(continued)

Eat it! "It's an open flower, like. You know how a flower is," says Andrea Lattanzi, whose family owns New York's two Italian kosher restaurants, in his lilting Italian accent. "Between a fried and boiled artichoke. It's one of the plainest and most delicious plates, and it really goes back a long time. Typical Roman Jewish plate." Sample Carciofi Alla Giudea the easy way -- in a restaurant -- at the Lattanzi's family restaurants: - Va Bene, (kosher dairy) - Tevere 84, (kosher meat)

At dinner, we ate more (and better) fried foods than we normally consume in a year in health-conscious Los Angeles. Since the roots of Roman Jewish food go back to the professional restrictions imposed by whimsical pontiffs (which limited the jobs that Jews were allowed to hold), Roman Jews became specialists at frying morsels of fish and vegetables as friggitori, or street vendors. We had crisp, brown arancine, or rice balls stuffed with oozing mozzarella and peas, battered and fried zucchini blossoms filled with mozzarella and anchovies, and the piece de resistance: a platter of perfectly battered and fried southern Italian vegetables -- eggplant, onion, potato, zucchini and green beans -- sort of like a Jewish tempura. That was just for starters.

Though we toddled off to bed satisfied, thoughts of the legendary artichoke played havoc with my sleep. The next morning, after my cornetto and cappucino, I went out in search of the mysterious missing artichoke.

What do the Romans do?

For strength, before lunch, I stopped at the Campo di Fiori's first-rate Il Forno (not to be confused with the ghetto's antica forno) on the edge of the piazza. But it was near the two thousand year-old columns of the Portico d'Ottavio, at trattoria Da Gigetto, that I found what I was looking for -- the only dish widely recognized all over Italy as not only Italian, but Italian-Jewish -- the carciofi alla guidea.

It came to me with petals flattened like a sunflower and browned from the hot oil. The artichoke's center remained moist with vegetable juices while the outer leaves were paper-thin and crisp like good potato chips. It was profoundly deep-fried but it was not battered, and unlike other foods that I have dreamt about, it did live up to its reputation.

As for the other specialties at cozy Gigetto, they had fried filets of salt cod, stuffed zucchini blossoms, puntarelle (a popular Roman green) with anchovy dressing, and spaghetti in clam sauce. That's right, totally tref clam sauce. The Jews of Rome, the oldest continuous Jewish community in Europe, do not consider themselves Ashkenazic or Sephardic, but primarily Italians. And what could be more Italian than bending the rules a bit, especially where pleasure is concerned?