Stinco di Maiale allo Speck (Italian South Tyrolean Pork Shank with Speck) This is the pork shank as it is cooked in Alto Adige, where the meat is studded and wrapped with speck before it meets the oven. Speck is neither prosciutto nor bacon. It is boned pork leg, lightly salted, rubbed with juniper, bay, pepper and garlic, cold smoked over beech at a temperature that never cooks it, then matured for months in mountain air. What it gives the shank comes from that double treat

South Tyrolean apple strudel depends on a hand stretched dough so thin that the cloth beneath can be seen through it. The filling combines tart apples, butter toasted breadcrumbs, raisins and cinnamon. Breadcrumbs are structural: they absorb apple juice and protect the lower pastry from becoming soggy. This is not puff pastry and should not rise into thick laminated layers.

Italian South Tyrolean Shredded Pancake (Kaiserschmarrn Altoatesino) Kaiserschmarrn is a dessert that is deliberately destroyed halfway through cooking. A thick batter lightened with whipped egg whites goes into a hot buttered pan, sets into one tall soft pancake, and is then torn apart with two forks or the edge of a spatula into ragged pieces the size of a walnut. Sugar and fresh butter go in after the tearing, and the torn edges caramelize where a whole pancake would have