to what an Italian- American tells you about Italian food."

It was around this same time that she caught me stirring a sauce first clockwise and then counter-clockwise. "Brenda, stir only in one direction," she mandated, "or you will confuse the consistency."

I admit I still wonder about the chemistry behind this rule. But, I no longer wonder that such a rule exists.

On this warm July afternoon, after discussing olives and lamenting the misunderstood anchovy, I rise to leave. As we say good-bye for the dozenth time in our lives, Laura smiles at me conspiratorially. I know she knows I realize that it's all been about food.