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Antipasti

Carpaccio

Shavings of raw meat filet, drizzled with olive oil. Traditionally, the raw item was beef filet served with lemons and a mayonnaise or mustard sauce and garnished with capers. Nowadays, you can find all sorts of carpaccio including tuna, venison, buffalo, and even ostrich. Incidentally, the name is a tribute to the Renaissance painter Vittore Carpaccio, who was fond of blood-red paint and used it liberally in his work.

Fiori Fritti

Saffron-colored zucchini blossoms are served battered and deep-fried. Sometimes they are filled with ricotta and herbs before cooking.

Frittata

A round omelet, a frittata is thicker than its French cousin and often has the ingredients -- such as artichokes or asparagus -- mixed into the eggs instead of nestled between folded halves. Frittatas are often sliced and served cold as an appetizer.

Panzanella

This is a Florentine bread salad, in which stale Tuscan bread is soaked in water with tomatoes and onions. The bread is then wrung out and tossed with tomatoes, onion, basil, and olive oil.

Polenta Fritta

Day-old polenta is a wonderful antipasto when sliced, deep-fried, and salted.

Suppli al Telefona

This is a deep-fried rice croquette with a mozzarella filling. When you bite into it, the hot cheese stretching down from your chin resembles the cord of a telephone.

Primi Piatti

Pappa al Pomodoro

This lovely and simple bread and tomato soup works only when the bread is excellent, the tomatoes red and ripe, and the olive oil top-notch. These elements carry the soup's flavor, aided only by a bit of chicken stock, garlic, and basil.

Ravioli Nudi di Pesce

These "naked fish" ravioli are essentially a filling without a pasta pillow-case to surround them. Raw fish is ground and bound with egg yolks and flour. The mixture is rolled into balls that are then poached.

Ribollita

Ribollita means, literally, reboiled. It is a Florentine soup made by enriching and reheating yesterday's minestrone with good peasant bread.

Risotto alla Milanese

Risotto, the Italian rice specialty, is prepared by mixing hot stock into arborio rice (short, fat, Italian-grown rice) that has been sautéed in butter. Risottos can take any form, some soupy, others rich and solid. When tinged with saffron, Risotto alla Milanese wears one of its most famous and ancient guises.

Risotto con le Zucca

This risotto builds from a base of pumpkin (an Italian favorite) that has been sautéed with onions and simmered in chicken stock.

Timballo di Piccioni

A timballo is a dish prepared in a pastry shell. This one combines squab and macaroni in a balsamella sauce (Italian béchamel). The whole is cooked in a pre-baked pastry shell.

Tortelli al Coniglio

This is circular or sqaure twists of pasta stuffed with potatoes and Parmesan cheese. The light sauce is made from rabbit stock, rabbit liver, pancetta, wine, and vegetables.

Trippa alla Fiorentina

Tripe that has been cut into long, thin strips is boiled until tender, then stirred into a light stew of vegetables, wine, and herbs -- parmesan tops the dish.

Stracciatella

Meaning "little rags," this well-known Roman soup is made by stirring a raw egg, Parmesan, and lemon batter into hot broth -- like hot and sour soup or egg-drop soup, the egg breaks into stringy fragments as it poaches.

Secondi Piatti

Arista

A loin of pork is split and filled with a mixture of black pepper, garlic, and rosemary. It is then tied back together and roasted.

Bollito Misto

An ancient dish, famous in Modena and surrounding areas, is, as named, mixed boiled meats, including chicken, beef tongue, and pig's foot. The meat broth is rich and the meat super-tender.

Pollo alla Diavolo

A dish shared by Rome and Tuscany to the north. A whole chicken is flattened, rubbed with olive oil, garlic, lemon, and perhaps some rosemary, and grilled over hot coals.

Fritto Misto

A relative of bollito misto, fritto misto is a collection of sweetbreads, vegetables, cheeses, chicken, and other croquettes breaded and deep-fried. It is served in a great mound.

Ossobuco

Ossobuco's literal translation, "mouth, or hole, in the bone," aptly describes this dish. Veal shanks are halved to reveal the inner marrow, then braised with pancetta (Italian bacon cured with spices, not smoked), wine, tomatoes, carrots, onions, and celery. Special spoons are used to scoop out the marrow.

Pastello di Pesce

This recipe predates the return to culinary simplicity that marks the Renaissance -- a fact that may be obvious from the many spices used to flavor the fish, including cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, saffron, and cayenne pepper. The fish is rubbed with these spices and baked in pastry.

Pollo alla Cacciatora

This is a pan-Italian dish, a rustic preparation of fowl -- traditionally game -- that has migrated to all other meats. It is a stew full of aromatic herbs, garlic, wine and olive oil.

Saltimbocca

A Roman specialty, a breaded veal cutlet with sage is fried so it "jumps into your mouth."

Dolci

Castagnaccio

Medieval peasant cooking often relied on nuts to make flours and to thicken sauces -- this cake is made from chestnut flour, pignoli nuts, and raisins.

Granita

Granita is the Italian term for an ice made of water, sugar, and a flavoring such as wine, coffee, or fruit juice.

Timballo di Pere

A pastry shell of sweet dough is baked then layered with whole pears poached in wine and whipped cream. Then, the dish is covered with a pastry lid.

Zabaione(Zabaglione)

This delicate, all-purpose dessert combines egg yolks, sugar, and Marsala over simmering water until the mixture thickens into a frothy custard. It is known in France as sabayon.